TEAC16 Report
Before lunch of Friday, October 7, there was an I-LINC Discussion Panel: Future Paths to Work in plenary. Continuing
the topics raised in previous sessions, and the overall theme for the event, this session allowed industry and EC experts
to comment and add further thoughts to the conversation.
The following questions were addressed: How can
telecentres best support people with evolving technology
and future working practices? How might future
recruitment processes change the support that job seekers
will need? What role can industry and government play in
helping support organisations be more adaptable to future
changes?
The panellists were:
Anusca Ferrari – European Schoolnet, I-LINC
Martine Tempels – Senior Vice-President, Telenet
for Business
Alexander Reidl – Deputy Head of Unit, Digital
Economy and Skills, European Commission
Karsten Simons – Strategic Operations Lead, Corporate Affairs Europe, Cisco Systems
The topics covered I-LINC itself, the gap between what government and education provide to citizens as valuable
resources for them to use and what they actually use, the (New) Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, the Cisco NetAcademy
and the Cisco view on emerging technologies (e.g. IoT) and citizens. A video of the discussion panel is here.
Interactive sessions
Future Trendspotting
The opening plenary was followed by an interactive Future Trendspotting workshop where delegates explored the
issues of Digital Skills for Future Work. Thinking about the actions that telecentres could put in place, delegates
discussed three topics; emerging technologies, future skills, and future working practices. There were many interesting
ideas and statements that came from the tables, this is a very short selection of some of the notes of this session.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will empower people significantly
in the future. However, citizens will need support on how to
assess critical information produced by AI.
There will be a huge commercial push with AI (e.g. as with
Amazon Echo) and people will need to understand how the
commercial aspect of AI could affect them. Both are the
areas where Telecentres could help.
Virtual Reality can give you the courage to actually do
certain things that you didn’t dare to do in real life.
New jobs, like drone operators, may be very well suited for
video game players, because they require fast reactions.
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