Following the High-level governance meeting of the European platform of national initiatives on digitising industry led by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on the 21st of November 2017, 3 new Working Groups were established in order to advance the digitisation of the European Industry.

The first Working Group meeting of Digital Innovation Hubs in Europe was held on 22 January 2018.

The participants who will attend the meeting in Brussels are kindly requested to register for the day before 15 February.

No registration is required for the interested attendees who will follow the event via web streaming.

Due to limited places available, the registered participants who decide not to attend the event are kindly requested to cancel their registration.

This is the second meeting of a series of the Digital Innovation Hubs Working Group meetings to take place until the next High-level governance meeting with Commissioner Mariya Gabriel in summer 2018.

The aim of the second Working Group meeting is to bring together Digital Innovation Hubs, who are part of the European Catalogue of DIHs, to discuss how to finance DIHs and how to improve access to finance for SMEs.

During the day we want to give the opportunity to all Digital Innovation Hubs that want to share how they finance their DIHs and which business models they are using, as well as how they support SMEs in finding funding for their business innovations to give a short presentation about it.

Therefore we invite you to submit an expression of interest and attach it to your profile through the registration system before the 5th of February 2018 focusing on one of the following:

• Business model of the DIH, with clear examples;
•  Example of how you supported SME to get access to funding (e.g. from a local bank or local financing intermediary);
• Challenges you have encountered for any of the cases above, also as example cases.

From the received expression of interests, we will draw up a final agenda of the day, which will exist of a mix of presentations and discussions and which will be circulated around 9 February 2018.

A dedicated space for the event has been created in sli.do under the code: #DIH2018.

Furthermore, you are kindly invited to participate to the Digitising European Industry Stakeholder Forum 2018 which will take place between 27 and 28 March 2018 in Villepinte, France.

The report summarising the main key messages of the day can be accessed here.

A recorded version of the event is available here.

The presentations are available here.