A special GNSS Venture Academy and a session to promote GNSS education are being held for registered participants prior to the opening of Galileo Application Days on 3 March.
The two sessions, part of the launch of this year’s European Satellite Navigation Competition (Galileo Masters), require pre-registration, which can be made onlinehere.
Venture Academy
The GNSS Venture Academy is being held on the morning of 3 March in coordination with the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) as a means of helping small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) fine tune their business plans.
Galileo Application Village © GSAThe session will highlight the critical issues SMEs need to address when developing satellite navigation business applications. Face-to-face meetings will be organised between SMEs and experts in a range of domains, including intellectual property rights, innovation management, fund raising, liability, standardisation, marketing location-based and road user charging services, Living Labs, incubators and EGNOS providers.
Registration is open to SMEs involved in projects funding through the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme for research (FP7) and other SMEs.
The programme includes speakers from the GSA, the European Space Agency, Ptolemus, New Concept Gaming, Alcatel Lucent, the University of Nebraska, ENoLL and the Solvay Brussels School of Economics. SMEs can also register for face-to-face interviews with finance and marketing experts.
To register for the Venture Academy send an e-mail to Florence Ghiron at Capital High Tech (fghiron@chtech.fr).
University Challenge
At the same time, organisers will run a parallel special session for GNSS educators and students, which includes the launch of the European Satellite Navigation Competition’s University Challenge.
The session aims to promote the relevance of satellite navigation to education and will stress how high quality GNSS training is a driver for innovation, an enhancement for companies' competitiveness and a valuable opportunity for international cooperation.
Speakers include representatives from G-TRAIN, an FP7 project, Young Researchers in GNSS, UN Spacegeneration, and the ERIG project, which was funded under FP6.
The session will conclude with the l aunch of the University Challenge, the European Satellite Navigation Competition’s first Special Topic Prize specifically designed for students.
The new prize has been launched to help bridge the gap between GNSS research and entrepreneurship. University Challenge is aimed at students and research associates as a means of fostering the creation of commercial ventures from bright ideas.
University Challenge is being carried out by the Application Centre for Satellite Navigation in Oberpfaffenhofen, the organiser of Galileo Masters, and is supported by the FP7 project KIS4SAT (Knowledge Intensive Services in the satellite downstream applications and services sector).
Stefan Zhelyazkov, a student at Leiden University, will present SnowMate, an alpine assistant that was last year’s regional winner for South Holland.
To register for this session e-mail Fabio Dovis at Politecnico di Torino (fabio.dovis@polito.it).
Coaching for elevator pitches
In a third side session the event organisers offer a coaching session for SMEs and entrepreneurs registered for the elevator pitches sections to help them fine tune their presentations. Registration on a first-come, first-serve basis is open to other SMEs and entrepreneurs who would like to improve their presentation skills. For more information and to register contact Andreas Dippelhofer (dippelhofer@anwendungszentrum.de).
Galileo Application Days, 3-5 March, features live demonstrations of cutting-edge applications and services developed to exploit the global satellite navigation systems (GNSS), in addition to kicking off the 2010 European Satellite Navigation Competition.
The event is hosted by the European Commission and is organised by the GSA and the Application Centre for Satellite Navigation in Oberpfaffenhofen.
It will take place at the Charlemagne Conference Centre in Brussels and will feature a unique ‘Applications Village’ outside the Berlaymont Building, the headquarters of the European Commission.
The Village will feature live demonstrations of innovative GNSS applications developed under the EU’s 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), the European Satellite Navigation Competition, the European Space Agency Technology Transfer Programme, and national and regional initiatives.
Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you do republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).