Panel from left to right: T. Gornostaja, C. Kraus, M. Nagy-Rothengass, J. Hummel, C. Romero D.
Together with the partners of the LT Observatory project and organisers of the EDF, EMF and LT-Innovate co-organised a session on 17 November entitled "Multilingual Big Data for e-Commerce and e-Services". Actors in e-Commerce and Language Technologies discussed what is needed to make the "Data Revolution" in a multilingual environment a success for cross-border business.
A video welcome message given by Paul Rübig, MEP set the scene, emphasising that "languages are a key issue for Europe, the Digital Single Market and eCommerce".
Carlos Romero Dexeus, Segittur, Spain gave an overview on how data and multilingualism can support the tourism sector. He was also among the drafters of the Spanish Government's "Plan de Impulso" that dedicates 70+ MEUR to Language Technologies and gave this plan as a "best practice" to be taken up by other Member States. Link to his presentation.
Carsten Kraus, CEO of Omikron/FACT Finder, Germany provides eCommerce search solutions for 1500+ on-line shops. "Innovation = money + brain; money alone is not sufficient but it may buy brain". Link to his presentation.
Jochen Hummel, Chairman of LT-Innovate and CEO of ESTeam, Germany explained how the LTi cloud can benefit eCommerce and the Digital Single Market. Link to his presentation.
Tatjana Gornostaja, TILDE, Latvia, presented the "marriage" of language and knowledge with the example of the FREME project. Link to her presentation.
The panel session was moderated by Márta Nagy-Rothengass, EC, DG CNECT. The lively discussion that followed raised issues such as:
-The importance of visibility of (eCommerce and eServices) solutions to reach the user/customer;
-The considerate use of money (and brain) for innovation;
-Multilingual solutions for evidence-based medicine (commonly only in EN, ES, Chinese) that are lacking;
-Multilingual search to FIND a product or service which is a main challenge;
-Other elements of eCommerce that differ from country to country like delivery, return policy or laws (all are addressed by the DSM);
-eHealth at patient level: high-quality translation needed e.g. for multilingual allergene information on products when traveling (for interoperability of eHealth systems, see eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020).
Check out our twits and pictures on Storify!
#EDF2015 and for our session: #MLEDF
About EDF2015:
The European Data Forum (EDF) is a meeting place for industry, research, policymakers and EU initiatives to discuss the challenges of Big Data and the emerging Data Economy and to develop suitable action plans for addressing these challenges. Of special focus for the EDF are Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), since they are driving innovation and competition in many data-driven economic sectors. The topics discussed at the European Data Forum range from novel data-driven business models (e.g. data clearing houses) and technological innovations (e.g. Linked Data Web) to societal aspects (e.g. open governmental data as well as data privacy & security).
Programme of EDF2015
EDF 2016 will take place on 29/30 June in Eindhoven (Netherlands).
