The best way to understand NGI? Dive right in! At the Next Generation Internet – technology deep dive workshop, held at the Web Summit in Lisbon on 7 November, entrepreneurs and people working in start-ups, many of whom had never come across the initiative, had a chance to check ‘under the hood’ of NGI.
The technology deep dive featured developers funded under the NGI initiative, who presented projects and technologies developed under the first year of the program.
- CASPER, a project to identify and apply potentials of using artificial intelligence (AI) to protect young people on the internet. Presented by Aleksandar Jevremovic and Nuno Garcia.
- CONTEXT, a prototype messaging app, decentralised on all architectural layers with an open, universal and distributed identity infrastructure. Presented by Dominik Beron.
- CONSENTO , which uses a distributed network to securely back up confidential data and control access without the fear of losing your Presented by Daniel Kastl.
These presentations gave a flavour of the NGi initiative and the innovative projects it supports. There are currently 120 ongoing projects. All of the projects are free to use and are open source and respect the EU values of privacy, security and accessibility. In addition, they benefit from being part of the NGI community of knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
A Q&A session followed, where NGI project leads were asked about the ease of accessing funding through NGI – and were able to reassure those considering applying that processes were much easier than other funding mechanisms as an individual project gets direct support, rather than the traditional method of applying and operating in a consortium. In fact, the focus is on supporting internet innovators that do not normally participate in European Commission research.
Keep an eye on funding opportunities: ngi.eu/get-funded