Monday, June 16, 2008, Hotel Golf Libertas, 14:00 - 15:30 

Co-chairs:
Nikos Manouselis, Researcher
Greek Research & Technology Network
& Informatics lab, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
Andreja Pucihar, Assistant Professor & Head of eMarkets Lab
Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Maribor, Slovenia
C@R- User centred Innovation for Rural Development
Laura Zurita Gomez, Project Manager
Atos Research and Innovation, Consulting and Public Sector, Atos Origin, Spain

Presenters:
Agricultural Learning Repositories: the Case of Raising the Awareness of European Youth in Rural Areas about Organic Agriculture and Agroecology
Nikos Manouselis, Researcher
Greek Research & Technology Network
& Informatics lab, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece

The Opportunity Wales Approach to Upskilling SMEs in eBusiness
Martin Parfett, Director, Research & Development
Ceri Evans, Researcher
eCommerce Innovation Centre, Cardiff Business School, United Kingdom

Go-on Line Initiative - Lessons learned from the Greek Experience
George Perris
Chios Chamber of Commerce, Greece

Skill Requirements for eGovernment
Friederike Thessel
IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment - Competence Center, Universität Potsdam, Germany

Workshop outline

The emergence of the Information Society is believed to transform the conduct and structure of business, learning and development as it is being carried out today. A major barrier towards this direction is the low degree of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) and business innovation adoption from small & medium enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas. This barrier has been long identified related to studies on rural development_¹, which have indicated that rural SMEs should change the way they think about their business structure and functions, integrating ICT and business innovation in their everyday working practices_². To this end, a variety of initiatives and measures (such as the Go-Digital Initiative) have already been deployed, both at a European and at a National Level, aiming to familiarize SMEs with ICT and e-business. But innovative methods, practices and technologies are constantly being proposed and tested in the context of larger enterprises, proving their potential in increasing novelty and competitiveness in business operations_³. European SMEs should not be lagging behind such developments: the introduction of state-of-art business and technology topics into their lifelong learning should be an aim of innovative training approaches. This is a need even more important for SMEs that are located and operating in rural areas, to help them increase their competitiveness and entrepreneurship.

Reporting experience from the implementation of lifelong learning initiatives for the SMEs of European regions, as well as sharing this experience with other people working on similar topics, can lead towards achieving a wider dissemination of good practices and methods for the lifelong learning of rural SMEs, and further promoting the results of past or ongoing efforts.

The proposed workshop is expected to include presentations that will report results from various ongoing or completed efforts that implement lifelong learning initiatives for rural SMEs.

The session is expected to conclude with an open discussion between participants on current and future research directions related to lifelong learning of SMEs in rural areas.

Contact information
Prof. Alexander Sideridis and Mr. Nikos Manouselis
Informatics Laboratory
Division of Informatics, Mathematics & Statistics
Dept. of Science, Agricultural University of Athens
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_{¹ Gelb E., Offer A., “ICT in Agriculture: Perspectives of Technological Innovation”, European Federation for Information Technologies in Agriculture, Food and the Environment, 2008.
² Matopoulos A., Vlachopoulou M., Manthou V., Manos B., “A Conceptual Framework for E-business Adoption and Development for Enterprises in the Agri-Food Industry”, EFITA/WCCA’05, 25-28 July 2005, Vila Real, Portugal, 2005.
³ Nachira et al., Digital Business Ecosystems, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission, 2007.}