14 May ALL DIGITAL General Assembly 2018: to be proud of and look forward to

14 May, 2018

On 8-9 May 2018, representatives of 28 member organisations gathered in Brussels for the General Assembly to assess and approve of the main organisational documents, elect new Board members, as well as discuss the members’ services, opportunities and major events.

Chair of the Board Mara Jakobsone welcomed the participants and saluted on their work in 2017, when 1.5 mln people were trained by the members’ network organisations and digital competence centres.

Mara also introduced the new members that had joined ALL DIGITAL since the previous General Assembly in 2017:

• VAATA MAAILMA SA – LOOK@WORLD FOUNDATION, Estonia
• ECCC FOUNDATION, Poland
• ASSOCIATION RURAL INTERNET ACCESS POINTS (RIAP ASSOCIATION), Lithuania
• iVOTE FOUNDATION, Macedonia
• BRUXELLES FORMATION, Belgium
• IASIS, Greece

The mandate of the General Assembly is to evaluate and approve the main organisational documents, so the first part of the meeting was the formal one. ALL DIGITAL’s CEO Laurentiu Bunescu and COO Peter Palvolgyi presented the documents and led the discussions, and the General Assembly assessed, debated and approved:

– The new ALL DIGITAL Strategic Plan for 2018-2020;
– the Annual Report 2017, Accounts and the report from financial controllers;
– the Action Plan and the Budget 2018.

The General Assembly also held the elections for two Board members, the Deputy Chair, and a financial controller. As a result, we are pleased to introduce our new Board members:

– Virginia Pareja, Fundacion Esplai, Spain
– Sara Van Damme, Digipolis Gent, Belgium

The new Deputy Chair is Achilles Kameas, DAISSy Research Group of Hellenic Open University and Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus”, Greece, and the new financial controller is Athanasios Priftis from Ynternet.org Foundation, Switzerland.

The 2nd day was a more informal members’ meeting where the services for members and main campaign and events were introduced and discussed.

The Annual Membership survey, conducted during January-March 2017, showed the major trends in the network and let us analise the value of the services we offer. Our centres provide a wide range of services and training programmes, as you can see from the charts below.

    

According to the members, the most useful benefits of the network are:

• Proposal development and applying for funding together; collaboration on projects with other members
• Info on EU funding and policy; funding alert
• Info on other members’ activities ( through various means) – to get inspired and localise
• Annual meetings/summit

 

The services that the members still need the most are the same with improvement and also with more training and online events for members.

Hence, the Assembly continued with the presentation of the training offers for members by the Board member Altheo Valentini. We will announce the offers separately, and they will be published on the website.

 

Another offer, presented by Iva Walterova, is the result of the partnership between ALL DIGITAL and CISCO –  the NetAcad programme.  Iva explained the programme and described the opportunities for members to join, which was followed by the feedback from the current participants. The members joining the programme will enjoy the following benefits:

• Free access to a wide range of CISCO NetAcad courses, technical support and teacher guidelines
• Access for students to globally accepted industry certifications
• Free qualifications for trainers to become Cisco NetAcad instructors
• Free qualifications for selected trainers to become Cisco NetAcad instructor trainers
• Seed funding to support engagement of instructors and students

 

The two flagship events of ALL DIGITAL are the ALL DIGITAL Week and the Summit, and sessions on those are always long awaited and arouse most discussions.

ALL DIGITAL Week 2018 results were unveiled at the General Assembly – 123,000 people from 32 countries people were engaged in the campaign; 4,060 local partners organised 5,400 events and reached over 8,000,000 people.

The campaign manager Ekaterina Clifford highlighted the main achievements and changes in 2017 and thanked all the partners, many of whom were present at the General Assembly and. Later the the participants discussed the challenges from 2017,  relevant topics for next year and already set the dates for the next year’s campaign – 25-31 March 2019.

The ALL DIGITAL Summit 2018 concept was presented by the policy and project officer Gabriela Ruseva. This year’s Summit will be co-hosted by our Belgian member Maks vzw and will take place in Brussels on 18-19 October under the title “Digital Journey: From Inclusion to Empowerment“.

We will be talking about digital journey to become engaged digital citizens, skilled workers, empowered educators or inspiring leaders in the digital society.  The digital society that is  smart and inclusive, which is more equal, more tolerant, more democratic, more critical, more active and better prepared for the challenges of today and tomorrow. The digital journey starts from realising that digital tools are for everyone, and through feeling safe and comfortable with our own capacities. it brings us to being empowered by our own knowledge. Want to explore this topic and learn from other members on how to include and empower people with digital skills? Then join us in Brussels on 18-19 October. More info and details to follow.

The General Assembly also hosted the final event of the Pathways4Employ project “Digitally Competent: New pathways for new workers“. The workshop, as well as the project itself, looked at the digital skills needed in two interesting profiles for employment offering opportunities in the coming years: entrepreneur and virtual worker”. The project partners reviewed the needs analysis results, the open badges ecosystem, demonstrated the Pathwaysforemploy platform and presented the piloting approach. You can see the agenda here.

 

Greetings from the General Assembly participants, and we hope to see many of you at the Summit in October!