“Let’s reinvent Europe!”

On 9 September 2019, DLD founder Steffi Czerny will hold the fourth DLD Europe innovation conference at the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the EU.

Digitalisation is changing the world, including Europe. It is the source of the greatest challenges currently facing the EU – artificial intelligence, fake news, populism, data protection, innovative business models and the race for the latest technologies. DLD has been grappling with the technology-driven upheaval of our economy and society since 2005, and wants to provide Europe with new perspectives on the pressing issues of our time – and so, once again, the international conference platform is bringing its network of digital experts to Brussels to mingle with politicians and lobbyists.
 

“Has Europe fallen into a technology trap? Are privacy and data protection a thing of the past? How can artificial intelligence and human ethics be reconciled? How can we fight fake news and actually make a difference? And how can we get young people excited about Europe? These are all questions we need to ask ourselves – and we need to solve them regardless of our grand visions. With DLD Europe, I want to rethink Europe and get a constructive dialogue flowing.”

Steffi Czerny, DLD founder

Setting political priorities

It’s been over a year since Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect. But has it really made any difference to the fondness major tech platforms seem to have for collecting data? To what extent do corporations like Facebook and Google continue to exercise their market power? Paul-Bernhard Kallen, CEO of Hubert Burda Media, and Anne Niedermann (IFD Allensbach) will discuss whether users agree to the terms and conditions of major tech platforms voluntarily and with all the information they need – as demanded by GDPR. Focus columnist Jan Fleischhauer will then be joined by Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde and author Pernille Tranberg, among others, to discuss how we can retain control over our data in the future and whether social media should be subject to stricter regulation.

DLD Europe will also welcome EU Commissioners Mariya Gabriel and Günther H. Oettinger, EU parliamentarian Axel Voss and Georg Eisenreich, Bavarian State Minister for Justice, to explain their views on and plans of action for digital challenges.

Europe’s innovative strength

Nicholas Brusson (BlablaCar) and Johannes Reck (GetYourGuide) know what makes a successful start-up. These two European unicorns from France and Germany will attend DLD Europe to speak about recruiting talented young people, developing their employees in the long term and enabling them to partake in the company’s success so as not to lose them to the USA. Rafael Laguna (SpringD), the German government’s chief innovator, and Nili Shalev, director of the Israeli R&D Directorate, will be chatting with DLD chairman Yossi Vardi about what the EU and Germany can learn from Israel as a place of innovation.

Digital responsibility

What ethical questions do we need to ask ourselves when it comes to digitalisation? Professor Sarah Spiekermann (Institute for Management Information Systems, WU Vienna), Valentina Daiber (Telefónica Deutschland), Viviane Reding, former Vice President of the EU Commission, and John Frank (Microsoft) will join TV journalist Astrid Frohloff to discuss how companies can take greater digital responsibility. Professor Joanna Bryson (Department of Computer Science, University of Bath) and bestselling author Carl Frey (“The Technology Trap”) will also talk about the responsibilities and consequences of artificial intelligence.

Burda… SummerNight

After the conference, Burda will invite representatives from politics, economics, media and society to the terraces of Brussels’ Kwint restaurant for the seventh Burda... SummerNight event.

More information about the speakers and the DLD Europe programme is provided here. Attendance of the conference and Burda... SummerNight is by invitation only. For press accreditation, please contact dldpress@burda.com.