TechWeekEurope Shows Tech Strength Of Europe: Gallery

Our publisher, Net Media Europe, gathered its editors in London this week to address the question – what is a pan-European IT publisher for?

The NME group, which owns the TechWeekEurope, ChannelBiz and ITespresso brands, is the only tech publisher to operate in five languages and has editorial teams based in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Europe – a tech leader?

“Europe is the number one e-commerce market in the world, with an online turnover of € 246 billion,” said Jérome Bouteiller, editorial director of NME. “This is ahead of the US, on €234 billion. The region has huge historical strength in tech, as the birthplace of radio, computing and the World Wide Web,” he reminded an audience consisting of international marketing and advertising executives.

The current Euro crisis and recession is affecting all countries in Europe, but there are signs of life and technology is one way to overcome the current economic difficulties, the five editors said, pointing to developments in their own countries.

In the UK, the government plans to use tech to reduce the deficit, and hopes to save around £3 billion a year from the public sector by using online services such as the G-cloud, said UK editor Peter Judge. In the private sector, 13 percent of purchases are now made online and the UK’s e-commerce sector make up 8.3 percent of GDP, he added. Among the UK’s strengths is a share of the world data centre market of around five percent – something which the industry is jealously guarding.

In Spain that proportion is higher at 10 percent, according to Spanish editor Manuel Moreno. The government in Spain hopes that 4G and broadband can boost the economy and companies like Telefonica are looking to business from Latin America to improve their prospects.

“Our economic situation is one of the best in Europe,” said German editor Kai Schmerer, who boasted of a positive growth rate and low unemployment, as well as €14.5 billion of IT exports. Germany’s strengths aren’t always the most expected, he explained: “Germany is the leader in solar power in Europe.”

Italy plans to turn its economy round with a Digital Agenda from the “technocratic” government set up by Mario Monti, the economist drafted in by the Italian President to be Prime Minister. “Under this scheme,  €792 million is being invested in big IT projects by the Italian government,” said Italian editor Emanuela Teruzzi.

France has a history of governmental support for IT, and is adopting that model in the current crisis. “The government has invested €250 million to create national cloud providers such as Cloudwatt run by Orange and Thales, and Numergy, set up by SFR + Bull,” said Bouteiller.

To serve this patchwork of nations, with sites in different languages, the priority is to understand the IT professionals in each area, the editors agreed. This can be achieved through initiatives such as IT Life and polls.

Making stories that work across the five different regions, however, is a more complex issue, the editors said – and got agreement from those in the audience who manage marketing and advertising materials for multiple countries.

The Euro Story series, published each week from around the NME network, is intended to show the strength of NME and the possibility of publishing in multiple languages, while exhibiting the strength of the European region at the same time, said Bouteiller.

Euro Story: each week, we publish a selected story from across  NetMediaEurope’s network of European sites. This  story by Peter Judge is from TechWeekEurope UK .