In the midst of European Youth Week 2013, the normally calm Esplanade of the European Parliament was taken over by the sounds, the scenes and the excitement of Europe’s youth finding their voice and building their futures at Yo! Fest. Everywhere you looked, the youth generation of European citizens were debating, engaging with one another, and enjoying themselves with friends, music and food.

Driving Digital Jobs in Europe’ is an invitation only event hosted by Microsoft, June 18th, 2013 in Dublin. The event will bring together a group of 60 youth ambassadors from countries hardest hit by youth unemployment in Europe for a focused workshop looking at a number of challenges under the title ‘Driving Digital Jobs in Europe’. 

With the YO! Fest2013 taking place in Brussels this week, we took the opportunity to interview both Giuseppe Porcaro, Secretary-General of the European Youth Forum and Sylvie Laffarge, Director Community Affairs EMEA at Microsoft. Read on for more. 

It is time we begin to celebrate the impact of IT on education. Earlier this year, I wrote an opinion piece for IDG Connect about the increasing importance of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) qualifications. But even if we manage to attract greater numbers of STEM students, there is a growing gap between academic knowledge and the type of role-specific knowledge that makes it easy for...

Putting technology in the hands of individuals who make a difference, is always inspiring. Alfred Nobel, himself would have been impressed to hear the youth gathered in his home town of Stockholm recently to share their innovative, change-making ideas to take on some of society’s tougher issues. Microsoft Innovate4Good is a global initiative that aims to empower youth to change their world and...

Microsoft OneNote has helped reduce student drop-out rates in Norway. The country has made large investments in ICT education in recent years. What are the effects of these investments? How have they provided optimal learning and better outcomes for students?

Students report that the operating system makes it easy to view information without opening applications. The Microsoft in Education team talks with Heiki Tähis, Head of IT and CIO of the Tallinn Polytechnic School in Estonia, about the school’s adoption of the Windows 8 operating system.

If you were an employer looking for a young person to recruit, would you rather hire someone with impeccable academic credentials or someone who you knew can communicate effectively, has good organizational skills, can take decisions independently, bring the best from others to achieve common goals?

Why are there so few women technology entrepreneurs? There are numerous research projects and opinion polls that have looked into the issue, but we decided to go straight to the source and ask some of the leading female Start-ups working with Microsoft in Europe what they think.

Europe is at risk of being left behind by countries such as India, which is reshaping its future with new entrepreneurial creativity and social policy innovation. Currently the EU member states lose €153 billion every year by not being able to reconcile a quality transition and easier access to the labour market for the 14 million out-of-work, disengaged young Europeans.

You’ve all seen the figures over the past year and more that show high youth unemployment across some European Union Member States. But do people know that technology can have an enabling role in Europe and beyond? 

Recently, both at European level and at Microsoft, we have had many discussions on how can industry improve and bridge the productivity skills of youth transitioning from school to work, and one of the things that we have found out is that it cannot happen without investments efforts and good will at national level in all European countries.

The Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs was launched last week to address the shortfall of Europeans with digital professional skills and to exploit the employment potential of ICT. The EU's competitiveness is "under threat" according to Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission, if it cannot fill the expertise gap. 

In this high level event we plan on gathering 100 young Spaniards, Startups and SMEs with the objective of establishing a forum for dialogue in which the young generation, civil society leaders, government elites, MEPs and entrepreneurs will discuss the role of youth as the key to the future in Spain’s competitiveness, in three of the areas that have been set as priorities: development of ICT skills,...

As we discussed extensively at the ‘Youth, the Key to Europe’s future’ event in Brussels on 22nd of January, today’s educators face some tough challenges as they work to prepare students for the 21st century workplace. Microsoft and its partners are helping them make the grade.

Recommendations for education systems to support an improved workforce in the 21st century. Education systems need to be reformed in order to provide the workforce of the future with ‘updated’ skills.

The Partners in Learning Global Forum 2012 was a unique experience in my career, summarising in two words: Life Changing! I was able to be connected with brilliant personalities and projects and I felt that I wasn't alone on this journey.

When Jurgen van Gael joined London-based start-up Rangespan – a company which develops analytical tools to help retailers grow and optimise their online range – he found his combination of scientific and practical experience to be crucial for making an impact in the start-up environment.

Digital skills are in short supply at a time when Europe needs them most. According to European Commission estimates, Europe faces a shortfall of 700,000 digitally skilled workers by 2015, a gap that seriously threatens the region’s ability to compete. With youth unemployment in some countries as high as 50 per cent, the financial burden of supporting the young jobless is jeopardising future economic...

When looking at the current state of the European economy, it is hard to ignore the struggles of one group in particular – today’s youth. There is a generation of out-of-work, disengaged young Europeans that cost EU member states €153 billion every year, according to new findings by EU research agency Eurofound. 

Microsoft’s event “Transforming education to regain economic prosperity”, will seek to promote and explore new assessment methods around collaborative problem solving. The discussion with key actors involved in this project, will provide guidelines to policy makers on how to help education communities prepare for PISA 2015.

Last month, we joined the first ever pan-European job shadowing programme, led by Junior Achievement- Young Enterprise Europe, which gave us the possibility to look directly into a company and their market. That company was Microsoft.

Microsoft is happy to sponsor this year’s European Employment Forum 2012, which will take place in Brussels on the 27th & 28th of November.

A private grade 4-12 educational institution in Greece (Athens), Doukas School has invested heavily in innovative education to provide its 2,000 students with the finest educational, cultural, and athletic programs in the country.

"Europe needs a youth guarantee - that young people will be in work, training or education within months of leaving school’’ László Andor, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.

Youth unemployment in Europe is high. In many cases there are jobs available but the skill sets to meet them are scarce. Digital skills are in high demand and essential for enhancing employability, and driving innovation and sustainable growth in Europe. 

Companies want employees who can think critically, work collaboratively and communicate through new technology. A revolutionary project is teaching students how to do them all.

Berlin’s Trifense, an EIT Entrepreneurship Award winner, takes a new approach to Internet security – and starts to gain traction in the market.

There’s no escaping the news of today about growing unemployment and economy turbulence, which means uncertainty for many – not the least to students and fresh graduates. But as the economy stagnates for now, innovation, entrepreneurship and enthusiasm are still holding a bright camp at - where else - than universities.

Victor Henning, co-founder of Mendeley, an online service that helps academic researchers organise and share the mounds of documents they collect, hardly looked up from his computer screen when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. He was immersed in the day-to-day routines of his start-up, including getting more users and securing the next round of venture capital.

Innovation processes are becoming more open. The large, vertically integrated R&D labs are giving way to distributed networks of innovation, which connects numerous companies and organizations into ecosystems. Public policy should follow this evolution and consider the roles of human capital, competition policy, financing, intellectual property, and public data in promoting open innovation.

ICT has recently been pointed out by the European Commission as one of the big job growth areas and as a digital native, a student in 2012 who has grown up surrounded by technology I should feel privileged.. 

Social stability, economic prosperity, and cultural richness all depend on educational excellence. Over the past thousand years, European universities have been at the forefront of shaping art, science and commerce.

Some revolutionary ideas for school reform are not so new. The 17th-century philosopher and ecclesiastic Comenius had important things to say about 21st-century education. More than 300 years ago, he favoured “learning through play”, arguing that the successful acquisition of knowledge was active, not passive and that it should be a pleasure, not a task. “That guy was ahead of his...

The prospects for Europe's youth were never bleaker; the prospects were never brighter.

At Microsoft, one of my primary roles is leading our Local Software Economy initiative, which aims to accelerate the development of innovative software industries worldwide. The initiative—which is also a passion of mine—involves working closely with entrepreneurs to help them foster the skills, IT solutions, partnerships and, ultimately, businesses that will have a large impact on their local...

Why the industrial model – hierarchical organizations using standardised methods to produce uniform products – no longer works for schools or students.

Innovative teachers + technology + smart policies = the active learning and collaborative skills required for the 21st century.

In terms of modernising educational systems, Commissioner Vassiliou says, “We have a long way to go”.

Looking for web-based teaching tools to prepare its students for the future, Kello School in Finland deployed Microsoft Live@edu to give students a rich online learning experience, foster peer collaboration and enable students to work away from school all within a secure online environment.

It’s all about inspiring breakthroughs!

E-skills are no longer required only for those who work in IT departments, but for everyone participating in a digitized economy. The new economy is a digital economy. It's notable that many of the goals and metrics outlined in the European Commission's new Digital Agenda – public Internet use, availability of government services over the Internet, broadband adoption among disadvantaged groups...

The IT Academy in perspective

Finland has set out to create a university that has innovation built into its foundations, merging three institutions into one along the way.  Is Aalto a model for universities in other countries?

In this case study, you can read about how students and staff at the University of Bologna can now collaborate and learn anytime and anywhere, thanks to cloud computing.

“What could we get if we invested 4 billion Euros in digital infrastructure and skills instead of building a fixed link across the Femern Belt to Germany?“ Raising aspirations for the digital economy and providing challenging angles of thought leadership, an eSkills manifesto was recently launched during the conference Digital Skills for Growth and Welfare hosted by Microsoft in the Danish...

This post is a discourse on how new technology is a key factor that induces enjoyment as an educational path to the skills of the 21st century.

In this case study, you can read about how the European University Institute (EUI) overcame limitations in storage space of its previous email system with cloud computing, achieving 100 times more storage and 43% in cost savings. The European University Institute (EUI) was set up in 1972 by the six founding Member States of the European Communities to provide advanced academic training to...

Take a Microsoft consultant in Madrid, add a PR Director in Kiev,  include a development tools specialist in Warsaw and an online marketing director in London. Then add to this the HR consultant in Dublin and finally throw in a very generous sprinkling of technical experts all around Europe. That’s when you start to get a sense of the cumulative value that employees at Microsoft are...

Office 365 for education will extend learning possibilities to students while helping them master technology they will use in their future careers.

Last month, people from around the world gathered at two education events in London – the Education World Forum (EWF) and the BETT trade show, one of the largest ICT in education conferences worldwide – to discuss how technology can help improve the state of education globally. Interestingly, The New York Times recently reported on the modern day skills students need to excel and succeed in...

Talent has no age. Talent has no passport. Talent has no gender; but opportunity has all three. Indeed, it is people that are the world's greatest untapped resource.

Just a few weeks after the launch of the EU flagship initiative Youth on the Move, on 4 October, Microsoft and European Schoolnet hosted a successful EU roundtable on eEducation entitled “ICT – are we doing enough to keep Europeans ahead in education?” in Brussels.

The world's premier student technology competition celebrates this year’s winners on the 6 October! The event takes place at the European Parliament and is hosted by Polish MEP Rafal Trzaskowski.

Innovation in technology has changed the way we access and consume knowledge! With this in mind there can be no greater impact than that on the delivery of education and the creation of an attractive learning path for students both young and old. 

Technology can be an amazing tool to help drive social change and economic development. In their constant struggle to do more with less, many nonprofits have already embraced technology to improve productivity and reduce costs.

The Europe 2020 strategy calls for economic growth based on a smart, sustainable and inclusive model that targets an overall employment rate of 75% and a reduction of poverty by 20 Million among other priorities.

In June the "Enterprise & Industry Magazine" of the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission included an important article on e-skills.

Can Europe use cloud computing to stimulate economic growth?  If so, what skills will be needed to make most advantage of this technology trend? 

If you missed the chance to read Professor Jonathan Liebenau’s great post of skills and cloud computing, I strongly recommend you finding 10 minutes to watch his webinar on how skilled (or not) the European work force will be to embrace cloud computing

With UK unemployment reaching 2.5m and 77% of all jobs requiring digital skills, we launched Britain Works in September 2009 to help 500,000 people get jobs through IT skills training by 2012.   

The first ever meeting of the G20 employment ministers  set the tone for a concerted response to the current global employment challenge

The European Union has singled education and training as one of its priorities with the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy, its overarching program focusing on growth and jobs.

 The European Union has singled education and training as one of its priorities with the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy, its overarching program focusing on growth and jobs.

www.e-aptitudini.ro portal puts the incentive on upgrading skills! An initiative launched during the European eSkills Week by Junior Achievement Romania and Microsoft to match the demand for eSkills trainings against available educational resources! 

The pace of change and development in education has picked up substantially in recent years – largely because of the key role ICT is increasingly playing in both teaching and learning. 

Education is one of the important targets in Europe’s 2020 Strategy and rightly so.

The feeling in Berlin this week is not quite one of the majestic city of the past, but much more an innovative, exciting capital looking to the future.

With support from Microsoft, enabling Telecentre-Europe to meet and develop the bid, they have secured a €260,000 capacity-building grant from the EU Grundtvig Program. 

Women now account for over half of Europe’s immigrants. They face many challenges including higher unemployment and are often clustered in less-skilled occupations.

CeBIT 2010 opened its doors yesterday, March 2nd. This year’s theme of the most important fair for the IT business is “connected world”.

We can no longer afford to discard skills and human capital if we want to meet the challenges of a knowledge-based society and to maintain European competitiveness, employment, and social inclusion.

This is an advertorial that we have produced recently with the European Commission in support of the European e-Skills Week (1-5 March 2010).

Have a look at Ade McCormack’s recent Financial Times column, which highlights the importance of e-skills to our future, the role of management within organisations, and how it all affects technologists, users and the socially excluded alike…

I recently had the chance to speak to one of our Students to Business partners, Roberto Pietra, who is VP of HR at the tech services firm, Avanade.

The competitiveness challenge is one which will decide the future of Europe, and given the nature of globalisation, we as a continent need to get further into the business of selling ideas to be able to meet this challenge

Every year, Microsoft runs the Imagine Cup, a global technology competition for students to develop their IT skills while at the same time making a difference. 

Forward-looking perspectives from INSEAD’s recent conference  ‘Building e-Competences to Strengthen Innovation in Europe’  and the European University-Business Co-operation Forum  would suggest that the academic/business footprint on skills and workforce development is moving towards a closer fit but that there is more work to be done!

Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman of Microsoft Europe, on unlocking human potential through inspiring creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship; and improving European competitiveness by re-aligning education programmess and providing support for start-up companies.

How a student from Wrocław became an expert in software verification – via Aachen and Redmond.

As a teenager in 1990s war-torn Kosovo, Alban Rrustemi loved a good crime film – especially one with computing gadgets.

Innovation isn't just what scientists and engineers do: it's also a feature of many community-based organisations and social entrepreneurs. But the result is the same: new ways of doing things and new products and services that enable people to change their lives.