Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
A Greek boot camp for startups
Thursday, October 31, 2013
After suffering an economic catastrophe, seeing a quarter of GDP evaporate over the past five years, Greece needs more than ever to encourage entrepreneurs. In an attempt to do just this, we recently inaugurated "Google Launchpad", a four-day boot camp for early stage start-ups, in Athens.
Greece is a country of highly qualified youth, ranking 10th in the world in availability of scientists and engineers. But it is ravaged by 60% unemployment (highest in the European Union) among youth under the age of 30. Our goal at Launchpad is to marry this potential talent with exciting opportunities.
The project brought together 80 developers and entrepreneurs from around Greece. They formed teams and organized their startups over the course of a week, under the guidance and mentoring from local Greek and visiting Israeli Googlers. Our first Google Launchpad took place in start-up hub Israel, and the Israeli experience provided crucial inspiration.
Some 13 start-ups ended up pitching their plans and prototypes to a panel of VC funders. Three winners were chosen:
· SpeakerZen, an app that presenters can use to get instant feedback from their audience
· SponsorBoat, an event marketplace connecting sponsors with event promoters
· Processus.io, a process management platform for SMB efficiency
Each received a three month package of support with office space, facilities,
legal/accounting advice and mentoring
,
recruiting services
as well as the Google Developers Startup Pack including $18,000 towards Google Cloud Platform products.
Congratulations! We hope these exciting ideas soon will be powering some exciting Greek startups.
Posted by Dionisis Kolokotsas, Policy Manager, Athens
Be inspired, ReCreate
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Edgar Degas
once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Our
ReCreate with Tate Britain
project allows all art-lovers to show what they see.
The project celebrates the Tate’s 500 year
British Art collection
by asking creative types across the world to ReCreate something of their own from a Tate Britain painting and to share on Google+.
Themes include
Cooking,
Comedy
and
Poetry
. Tate Britain invited famous TV chefs The Fabulous Baker Brothers to take inspiration from Hogarth’s ‘O the Roast beef of Old England’ to ReCreate a new recipe as part of the food series.
Watch
how they created a burger recipe inspired by the painting.
This evening, at 8 p.m. GMT, fashion photographer
Miles Aldridge
and our Google+ Photography community will present a special Hangout on Air about photography and art. Be sure to tune in
here
to watch live.
Want to get involved? It's as simple as 1, 2, 3:
Take a look at Tate Britain's
collection
on the Google Art Project and pick something that inspires you
Create something new and share it into the
with Tate Britain Community.
Tag it #Recreate and #TateBritain. Whether it's food, fashion, photography, we'd love to see it
Over the next few months, we will share selected artworks to the Google Art Project and Tate Britain Google+ pages. Upcoming themes include fashion, music and film. Make sure to join the Google+ Community and stay up to date.
Join us and ReCreate.
Posted by Calvin Lau and Kevin Maguire, Product Marketing Managers, EMEA
An unusual meeting of minds in Belgium
Monday, October 28, 2013
It will be a special moment when one of the “fathers’ of the Internet meets some of the “grandfathers." This evening,
Vint Cerf
, who helped pioneer the Internet’s original protocol in the 1980s, will travel to Mons in Belgium for a event celebrating the
Mundaneum
. Click below to enjoy live streaming of the event from the Manege Theater.
More than a century ago, two visionary Belgians envisioned the World Wide Web’s architecture of hyperlinks and indexation of information, not on computers, but on paper cards. Their creation was called the
Mundaneum
. Two years ago, Google struck a partnership with the Mundaneum to support the archive’s exhibitions, conferences, and other activities. Since then, the relationship has bloomed. A Google data centre is located near Mons and the Mundaneum has become a key partner in working with us to dig deep roots in the region.
As demand for our products grows, we’re investing hundreds of millions of Euros in expanding our European data centres. According to the the Wallonia Agency for Foreign Investment, our EUR550 million investment makes us one of Belgium’s largest investors. A data center is about more than just bricks, mortar and servers, too. Its about jobs. All of our open positions can be found on
Google Jobs page
for positions in Belgium.
In Mons, Vint will meet local web entrepreneurs in town, at the local
Beaux-Arts Mons museum
, which is featuring an
Andy Warhol exhibition
. Google is supporting the exhibition’s online activities.
On Tuedsay Vint will travel to Ghent for a repeat performance at the
Minard Theater
. We also have deep roots in Ghent. The Ghent University’s library owns a linguistic treasure trove of centuries-old books in English, French, German and Dutch. As a
Google book partner
, we have scanned more than 200,000 of the library’s out of copyright works. Works that once were relegated to hard-to-reach library shelves and received only an occasional reader now get more than than 100,000 views each day on the Net. That’s quite an achievement for a father of the Internet to celebrate.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Data Centre Community Relations, Europe.
Live streaming at Egypt's Abu Simbel Temple
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
It was a ritual for the Pharaohs! Twice a year, the sun aligns with the face of
Pharaoh Ramses II’s
statue in the inner sanctuary of the temple of
Abu Simbel
. Today, the
Egyptian Ministry of Tourism
live streamed the occasion on YouTube.
The solar alignment occurs on the date of Ramses II's birthday, February 22, and the date of his coronation, October 22. The latter date also signified the start of the harvest season for Ancient Egyptians.
Ramses commissioned the Abu Simbel temple between 1279 and 1213 B.C out of piety to the gods, to mark his own deification and to celebrate his domination of Nubia. It is carved into sheer stone, located 275 kilometers southeast of the city of Aswan. The original temple was positioned on the bank of the Nile. A UNESCO-sponsored project relocated and raised it some 60 meters in the 1960s to save it from flooding caused by the construction of the giant
Aswan Dam
.
Thousands of tourists flock to the temple to see the solar alignment spectacle. Now, thanks to the Internet, anyone can watch it from anywhere in the world at any time using a desktop or mobile device.
Posted by Tarek Abdalla, Head of Marketing, Middle East & North Africa
Seeing Spain through English eyes
Monday, October 21, 2013
Over the past few centuries, Span has exerted a powerful fascination on foreigners, particularly English-speaking ones. Visitors from the United Kingdom, as well as the U.S., Canada, Australia and Ireland, left powerful descriptions of their travels to this exotic land. Now, with our help, the
Cervantes Institute
has created an
online exhibition
based on accounts by foreign travelers collected in more than 240 books on Spain written between 1750 and 1950. More than five hundred images and engravings have been put online.
The Institute, the Spanish government’s equivalent to France’s
Alliance Francaise
and Germany’s
Goethe Institute
, is dedicated to promoting the Spanish language and culture. Some 40 of the exhibition's books, the out of copyright works, already had been scanned in our
Book Project
. Others were found in the collection of the Institute’s London branch. Institute curators have prepared a detailed analysis of the texts and organized them by subject, ranging from the role women to bull-fights
The exhibition explodes many stereotypes about Spain. Most foreign observers found them hard-working, seeing the much-noted afternoon siesta as hiding the real truth. “This is not a fair ground for the charge of laziness, so often urged against the natives of the south of Europe, for the heat at this hour will induce drowsiness even in the active and stirring Englishman, especially when not inured to the relaxing climate,” wrote
George Dennis
in
A Summer in Andalusia
, published in 1839. “The Spanish working man is really a most sober, hard-working being, not much given to dancing and not at all to drinking. They are exceptionally clever and sharp, and learn any new trade with great facility,” concurred Louis Higgin, in 1902 in his
Spanish life In town and country
.
More than 100 people showed up for the exhibition’s launch this month. The Cervantes’s Institute’s General Secretary discussed the project via Google Hangout with the the director of Cervantes Institute in London. The exhibition demonstrates how the Internet helps allow access to previously overlooked or ignored documents. Many of the books, stocked in dusty library shelves, received few readers. Today, anyone, anywhere in the world is able, with a click of their computer, to find and enjoy them.
Posted by Esperanza Ibanez, Public Policy Manager, Spain
Injecting data into journalism
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
We’ve long believed that the vast amounts of information unearthed by the Internet can power innovations in journalism. That’s why we are supporting the
European Journalism Centre’s
new online
data journalism course
. Registration for Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools has just opened at
http://www.datadrivenjournalism.net/course/
.
This five-module introductory course will give participants the essential concepts, techniques and skills to effectively work with data to produce compelling and visual stories. It is open to anyone with an Internet connection and is due to start in early 2014.
The course features a stellar line-up of instructors and advisors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, New York Times, ProPublica, Wired, Twitter, La Nacion Argentina, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Zeit Online, and others. “Whether you want to get over your fear of Excel, learn the language of your data geeks, or discover how to tell stories with data visualisations, this course will help journalists and newsrooms learn how to take advantage of these invaluable skills,” said Josh Hatch, senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and member of the course’s Advisory Board
There is already plenty of
evidence
of the opportunities and insights to be had in data driven journalism. We hope a graduate of this new course will soon be producing similar ground-breaking journalism.
Posted by Peter Barron, Direct, Communications, Europe, Middle East and Africa
Young and old unite for the Internet in Italy
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Students gr0w up with the Internet, but have difficulty entering the job market. Youth unemployment now reaches 40 percent in Italy. Retired entrepreneurs were successful in the business world, but often have little experience with the Net. Only 16 percent of Italian pensioners are online, benefiting from search, chats, blogs, and social media.
For two innovative Italian associations, the
Fondazione Mondo Digitale
, and
CNA Pensionati
, these alarming figures offer an opportunity to create a mutually beneficial exchange. At the pension group’s annual conference in Rome, and with our support, 300 students from nine schools from throughout Italy heard real life testimony on how to create and manage a company. Through next April, many students will visits to these companies and benefit from a specific training in our
“Clusters on the Web”
initiative.
In exchange for the business knowledge, the students will run workshops for retirees on how to use the Internet in their everyday life, learning how to access and use public administration services online or how to stay in touch with their grandchildren studying abroad.
At the launch event, Luciano, a retired tailor (pictured above), met up with Sara, a highschool student in Rome. Luciano wants to learn how the Internet can help him keep a record of his measurements and rationalise the administration of his business, and Sara wants to help him create an Internet site to promote his hand-made suits online. The Internet can drive ahead Italy’s economy - and engage all ages.
Posted by Laura Bononcini, Public Policy Manager, Rome
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