The NGI Forum 2021 is the flagship event of the Next Generation Internet initiative, which brings together some of Europe’s top internet innovators who are shaping the Internet of Humans. An Internet that guarantees trust, privacy, and inclusion, while empowering people and addressing global sustainability challenges.
Digital technologies and access to a safe and secure Internet have proved essential during the COVID-19 crisis, but the pandemic has also exacerbated existing technological, societal, and economic gaps. Human centricity is not an option for Europe as we enter the Digital Decade, it is a core component, and NGI is an essential initiative to bring the human dimension at the core of the Internet.
NGI Explorers, in collaboration with the project NGIAtlantic.eu and in the context of the NGI Forum 2021, organized a pitch contest among the European fellows (a.k.a Explorers) who successfully completed the programme so far. Alexandra Garatzogianni, Coordinator of MediaFutures, represented the project as a jury member at the pitch contest. More specifically, the EU-funded NGI Explorers project organised missions to the United States in the frame of fellowships for the best European internet researchers and innovators. Participants obtained thus the necessary skills, the network and the resources that will empower them as future pioneers of European NGI, strengthening thus EU-US collaboration, the European NGI ecosystem and novel ‘made in Europe’ services and products.
The LUH team (Alexandra Garatzogianni, Gerrit Rosam and Alina Brockob) represented the MediaFutures project at the NGI Forum 2021. This was an opportunity to exchange on the first NGI results, learn about the impact of ground-breaking internet technologies, discuss future priorities with experts across several domains, such as trust and data sovereignty, Internet architecture, decentralised technologies, or new methods of search. It also provided insights into NGI upcoming calls in Horizon Europe, offering an opportunity to top internet innovators to continue their work and to join the growing NGI community.
The NGI Forum 2021 is organized by NGI4ALL, which is part of the NGI initiative. NGI4ALL has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement no 825354.
