 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning My name is Sachiko Muto and on behalf of all of us at OFE It's my pleasure to welcome you to this year's summit and We're focusing this year on the power of openness and collaboration to stimulate innovation in Europe and We're really asking ourselves two basic questions First what is the opportunity of open collaboration and the second question is What sort of policy framework is needed to fully realize this potential for for the benefit of Europe and Today we're ourselves exploring these issues Today open-form Europe is not we're not we don't have ready messages We are not campaigning, but we're actually exploring these issues together with all of you and Each year it's an opportunity for us actually to stop up and and ask ourselves What the latest trends and the new technologies? What they actually mean and how they relate to the OFE mission of open and competitive choice for IT users and When I look back on previous summits I I I'm reminded that some of the talks that were given We're not just hugely inspirational to me at the time but they actually continue to Influence debate and policy outcomes today for example, I was thinking yesterday about The talk given by Vint Cerf four years ago at our first summit when he talked About the need for for for standards in the cloud Also two years ago. We had professor Nigel Shadbolt here Given giving what I I saw as a landmark speech on on open data And so I'm looking forward to to today's program being inspired and looking forward to Looking back on today. And so If we look at the program See if I can use this thing We are going to start off in just a few moments by really challenging our own sort of instinct for preferring everything open and our own Chief executive Graham Taylor will will will lead that discussion which which promises to be quite quite exciting We then in the first panel will hear from companies and organizations for For which open collaboration is is actually already a way of doing business for them and There we will be looking to to hear about the opportunity That already exists and and and for future opportunities in In the next session, we are very pleased to welcome back vice president of the European Commission in Neely Cruz Just talk about what the the European Commission is doing to stimulate innovation in this sector We're also lucky to have the chair the chair of the Mozilla Foundation Mitchell Baker we had to speak to us and Finally in that session. We have dr. Jochen Friedrich who will report back from a stimulating discussion that we had yesterday at the first OFA fellows conference and you'll find on your seat actually the proceedings of that conference and I hope you'll you'll find those those those papers interesting After the lunch we've found a weapon we think for for keeping everybody awake will have a an exciting panel discussion moderated by Glenn moody Where he'll also take questions from the floor, so be ready for that and we'll finish with the last panel discussion or the or the last session Where we will be looking at some of the challenges for the challenges for for realizing an open and in an innovative climate in Europe and there There are challenges, but I'm actually looking forward to to hearing some some upbeat stories there because In my years at OFA, I've really had the opportunity to meet some of the most innovative and And imaginative people and some of them are here today and will share their experiences With us and and hopefully inspire the rest of us to be to improve as well, so With all that ahead and we're already a bit late in the schedule. I Want to pass the word on to Graham Taylor OFP chief executive Graham Taylor co-founded OFE ten years ago with Basel cousins Bob Blatchford joined shortly after that and Graham has a long career in in ICT before that He was a director at ICL Last year, I think I I introduced Graham as my personal hero and I'll not do that today, but I'll say that he's a source of great inspiration for all of us in OFE And that's it Graham Taylor