Happy Sunday everyone!
Last Thursday, the EU launched a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for Digital Commons. During this launch, EU & national authorities were crystal clear on how large our digital autonomy challenges are in the Trump era. This was very refreshing, especially when compared to the experience I blogged about earlier in my post Hello Europe, Joe Biden is Gone.
At the launch event, I delivered a keynote in which I outlined how dependent we are technically and culturally on US big tech, and I offered some modest advice.
The Digital Commons EDIC could be the nucleus for getting the change we so desperately need in Europe. Technology that we control. Putting governments in charge again over their own IT systems.
The EDIC could also end up as a talking shop, something that has happened before.
Based on the clarity of vision provided by the European Commission (through Thibaut Kleiner) and by member state governments present at the launch, I am cautiously optimistic that this could be going somewhere.
In my keynote, I once again state just how messed up our situation is, and I also offer some modest recommendations that we’ll never regret, even if we don’t immediately manage to replace Microsoft 365, which is going to be hard work. But, we know it can be done.
Please do read on in my post Keynote opening Digital Commons EDIC: Moving beyond the Digital Uncommons!
Cheers,
Bert