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03 Jan 2020
Events
January 3, 2020 Headai

Headai active during Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Finland’s EU Presidency period began on 1 July 2019 and ended 31st December. The presidency of the Council rotates among the EU Member States every six months. During 2019, Headai took part in many discussions and conferences within this theme. This blog post summarizes the key actions.

There has been a lot of significant research and development work done in Finland — especially in the field of artificial intelligence and continuous learning. At the EU level, this can be scaled to serve the whole region. Finland, with its top companies, can lead the way towards a more sustainable skills economy.

You can read more on Finland’s EU Presidency.

Headai attended several conferences during EU2019FI

The following chapters summarize the key performances, where Headai team members were involved or Headai tech was presented, in events related to Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

High-Level Conference for Competitiveness: “Sustainable growth: skills and smart work organization in the digital era, 2 Jul 2019

Anu Passi-Rauste, Head of business development at Headai, took part in the conference dealing with the theme “Sustainable growth: skills and smart work organization in the digital era”. The subjects included e.g.:

  • How can companies recognize their skills needs?
  • How can the skills needs be met?
  • How can the employers best support their employees’ skills development?
  • How to advance upskilling and reskilling for all?

Anu’s presentation was titled: Jobs will be lost, skills are forever — AI mapping the skills landscape.

 

Meeting of Directors-General for Higher Education, 2nd Oct 2019

The meeting prepared the higher education sector’s contribution to the implementation of the European Education Area and the new strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training. The key topic was continuous learning, focusing on openness and digitalization.

One of the key partners of Headai and an active user of our technology, Metropolitan Universities of Applied Sciences (3AMK), gave a presentation on how AI can support in making sense of the changes in competence needs and also, how it can boost personalized, multi-disciplinary study paths and differentiation in the job market. Here, Headai technology gained a lot of attention — it enables understanding the labor market dynamics as well as the possible skill gaps in the universities’ curriculums.

Metropolitan Universities of Applied Sciences presented their experiences in using AI in optimizing the future supply of education to match changing working life needs.

You can read more about the cooperation of Headai & Metropolitan Universities of Applied Sciences in the customer story.

European Vocational Skills Week, 14th–18th Oct 2019

The Chairman on Headai, Harri Ketamo gave a presentation “Explainable semantic analytics with Semantic AI” during European Vocational Skills Week in Helsinki. Harri spoke about the AI-powered analytics done on the labor markets:

One of the major skills that have stood out in the labor market analysis done with open job ads, is “teamwork “.
–Harri Ketamo

EU Ministers of Education at Brussels, 8.11.2019

EU Ministers of Education met in the education council in Brussels on 8.11. The main themes of the meeting were lifelong learning and artificial intelligence in education. The meeting was chaired by Li Andersson, the Finnish Minister of Education.

Headai has taken its place as one of the leading Finnish companies bringing AI to empower continuous learning. Headai’s name often comes up when talking about artificial intelligence which can support sustainability in education and training.

Read more from the news article (in Finnish) from Ministry of Education and Culture.

12th board meeting of the European Network of Public Employment Services & AIEdu2019, Helsinki 12th–13th Dec 2019

Network of European Public Employment Services, PES, Met in Helsinki 12th–13th of December. The meeting was described as follows:

The Board meets to conduct strategic discussions and take decisions on the activities of the Network. The Network aims to support the regeneration of employment services by facilitating mutual learning and identifying best practices.
– EU2019 Event description

Finland’s EU level themes for the meeting were growth, skills and AI. Headai was invited to give a keynote and discuss the AI-related topics during forum discussions and round tables.

Harri Ketamo’s speech at AIEdu2019 — Behind the Scenes of AI, included themes like the complexity of learning and the myth of learning styles.

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The session was streamed, you will find Harri’s presentation below:

The website of the event:

https://aiedu2019.teamwork.fr/en/home

After Finland, it’s time for Croatia to lead the way

Croatia will be the last one of the current EU presidency trio. Croatia’s presidency programme has four focus areas:

  • a Europe that is developing
  • a Europe that connects
  • a Europe that protects
  • an influential Europe

Member states holding the presidency work together closely in groups of three, called ‘trios’. This system was introduced by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. The trio sets long-term goals and prepares a common agenda determining the topics and major issues that will be addressed by the Council over an 18 month period. On the basis of this programme, each of the three countries prepares its own more detailed 6-month programme.
The current trio is made up of the presidencies of the Romania, Finland and Croatia.
–European Council website