At the events, representatives from the EU public sector, European industry, key media, language service providers, and academia will gather to discuss the future of language technologies and craft an agenda for the multilingual Digital Single Market.
As a result of the Riga Summit, Europe will be one step closer to crossing the language barrier and overcoming one of the biggest obstacles to implementing the Digital Single Market. This will ultimately unleash great economic benefits to European companies and consumers alike, as products and services become available and understandable to speakers of all EU languages.
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The speakers at the Summit will share their own experiences in the fields of language technology, cross-border services, multilingual content, and EU innovation, as well as help to craft the agenda for creating a truly multilingual digital single market in Europe.
The conference will present the combined strategy, identify goals, and initiate concrete actions to bring about the crucial vision for a digital single market without language barriers, which is instrumental for empowering Europe in the global world.
META-FORUM 2015 is an international conference on powerful and innovative language technologies for the multilingual information society, the data value chain and the information market place. The two special themes of META-FORUM 2015 are Multilingual Technologies for the Digital Single Market and Language Technologies for the Big Data Challenge.
META-FORUM 2015 will discuss the current European Language Technology Research Landscape including current and future funding opportunities in Horizon 2020 and related programmes. New EU-projects will be presented such as the ones funded through the Horizon 2020 ICT 17 Call "Cracking the Language Barrier". These new projects include the research action "QT21 – Quality Translation 21" and the coordination and support action "CRACKER – Cracking the Language Barrier: Coordination, Evaluation and Resources for European MT Research". Furthermore, bridges will be built towards the areas of Big Data and Linked Data. An important and timely component of the conference is an update from the European language communities with regard to their demands and needs from monolingual, cross-lingual and multilingual technologies. Once again, the META Prize and META Seal of Recognition will be awarded to products, services or technologies that have contributed to the European multilingual information society. The full programme of the conference will be announced in early March, 2015.
W3C announced on 18 December the 8th MultilingualWeb workshop in a series of events exploring the mechanisms and processes needed to ensure that the World Wide Web lives up to its potential around the world and across barriers of language and culture. This workshop will be held 29 April 2015 in Riga, Latvia, and is made possible by the generous support of the LIDER project. The workshop is part of the Riga Summit 2015. Anyone may attend all sessions at no charge and the W3C welcomes participation by both speakers and non-speaking attendees. Early registration is encouraged due to limited space. Building on the success of seven highly regarded previous workshops, this workshop will emphasize new technology developments that lead to new opportunities for the Multilingual Web. The workshop brings together participants interested in the best practices and standards needed to help content creators, localizers, language tools developers, and others meet the challenges of the multilingual Web. It provides further opportunities for networking across communities. We are particularly interested in speakers who can demonstrate novel solutions for reaching out to a global, multilingual audience.
The CEF conference "Towards a Connected Multilingual Europe" will be held on Day Three of the Riga Summit. Pan-European digital service infrastructures (DSIs) foreseen in the CEF programme will deliver online public services for EU Member State administrations, citizens and economic operators. Automated Translation (AT) is one of the DSIs, and will provide automated translation services to all other CEF DSIs that necessitate multilingual communication or exchange of documents and other linguistic content between administrations, citizens and economic operators.
Apply to exhibit at the Riga Summit Technology Showcase (April 27-28) and demonstrate your product to the assembled speakers and guests, representing the European public sector, business, and key global media. The Technology Showcase is a prime opportunity to reach potential customers and collaboration partners.
Registration form for exhibitors
The Riga Summit gala dinner and concert will be held on the evening of April 28 at the historic Small Guild (Mazā Ģilde), a neo-gothic architectural landmark in the very heart of the Old City.
At the gala event, the assembled high-level speakers, dignitaries, and guests will have the chance to leisurely discuss the many issues raised throughout the Riga Summit, while enjoying the finest local cuisine, breathtaking choral music, and the architectural marvels of Old Riga.
The sumptuous meal will be prepared by gourmet chefs from one of Riga’s finest restaurants, Kaļķu vārti, which specializes in contemporary Latvian cuisine. The specially designed menu will be based on traditional specialties artfully reinvented in stunning culinary forms, with local produce sourced from organic Latvians farms.
Throughout the evening, guests will be entertained by one of Latvia's most esteemed choirs, Balsis, led by award-winning conductor Ints Teterovskis. Latvian choral music is renowned throughout the world, and Balsis ranks among the country's greatest ensembles. Balsis recently won first place in the Latvian national choral competition and has performed extensively throughout Europe.
For guests at the gala dinner and concert, Balsis will perform choral music from various periods, from early music to the Renaissance to the Romantic era, culminating in contemporary experimental works and Latvian folk song arrangements.
We look forward to enjoying an evening of fine cuisine, beautiful music, and stimulating discussion.
