2014's Apps for Europe finalists, and the eventual winners, at FutureEverything in Manchester. Next year's contest is already open - find out how to enter your app.
With 10 Business Lounges happening throughout Europe this year, Apps for Europe is trying to find the best open data applications and startups that Europe has to offer. We invite all developers, startups and companies that use open data as a recourse to join our competition and win a spot at the International Business Lounge @ Future Everything in February 2015.
Participate in a local Business Lounge to present your idea and find support and investment Get an overview of all important competition dates and deadline
Are you hosting an open data event, competition or hackathon and are looking for ways to support the participating teams? Apps for Europe can help! We are a support network that provides tools to open data event organizers to transform ideas for data based apps into viable businesses. We want to unleash the financial potential and social value of open data and create better apps and digital services for citizens across Europe.
Download our Apps for Europe Business Lounge guide and start your local Business Lounge now
Coding da Vinci, the first ever German open cultural data hackathon, started in Berlin with the first round on the 26th & 27th of April. The joint project by the German Digital Library, Service Centre Digitization Berlin, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, Wikimedia Germany drew more than 150 participants and 11 cultural heritage institutions from all over Germany.
In total 24 project ideas were pitched during the weekend. To get an overview all projects are presented in the Hackdash online.
The Business Lounge started on Saturday afternoon after the team presentations with a kickoff presentation of @Apps4EU and the following 4 sessions to support these 24 great projects:
- Feedback on projects and access to networks
- Sessions on business models and media sector specific issues
- Lean startup method
- Introducing possible future partners from the Berlin startup scene
The Business Lounge was conceived as a forum to discuss a wide range of issues related to business and market entry. Participants of the hackday showed on both days great interest in the business lounge and worked intensively with the mentors
Hubert Gertis, a media veteran @hubert
Tobias Martens, Advisor Digitale Agenda EU @tbsmartens
Daniel Dietrich, Chairman OKF DE @ddie
Walter Palmetshofer, ex-co-founder archify @vavoida
on various stages of their projects (business case, market size, market fit, traction) to take them next level. The feedback from the participants was that the lounge was highly appreciated and especially the outlook and practical guidance for the next steps were an immense value for them. We were happy to contribute to that process.
What’s on next?
The concept of Coding da Vinci programme is to give the teams a 10 week development phase after the first hackathon weekend to improve the projects and products even further. Apps for Europe Business Lounge mentors are helping all teams to scale their ideas during that period.
We will meet again on the 6th of July when prizes will be awarded to the best projects at the end of the Coding da Vinci project. Support by the Apps for Europe mentors for projects and individuals will of course continue after that event to assist that the projects in finding a sustainable path. We are thrilled to look forward to help those amazing projects and their presentation by beginning of July. Stay tuned for updates and reports from the final event.
While a lot of data has been opened for anyone to freely use, reuse and (re)distribute, the amount of new, sustainable businesses and their monetary value have lagged far behind the staggering figures projected a few years ago.
This has many reasons – the data isn’t available under the right conditions; it’s in various, incompatible formats; much value will be created by the governments themselves (that currently aren’t) – and last but not least, many developers are in need of skills, networks and money. Apps for Europe has been created to combat this last point, and provide developers with relevant knowledge, contacts and investors to make their results flourish. Nineteen partners, scattered all over Europe, have set out to make this happen. It’s a two-year project, funded in part by the ICT PSP call, which started in 2014.
As part of our aims, we have been on the lookout for the very best open data applications in Europe: apps, algorithms, platforms or services. During the first year, Apps for Europe has hosted eight open data events and five business lounges and has received 83 entries to the international competition. From these, ten projects where selected to attend the first International Business Lounge at the annual FutureEverything festival in Manchester. They where very diverse and addressed cultural opportunities, sustainability, mobility (bikes & parking), hyperlocal media and various algorithms as a service.
At FutureEverything, the finalists participated in master classes in finance, user experience and media coverage. They pitched to potential investors, partners and clients, as well as the general public. Then, they talked to a high profile jury consisting of Miquel Costa, President, Keiretsu Forum in Spain; Paul Maltby, Director of Open Data & Government Innovation at Cabinet Office in London; Lily Ash Sakula, Partner of Bethnal Green Ventures, and Paul O'Toole, Deputy Director of Wayra (Telefonica), that I was proud to chair. All of this lead to one winner of Apps for Europe 2014: Bike City Guide – who had a very convincing proposition, a powerful pitch, and demonstrated impact - and two runners up: Nearhood, and Old Maps Online. Finally, the audience award was given to the young Belgium start-up Nostalgeo.
Looking back, we’ve learned a lot. We found great, committed finalists and are sure that every one of them will make it and increase their impact and reach. The master classes and workshops were of high quality. We faced some logistical challenges that we’ll have to tackle, based on the feedback we received. Also, we need to interest more potential investors (who invest in technology, or people, but not open data as such), and possibly accelerators and incubators. Lastly, we need to widen the scope and background of the participants. Any help is appreciated here.
The end of the first competition marks the beginning of the new. From next week, you can start applying for winning the Apps for Europe 2015 competition at the Apps for Europe website. Likely, there will be open data events or business lounges near you that you can attend and participate in. And whether you are a developer, investor, or an event organiser you might find some interesting resources to help you make decisions on our website. Hope this will be valuable, and looking forward to meet you at the second International Business Lounge, or elsewhere in Europe.
The first edition of Trentino Open Data Challenge was officially launched in January!
This competition is organised and promoted by Trento RISE and the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy, in connection with the Open Data Trentino project that publishes a catalog of Open datasets from the public administration of the Province.
The competition is open to software developers, designers, journalists researchers, artists and anybody who is interested in proposing innovative ideas based on Open Data.
The competition is organised in two sections:
The Application section accepts web/mobile apps which make use of open data from any source and are original creations of the submitter, regardless of whether they have been created for the competition or if they have already been launched. Submissions open on April 2nd and close on May 20th.
The Storytelling section accepts videos, infographics, illustrations, comic strips, etc that build a narrative based on Open Data to promote and develop the Open Data culture. Submissions are currently open and close on May 20th.
On the 18th of February, during the Open Europe conference in the city of Ghent, an Apps for Europe Business Lounge took place in the 'Bijloke Muziekcentrum.' Here's a short overview:
Pieter Colpaert and Raf Buyle started the Business Lounge competition with a short introduction on Apps for Europe and why this project and sustainable Open Data applications matter.
1. The first pitch was about the technology behind data.be by Toon Vanagt.
2. The second pitch was from Nicolas Kint of Carambla, a parking app for smart cities. Check their website or download their app on Android or iOS.
You can view their presentation online here.
3. The third application was' Thuupe', a social cultural application for students who want to attend cultural events but have no peers to go with them. This application was presented by Maaike Scherrens and Cody Watson. You can view their presentation here.
Do check their video, we were all amazed on how young students could implement such quality into their video. It is a private video so you need to enter the password 'thuupe' to view it.
This enthusiastic duo has already won the Open Cultuur Data award during Apps For Culture.
You can find more on this application on the website of Nicolas, one of the Thuupe team.
4. The next application was zone plus, an application based on KBO Data that earlier during the day already won the KBO Hackathon. This was presented by Tim Leytens. There presentation can be viewed here.
5. The last application was another application of Appreciate HQ called 'Culture!' This application is all about gamification in the cultural sector. You can view their presentation here.
The Result
We ended with a tie. It was decide that Data.be and Carambla both had an excellent business plan and vision.
View the Data Days Business Lounge Storify.
There is also a good overview of the event in this google doc.
Eurapp, which was launched by the EU commission and run by DERI, NUI Galway and GigaOM Research, has spent the last year investigating the state of the European app economy. They have interviewed a variety of stakeholders and surveyed hundreds of companies that produce apps, both big and small; this information has been built on by content from workshops, which attempted to identify the bottlenecks limiting growth in the app economy; they have sought to address these through crowd-sourced challenges to come up with solutions. Last Thursday they presented the report of their findings – detailing both the jobs and revenue generated by the EU app economy in 2013 together with a forecast for the state of the app economy in 2018. The event also featured a number of vibrant speakers offering their take on the state of the European app economy as well as guidance for the future.
The statistics speak volumes especially when you consider that this is a market that did not even exist five years ago.
The conference was opened by Neelie Kroes (the vice-president of the European Commission) who spoke passionately about the need to improve digital skills and create a start-up friendly environment within the EU. Despite the successes in growth and scale detailed in the report she emphasised the necessity of the EU adapting to the constantly changing digital environment. She ended with a list of necessary changes that need to be put in place to allow the app economy to continue to grow and flourish:
The first speaker was Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer for Rovio the creators of Angry Birds, which is the 7th or 9th biggest licensed brand in the world, depending on who you ask. He advocated for a societal shift in attitude within Europe – we need to learn to cope better with failure and be more ambitious; our attitude to entrepreneurs and start-ups needs to change, it needs to be seen as a good career option as opposed to a reckless choice. He highlighted that overnight success stories are a rarity; Angry Birds was the 52nd game that Rovio made – failure is a necessary learning tool to move forwards. Angry Birds is now the most distributed entertainment content ever with over 2 billion downloads – it has reached far beyond the traditional game market with a common quote being ‘I do not play games but I play angry birds’. The company has diversified into other markets including activity parks and video and product distribution; he described how ambition is still the driving force behind their success. In 2013 they were the first brand to completely brand red square in Moscow – hosting an Angry Birds party for 40,000 people – he described this as being "quite hard to pull off but we still did it". Angry Birds has also, uniquely for a European digital company, totally penetrated the American market – they have a partnership with NASA and were the only European company involved in the US hour of code project; he argued vehemently that Europe needs to do better when it comes to digital education – during EU code week in October ‘let’s teach 50 million children how to code.’
Factory is a an organic accelerator for start-ups in Berlin, its founder Simon Schaefer spoke of the difficulty start-ups have addressing the global market; when a company starts out it is easiest for them to reach those who are right on their doorstep but exponential growth can only happen by thinking internationally at an early stage. The EU needs to create policies that create an environment that enables start-ups to succeed more easily. More details about this can be found in ‘A Manifesto for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to Power Growth in the EU.’
The report proper was compiled by Gigaom Research (Mark Mulligan, David Card), who are experts at providing insider insights to emerging technology markets. They opened by emphasising that it was important to be conservative when estimating the value and potential growth of new sectors – this makes the statistics presented all the more staggering. One of the surprises the report threw up was the breakdown of the 17.5 billion euro revenue of EU developers – 11.5 billion of which came from contract labour – providing services to companies that are not themselves in the app business; this is a potentially huge growth area as more and more companies see the benefit of communicating across digital platforms. This is further supported by the findings on how companies actually made money from apps: with 44% saying they tried to make money by charging for apps and 42% saying their revenue target was developing apps for others.
Despite its exponential growth the app economy faces certain barriers that need to be overcome for growth and success to continue. The report found that independent EU developers saw their biggest challenge as business and finance – consumer unwillingness to pay for apps along with the high costs involved in customer acquisition are barriers to revenue generation. Furthermore many start-ups and small companies lack the business knowledge and investment to grow their businesses beyond domestic markets. Other problems highlighted surrounded the acquisition of a talented workforce – European companies are not able to pay as high salaries as the US market and there is also a lack of coding education, which limits the size of the workforce itself. In terms of market the challenges that developers face are largely due to the dominance of large US platforms such as google, apple and Facebook, with further problems arising from multiple languages and inconsistent and restrictive regulatory policies across the EU.
Part of the aim of Eurapp’s study was to use crowd-sourcing to identify possible solutions to assist the continued development and growth of the app economy in Europe. They ran ideation challenges: nearly 100 innovative solutions were submitted. This was supplemented by a participatory session at the launch yesterday in which, groups came up with potential changes to EU policy that would assist the future development of the app economy. I am going to go through some of the most interesting crowd-sourced solutions:
The growth of the app economy is hugely exciting as well as being increasingly valuable to the European economy as a whole. However in order to achieve further successes there need to be some fundamental changes in both EU policy, the support infrastructure and public receptiveness. Future growth requires a vibrant, pan-European, connected environment enabling small companies to compete in a global market. In her introduction Neelie Kroes stated that the report itself leads to a bigger question: “what kind of life will the next generation lead and how will they interact and transact with the world?” Although this is impossible to answer specifically, the answer will undoubtedly be digitally, as the internet is a platform where “the only limit is your imagination.”
A full copy of the report can be downloaded here.
Pedro Torres from Portugal Telecom writes:
Hackathons are melting pots of hands-on innovation where tech wizards turn their wildest dreams into reality. And they have a lot of fun while doing it. Following tradition, Portugal Telecom will be holding its seventh edition of SAPO Codebits. It will take place between 10-12 April 2014 in Lisbon, in an amazing venue right by the river.
So what is it?
It’s a group of 800 geeks together for 3 days of non-stop tech and a 48-hour programming competition.
It’s great talks, from soft to hardware and everything in between, given by famous heavyweights or... you!
It’s hours of workshops so you can get your hands dirty, be it writing code or soldering components to build a robot.
It’s lots of hardware demos, 3D printing, arduinos, robots and all sorts of gadgets, because open hardware is here now!
It’s a quiz show, a security competition, surprise games, weird culinary experiments and all sorts of geeky fun.
It’s free; food, network, sleep over; It’s new friends, new knowledge and an totally unforgettable experience.
Suzanne Heerschop from Waag Society writes:
Innovation comes in all sorts and sizes. This was clearly visible at the recent Innovation Estafette in Amsterdam.
Hot topics were: recycling, energy consumption, health care, but most of all: the smart citizen. There is no Dutch equivalent for these words yet, but it's all about me and you.
We are used to having information available 24/7, and it better be relevant info too. We want answers to our questions right away. We want to express our opinions. And we expect the government to work for us, instead of the other way round. In short, we ask a lot. But are we willing to give something in return?
Smart Citizens Kit: measuring is knowing
A tool that could be found at multiple stands (an indication that we might have something worthwhile here) was one for measuring the environment. Admittedly, these are still quite simple instruments we are talking about, and our national weather institute KNMI is working on far more advanced equipment. But the power of the Smart Citizen Kit is that it will be placed in your home. It measures your own environment and gives you data that you can use. We’re currently in the process of providing 100 households in Amsterdam with a Smart Citizen Kit. That means 100 extra data sets that can be used for open data apps, provided bottom up.
Most of us are certainly willing to do something in return. We do want to work on smart apps, but we need the data. To have access to data is not so easy, and that is where the CitySDK comes in. It supplies an API (a set of definitions used to let software communicate), developed at Waag Society, to make it easy for organisations and (local) governments to free their data in a universal format, making their data compatible and available for apps based on open data.
Hopefully, we will see more applications for and by the smart citizens at this fair next year: citizens, civil workers, communities and start-ups that are innovating themselves by using a smart citizen tool.
Apps4Greece is an initiative by the Open Knowledge Foundation Greece and started in Thessaloniki last month. Apps4Thessaloniki is a collaboration between the Municipality of Thessaloniki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Open Knowledge Foundation Greece and Urenio Research Unit. It is also supported by Semantic Web Unit and madfordesign.
Apps for Europe supports the Apps4Thessaloniki competition and is organizing a Business Lounge event at the final event which will take place in April 2014.
The main aspiration of Apps4Thessaloniki is to stimulate the citizens of the city to create web and mobile applications, which will improve life in the city by providing the residents, visitors and businesses with new and innovative services aiming at development, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Also, it aims at creating open data, either by release from official organizations or by crowdsourcing from the citizens. The ultimate goal is to create a community with the participation of the municipality, organizations, institutions, companies and citizens, which will find new solutions to existing problems, by exploiting the potential of new technologies.
These solutions can be used in other cities, thus promoting the image of Thessaloniki and offer new business opportunities to those who distinguished themselves in the competition.
The project is based on two current trends of smart cities:
The contest is the first of its kind in Greece, starting in Thessaloniki. This will lead to the publicity and visibility of the city and the winning application, both in Greece and abroad.
Entrants can participate in one of the following three categories:
In each category there will be three awards; the prize of 3000€, 2000€ and 1000€.
The competition started on 14th November where citizens have already started submitting their ideas for applications and until 31th of December, developers will apply for participating on the contest.
What is important and remarkable about this contest is that citizens are at the center of the whole development process as the target of their participation is to improve their own city. Therefore, this is a contest run by the citizens for the citizens.
For more information, please check the following links:
· Site http://thessaloniki.appsforgreece.eu
· Presentation http://www.slideshare.net/patsar/apps4thess-1st
· Facebook apps4greece
· Twitter @apps4thessaloni
Piemonte Visual Contest - Open for submissions
Piemonte Visual Contest is a competition for visualisation projects based on data concerning the Piedmont Region in Italy.
Piedmont launched its Open Data portal (http://www.dati.piemonte.it) in 2010 where datasets from the regional government are published in accordance to Piedmont Open Data strategy.
The contest accepts works presenting social, economic and environmental information from the datasets the Regional Government is publishing.
Projects can be submitted in two categories: Infographic (static presentation of datasets) and Data Visualisation (dynamic web-based apps allowing for filtering and manipulation of the dataset).
The contest is promoted by the Regional Council of Piedmont and by TOP-IX with the objective of "Telling the story of Piedmont by leveraging public data heritage". The organizers see Open Data as a model to extract value from Public Sector Information by using the data to build new tools and to create innovative services.
The contest is open to citizens, companies and institutions based in the European Union, it has been launched on September 20th, 2013 and the deadline for submissions is January 31st, 2014.
Website: http://www.piemontevisualcontest.eu
Deadline for submission: January 31st, 2014
Today we are happy to offer you the interview with Spanish tech investor Francisco Marin from Ambar Venture Capital.
In 2010 Francisco has created an investment company Future Plus to show that the combination of specific sector and entrepreneur experience is a great asset for spotting and supporting successful technology start-ups.
He is sharing his experience in tech investing, the importance of the team in turning a good idea into a viable business, the current situation in tech investing in Europe and why investors should join the Apps for Europe network.
