Tag Archives: Europe

Eight things you need to know about Hash Code 2018

Are you up for a coding challenge? Team up to solve an engineering problem from Google—registration for Hash Code 2018 is now open.  

Hash Code is Google’s flagship team programming competition for students and professionals in  Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. You pick your team and programming language, we pick a Google engineering problem for you to solve. Thinking about competing in Hash Code? Here’s what you need to know before you sign up:

1. This is the fifth edition of Hash Code. Hash Code started in 2014 with just 200 participants. We’ve grown a bit since the early days—last year more than 26,000 developers teamed up to compete from 100+ countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

2. Problems are modeled after Google engineering challenges. We want participants to experience what software engineering is like at Google, so we model Hash Code problems after challenges faced by Google engineering teams. Past problems have included optimizing video serving on YouTube, routing Street View cars through a busy city, and optimizing the layout of a Google data center.  

3. You compete in a small team (just like engineers at Google!). To compete in Hash Code, you need to form a team of two to four people. This means it’s not just about what you know individually, but about how you and your team can work together to tackle the problem.

4. Hash Code kicks off with an Online Qualification Round on Thursday, March 1. It all starts with a YouTube livestream at 18:30 CET sharp, after which the problem is released and teams have four hours to code. 

5. Hubs add extra excitement to the Online Qualification Round. Hubs are meetups where teams in the same area can come together to compete in the Online Qualification Round. They’re also a great opportunity for you to connect with other developers in your community. More than 300 hubs have been registered so far, and it’s not too late to organize a hub if there isn’t one near you already.

Some competitors in the 2017 Hash Code Online Qualification Round
Some competitors having fun at a few of the hubs during the 2017 Hash Code Online Qualification Round.
6. The Final Round will be held at Google Dublin. Top teams from the Online Qualification Round will be invited to our European Headquarters in April to vie for the title of Hash Code 2018 Champion.

7. It's a competition—but it's also about having fun! As Ingrid von Glehn, a software engineer at Google London who is part of the Hash Code organizing team, puts it: “We design the problems to be challenging, but not intimidating. It’s important to us that everyone has fun while taking part.” 

Join in on all the fun online through our Facebook event and G+ community, using the #hashcode tag. These channels are also great spaces to connect with other engineers and find team members.

Hash Code 2018

8. You can register today. Ready to accept the challenge? Be sure to sign up before registration closes on February 26.

*Featured image: Teams hard at work tackling our wireless router placement problem during 2017’s Final Round in Paris. 

Meet the finalists of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe

Posted by Adriana Puchianu, Developer Marketing Google Play

Back in October we launched the 2nd edition of the Google Play Indie Games Contest in Europe, with the aim to identify, showcase and reward indie gaming talent from more than 30 countries. We were amazed by the innovation and creativity that indie developers from the region have to offer.

Selecting just 20 finalists has once again been a huge challenge. We had a lot of fun playing the games that will go on to showcase at the Saatchi Gallery on February 13th in London. Without further ado, we are happy to announce the Top 20 finalists of this year's edition. Congratulations to the finalists and thanks to everyone else who has entered the contest.

A Planet of Mine
Tuesday Quest
France

Bridge Constructor Portal
ClockStone Softwareentwicklung GmbH
Austria

Bury me, my Love
Playdius
France

Captain Tom Galactic Traveler
Picodongames
France

Core
FURYJAM
Russia

Flat Pack
Nitrome
United Kingdom

Fern Flower
Macaque
Poland

I Love Hue
Zut!
United Kingdom

Jodeo
Gamebra.in
Turkey

Kami 2
State of Play
United Kingdom

Kenshō
FIFTYTWO
Russia

No More Buttons
Tommy Søreide Kjær
Norway

Old Man's Journey
Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH
Austria

Broken Rules Interactive Media GmbH
Developster
Germany

The Big Journey
Catfishbox
Ukraine

The House of Da Vinci
Blue Brain Games, s.r.o.
Slovakia

The Office Quest
11Sheep
Israel

Unbalance
TVEE
Turkey

Undervault
Andriy Bychkovskyi
Ukraine

yellow
Bart Bonte
Belgium

Check out the prizes

All the 20 finalists are getting:

  • A paid trip to London to showcase their game at the Final held at Saatchi Gallery
  • Inclusion of their game on a promotional billboard in London for 1 month
  • Inclusion of their game in a dedicated Indie Games Contest collection on the Indie Corner for one month in more than 40 countries across EMEA
  • Two (2) tickets to attend a 2018 Playtime event, an invitation-only event for top apps and games developers on Google Play
  • One (1) Pixel 2 device

They will also have the chance to win more prizes at the final event.

Join the Google Play team and the finalists at the final event:

Anyone can now register to attend the final showcase event for free at the Saatchi Gallery in London on 13 February 2018. Come and play some great games and have fun with indie developers, industry experts, and the Google Play team.

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News Lab in 2017: Our work around the world

This week we’re looking at how the Google News Lab is working with news organizations to build the future of journalism. So far, we shared how the News Lab works with newsrooms to address industry challenges and use emerging technologies. Today, we’ll take a look at the News Lab’s global footprint and its efforts to fuel innovation in newsrooms across the world.


Technology continues to change how journalists across the world report and tell stories. But how technology shapes journalism varies from region to region. This past year our team, the Google News Lab, conducted in-person trainings for journalists across 52 countries. Today, we take a look at the unique challenges of newsrooms in the regions we serve and how we’ve adapted our mission for each region to help build the future of journalism.

Europe

In Europe, it’s been another big year for politics with major general elections taking place in the Netherlands, France, UK, Germany and Norway. We wanted to ensure we were helping newsrooms cover these critical moments with the accuracy and depth they required. So, our efforts across these countries focused on helping newsrooms verify digital content in a timely fashion and providing training in digital skills for journalists.

  • We helped the First Draft Coalition pioneer new collaborative reporting models to combat misinformation and verify news stories during the UK, French, and German elections. In France, we supported First Draft's launch of CrossCheck; a collaboration among 37 newsrooms to verify or debunk online stories during the election. In the build up to the elections in the UK and Germany, we also supported fact-checking organizations Full Fact and Correctiv to help newsrooms identify new sources of information. These initiatives helped more than 500 European journalists verify content online and debunk 267 inaccurate stories shared on social during the French and German elections. 
  • Journalists across Europe used Google Trends to help visualize big political stories—here’s a peek at what they did. 
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Journalists attending the European Journalism Centre News Impact Summit in Manchester, UK.

  • We continued to ramp up our efforts to train European journalists digital skills. We worked with The European Journalism Centre on the latest series of the News Impact Summit, providing large-scale training events on news gathering and storytelling, combined with design-thinking workshops for journalists in Rome, Hamburg, Budapest, Manchester and Brussels. And our partnership with Netzwerk Medien-Trainer has provided over a thousand journalists across northern Europe with expert training on data journalism, verification and mapping.

Asia Pacific

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Journalists from across Asia attend a session at our first News Lab Summit in APAC.

This year, we expanded our training and programs to the  Asia Pacific, where we’ve tailored our approach to meet the specific needs of journalists across this diverse landscape. In a part of the world that is largely mobile-first (or mobile-only) and chat apps are the norm, there are a unique set of opportunities and challenges for newsrooms.

  • In July, our first News Lab APAC Summit welcomed 180 guests from 150 news organizations across 15 countries to our offices in Singapore. Product specialists and experts from newsrooms across the region came together to share best practices, learn about emerging technologies, and engage in open dialogue on challenges critical to the news industry.
  • In India, our Teaching Fellow has provided training and support to around 4K journalists and journalism students across the country. Our partnership with the Digital Identities team helped journalists in New Delhi experiment and engage new audiences with their stories.
  • Working in partnership with News Lab, the South China Morning Post released an immersive virtual reality project to depict the changing landscape of Hong Kong over 170 years of history.
  • We’re working to support research projects that tackle industry challenges - working with Media Diversity Australia to quantify issues of diversity and representation in the Australian news organizations, while in South Korea we’re supporting a study about the use of chat apps and their role in the news ecosystem.

Latin America

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Journalists from across Brazil gathered for an open conversation on the future of news at our first News Lab Summit in Brazil.

Working with journalists across Latin America, we elevated new voices beyond traditional newsrooms, and helped established journalists experiment with new technology and research. In Brazil alone there are an estimated 139 million Internet users, providing a huge opportunity for news organizations to experiment and test new formats.

  • We hosted the first Google News Lab Summit in LatAm Google’s HQ in São Paulo, which convened 115 journalists from across Brazil. Attendees from 71 organizations heard from product managers and industry experts about data journalism, immersive storytelling and verification.
  • Impacto.jo, an experimental project in Brazil supported by the News Lab, helps journalists track the social impact of their reporting. As a part of the project, six organizations including Nexo Jornal, Folha de S. Paulo, Veja, Gazeta do Povo, Nova Escola and Projor will each track the public response and social reaction to their stories. 
  • In Brazil, we brought 300 journalists to a first-of-its-kind independent journalism festival in Rio de Janeiro to share ideas on how to engage audiences online with original journalism.
  • Our Teaching Fellows based in Buenos Aires and Mexico City have travelled beyond Argentina and Mexico to provide 75 workshops in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay

Middle East & Africa

We are focused on the growing number of mobile phone users, providing trainings for journalists on digital integration, as it remains a challenge in this part of the world.

  • We’re working with Code for Africa and the World Bank to provide training to six thousand journalists across 12 major African cities. Their online learning course will provide self-paced lessons for journalists across Africa. They’re also working to support local Hacks/Hackers meetings to bring journalists and developers together to share new ideas.
  • In South Africa, we held a GEN Editors Lab hackathon, in association with Code for Africa, that brought together 35 developers and journalists to tackle a range of topics including misinformation. This builds on our support for previous events in Nigeria. We’ll be taking the hackathons to Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Taiwan.
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Journalists in Africa going through digital skills training.

A bulk of our in-person training work has been made possible by the Google News Lab Teaching Fellowship, which launched this year and enlists industry professionals, academic experts and experienced journalists to help us provide practical, in-person workshops and presentations across the world. In total, we hosted workshops, hackathons, and in-person trainings for 48K journalists across 52 countries.


Since we can’t be everywhere in-person, our online training center offers a round-the-clock service in 13 languages including Arabic, Polish, Hebrew and Hindi. We’re continuing to collaborate with training organizations around the world, and our growing Training Network now includes expert trainers in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia Pacific. There’s plenty more to do in 2018 and we’re looking forward to working with journalists and newsrooms across the world.


Digital News Initiative: €20 million of funding for innovation in news

In October 2015, as part of our Digital News Initiative (DNI)—a partnership between Google and news publishers in Europe to support high-quality journalism through technology and innovation—we launched the €150 million DNI Innovation Fund. Today, we’re announcing the recipients of the fourth round of funding, with 102 projects in 26 European countries being offered €20,428,091 to support news innovation projects. This brings the total funding offered so far to €94 million.

In this fourth round, we received 685 project submissions from 29 countries. Of the 102 projects funded today, 47 are prototypes (early stage projects requiring up to €50,000 of funding), 33 are medium-sized projects (requiring up to €300,000 of funding) and 22 are large projects (requiring up to €1 million of funding).

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In the last round, back in July, we saw a significant uptick in interest in fact checking projects. That trend continues in this round, especially in the prototype project category. In the medium and large categories, we encouraged applicants to focus on monetization, which led to a rise in medium and large projects seeking to use machine learning to improve content delivery and transform more readers into subscribers. Overall, 21 percent of the selected projects focus on the creation of new business models, 13 percent are about improving content discovery by using personalisation at scale. Around 37 percent of selected projects are collaborations between organizations with similar goals. Other projects include work on analytics measurement, audience development and new advertising opportunities. Here’s a sample of some of the projects funded in this round:

[Prototype] Stop Propaghate - Portugal

With €49,804 of funding from the DNI Fund, Stop Propaghate is developing an API supported by machine learning techniques that could help news media organizations 1) automatically identify if a portion of news reporting contains hate speech, and 2) predict the likelihood of a news piece to generate comments containing hate speech. The project is being developed by the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC), a research & development institute located at University of Porto in Portugal.

[Medium] SPOT - France

Spot is an Artificial Intelligence-powered marketplace for curating, translating and syndicating valuable articles among independent media organizations, and is being developed by VoxEurop, a European news and debate website. With €281,291 of funding from the DNI Innovation Fund, Spot will allow publishers to easily access, buy and republish top editorial from European news organizations in their own languages, using AI data-mining technologies, summarization techniques and automatic translation technologies, alongside human content curation.

[Large] ML-based journalistic content recommendation system - Finland

Digital news media companies produce much more content than ever reaches their readers, because existing content delivery mechanisms tend to serve customers en masse, instead of individually. With €490,000 of funding from the DNI Innovation Fund, Helsingin Sanomat will develop a content recommendation system, using machine learning technologies to learn and adapt according to individual user behavior, and taking into account editorial directives.

The recipients of fourth round funding were announced at a DNI event in London, which brought together people from across the news industry to celebrate the impact of the DNI and Innovation Fund. Project teams that received funding in Rounds 1, 2 or 3 shared details of their work and demonstrated their successes in areas like local news, fact checking and monetization.

Since February 2016, we’ve evaluated more than 3,700 applications, carried out 935 interviews with project leaders, and offered 461 recipients in 29 countries a total of €94 million. It’s clear that these projects are helping to shape the future of high-quality journalism—and some of them are already directly benefiting the European public. The next application window will open in the spring. Watch out for details on the digitalnewsinitiative.com website and check out all DNI funded projects!

$13 million dollars in 10 years: CS professional development grants are open

Ten years ago, Jeff Walz, a manager on Google’s University Relations team, had a hunch about widening access to computer science (CS) education for students—he thought that if teachers could train other teachers, who would then train their students, together they could create a ripple effect. After attending a Carnegie Mellon University workshop for high school teachers designed to expose them to the “bigger picture of computer science,” Walz was inspired to create opportunities for teachers to expand their skill set. So he created Google’s first grant program to fund professional development opportunities in computer science for high school teachers.

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Jeff at CMU celebrating the 10th anniversary of the DARPA Urvan challenge

Over the 10 years since, we’ve provided more than $13 million through our professional development grants program, formerly known as CS4HS, to fund teacher PD in computer science education around the world. Over 50,000 educators in more than 50 countries have benefited from our professional development program, designed to grow their confidence and skillset. This program is just one example of our ongoing commitment to ensure more students have access to computer science education.

And today, grant applications are open to school districts, universities, and other education nonprofits around the world for the 2018-2019 school year. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the program, we’re expanding to include applications to fund PD programs for primary, secondary, middle school teachers, as well as teachers who are still in school. Grants are available in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, China, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.

The impact of professional development grants for educators

Here are a few stories of how PD providers have used our funding to support and enable educator impact:

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Dr. Lisa Milenkovic, STEM and CS Supervisor for Broward County Public Schools, the sixth-largest school district in the U.S., wanted to boost interest in CS across her district. As a grantee, Milenkovic developed an online PD course to help educators achieve state certification in Florida for teaching CS. The CS certification course and face-to-face mentoring builds CS teaching expertise in the district, increasing the availability of CS classes district-wide. Learn more about Lisa’s PD journey for educators in Broward County Public Schools.

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Paul O’Callaghan is a primary school teacher at Lucan Community National School in Dublin, Ireland. To further build his confidence in teaching CS and computational thinking (CT), Paul participated in the CTwins project, a joint initiative of 2016 grantees Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast. “It was motivational to be surrounded by like-minded educational professionals and to work collaboratively with people of all ages who were passionate about integrating CT meaningfully into their curricula.” The CTwins workshops encouraged Paul to develop at his school school to integrate CS throughout the entire curriculum for students aged 5 to 12. Paul says that “the potential for CS in our school knows no bounds” thanks to professional learning opportunities for teachers like himself.  

Join our online CS seminar to learn more

To learn more about computer science professional development, join us on December 16th for our first-ever online CS seminar, “Building Pathways to Teaching Computer Science.” School districts, universities and community organizations can learn how to create effective PD programs tailored to local needs of educators to integrate CS and CT into their classrooms. Seminar speakers include Maggie Johnson, Vice President of Education and University Programs at Google, Deborah Seehorn, Interim Director of CSTA, and Daniel Moix, K-12 Teacher and K-12 CS Framework & CSTA Standards Writer. You can watch the event live (or the recording) on the Google for Education YouTube Channel.

How Greek businesses are going digital with Grow Greek Tourism Online

When the recession hit Greece, Ntina Denaxa and her family faced tough times. They had to leave Athens and move to her husband’s hometown of Messaria, a small village in Santorini, using the last of their savings to renovate abandoned houses into a small hotel. Soon after, a neighbor introduced her to an adviser who was in the village showing local businesses how to promote themselves online, as part of the Grow Greek Tourism Online program.

In partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Education, the Greek National Tourism Organization (EOT) and the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), three years ago we created the program to offer free training on digital skills to people working in the tourism sector. Since then, we’ve visited more than 80 cities and 37 universities, and created a free online training​ platform, helping 70,000 people of all ages and backgrounds, like Ntina, to grow their business or career. Since the training, Ntina has used her new digital skills to promote the hotel internationally and attract more guests: “Now we’re welcoming people from all over the world and when they come, they eat in local restaurants and buy local products. It helps everyone,” she says. “I’m proud of what we’ve built.” And Ntina is just one example—67% of the businesses confirmed they had concrete business results following our training.

There are even more opportunities out there. According to a recent study by Oxford Economics on the “The Impact of Online Content on European Tourism,” increasing tourism-related online content would increase Greece’s GDP by 3.9%, and generate over 176,000 new jobs.

We’ll continue to work with our partners  to expand our programs further by giving new opportunities to Greek businesses and students.

Bridging the digital skills gap in Europe through the Developer Scholarship Challenge

Everyone needs the right digital skills to get a job, grow their career or business, or become an entrepreneur or developer. That’s why we started Google Growth Engine in 2015, a collection of digital skills programs offering free online and in person training across Europe.

The Developer Scholarships Challenge is one of these programs, a partnership between Google, Bertelsmann and Udacity, to help Europeans develop the skills required to build winning apps. Together we launched the first phase of developer scholarships in November 2016, and in September this year, announced phase 2 of the Developer Scholarships Challenge offering 75,000 scholarships to beginner and existing programmers.

When we joined the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition back in 2015, we did so in the hope of helping to make a difference to people’s futures, and we have been humbled by the many stories of success we’ve heard from our trainees along the way. That includes people like Aaron, who made the risky decision to drop out of business school to pursue his passion for computer science. Looking to self-learn, he came across the Google scholarship on Udacity and went on to earn his Associate Android Developer Certification. He is now an Android developer at SinnerSchrader Swipe in Berlin and on track to fulfill his dreams of being a full-time developer.

Today, we’re delighted our initiative has been recognized by the European Commission, winning the EC Digital skills award in the “Digital skills for ICT professionals” category, developing high-level digital skills for professionals in all industry sectors. This is the second year in a row the EC has awarded Google for our digital skills work.

To date, we have seen more than 200,000 applications, with demand coming from every country in Europe. The initial 60,000 spots for phase 2 have now been filled and the new semester is underway. Still, we know there is much more we can do. App development represents an important opportunity for economic growth in Europe as the apps sector alone could employ 4.8 million people and contribute €63bn to the EU economy by 2018. However, 40 percent of companies report problems finding candidates with the required skills to develop apps and one of the key barriers is access to developer education for everyone.

We look forward to continuing our efforts to bring digital skills and new opportunities and we are committed to helping more people get the skills they need to succeed and to grow with Google over the coming year.

RCS messaging now available to Telia subscribers in Sweden

Over the past year, we’ve been working to upgrade SMS text messaging to RCS, the next generation carrier messaging standard, partnering with carriers and device manufacturers around the world. So far we’ve launched RCS messaging with carriers in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, and starting today we’re partnering with Telia Company to bring RCS messaging to their millions of subscribers across Nordics, Baltics and Eurasia. RCS messaging will launch first to Telia consumer subscribers in Sweden starting this week, and will expand to more countries over time.

With RCS messaging, Telia subscribers will automatically have access to advanced features on their Android device. Texting over WiFi, typing indicators, high-res photo and video sharing, read receipts, and more will now be included in the carrier messaging experience through Android Messages. The service will be powered by the Jibe RCS Cloud from Google, and will be fully interoperable between networks through the Jibe RCS Hub, including Telenor, Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. This RCS messaging implementation supports the GSMA universal profile—a standard supported by more than 60 carriers and manufacturers.

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In markets where RCS is available, Telia subscribers who already have the Android Messages app on their phone will automatically get access to RCS services through an app update. Subscribers who don't have the app can install the Android Messages app from the Google Play store. All new Android devices from Telia will come with Android Messages preloaded as the default SMS and RCS messaging app.

We’re excited to bring more enhanced messaging features to Android users in Sweden, and even more countries soon, with RCS.

Update on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism

At last year's EU Internet Forum, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube declared our joint determination to curb the spread of terrorist content online. Over the past year, we have formalized this partnership with the launch of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). We hosted our first meeting in August where representatives from the tech industry, government and non-governmental organizations came together to focus on three key areas: technological approaches, knowledge sharing, and research. Since then, we have participated in a Heads of State meeting at the UN General Assembly in September and the G7 Interior Ministers meeting in October, and we look forward to hosting a GIFCT event and attending the EU Internet Forum in Brussels on the 6th of December.

The GIFCT is committed to working on technological solutions to help thwart terrorists' use of our services, and has built on the groundwork laid by the EU Internet Forum, particularly through a shared industry hash database, where companies can create “digital fingerprints” for terrorist content and share it with participating companies.

The database, which we announced our commitment to building last December and became operational last spring, now contains more than 40,000 hashes. It allows member companies to use those hashes to identify and remove matching content — videos and images — that violate our respective policies or, in some cases, block terrorist content before it is even posted.

We are pleased that Ask.fm, Cloudinary, Instagram, Justpaste.it, LinkedIn, Oath, and Snap have also recently joined this hash-sharing consortium, and we will continue our work to add additional companies throughout 2018.

In order to disrupt the distribution of terrorist content across the internet, companies have invested in collaborating and sharing expertise with one another. GIFCT's knowledge-sharing work has grown quickly in large measure because companies recognize that in countering terrorism online we face many of the same challenges.

Although our companies have been sharing best practices around counterterrorism for several years, in recent months GIFCT has provided a more formal structure to accelerate and strengthen this work. In collaboration with the Tech Against Terror initiative — which recently launched a Knowledge Sharing Platform with the support of GIFCT and the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate — we have held workshops for smaller tech companies in order to share best practices on how to disrupt the spread of violent extremist content online.

Our initial goal for 2017 was to work with 50 smaller tech companies to to share best practices on how to disrupt the spread of violent extremist material. We have exceeded that goal, engaging with 68 companies over the past several months through workshops in San Francisco, New York, and Jakarta, plus another workshop next week in Brussels on the sidelines of the EU Internet Forum.

We recognize that our work is far from done, but we are confident that we are heading in the right direction. We will continue to provide updates as we forge new partnerships and develop new technology in the face of this global challenge

Europe on Stage: How YouTube is spurring opportunity

For three years now, YouTube stars from across Europe have gathered in Brussels to share their passions, amaze people with their talents, and celebrate their achievements at the Europe on Stage event, hosted last week by Brussels’ BOZAR Centre of Fine Arts. Europe on Stage highlights the diversity of talent in Europe, and demonstrates YouTube’s unique power to drive positive social change and create economic opportunity, as well as entertain.

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Sergei Polunin, whose interpretation of Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” made the world look at ballet in a whole new light, wowed people with his performance

The event featured several YouTube stars who performed in front of a live crowd of fellow creators, fans and other invitees in Europe’s political capital. We saw fancy footwork from acclaimed dancer Sergei Polunin, as well as Wass, the French-Algerian football freestyler who gave us a new take on the beautiful game. And Marina Satti got everyone in the groove with her unique combination of Greek folk music and contemporary beats: Her song Koupes has had over 16 million views.

She wasn’t the only Greek person in the lineup. European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, spoke in a video message about the cultural values that bring Europe together, saying that “we need international, creative and inspiring events” like this one to bring together artists and thinkers, politicians and entrepreneurs to engage with each other.

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Humza Arshad, a YouTube “Creator for Change,” hit the stage in Brussels

We also heard from Humza Arshad, a British-Pakistani comedian and member of YouTube’s “Creators for Change” program. He uses humor on his YouTube channel to break down stereotypes about Muslims, prevent radicalization of young people—and get big laughs at the same time.

Humza is one of many creators using online platforms like YouTube to foster belonging, tolerance and understanding in unique ways. In fact, it was through recognizing YouTube’s ability to foster communities that we started Creators for Change last year. This global initiative supports creators who use their YouTube channels to tackle social issues and promote awareness, tolerance and empathy.

YouTube is also a growth engine for creators. For a start, it helps artists like Ace Tee and Marina Satti reach a global audience, regardless of what language they sing in or where they come from. But the platform is also a unique tool for small businesses, like Nicole Tonnelle, the French beautician who has built her brand on top tips to look magnifique. She’s 65, but age is nothing but a number—just like 7 million, the number of views on her channel. The growth of her audience shows that today, it’s easier than ever for educators, artists and entrepreneurs to build a business.

Alongside the event, we hosted a YouTube Space Pop-up—the first time in Belgium, after earlier outings in Rome and Stockholm. YouTube Spaces are places for creators to come together to collaborate, create and connect with one another. In a dedicated space at the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, hundreds of YouTube creators came together to polish their skills, establish new relationships, and produce content, while taking in workshops on topics from production fundamentals like lighting and lenses, to ideation and brand management.

Finally, there’s the cultural impact of YouTube: Institutions like the city of Mantova, the Berliner Philharmoniker, Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Castles of the Loire Valley are all sharing their treasures online, making this important heritage easier for anyone to explore. British Pathé has made 85,000 archive films available on YouTube, along with films from national audiovisual institutes across Europe, so history buffs and nostalgia enthusiasts have plenty to watch.

For these creators, the YouTube platform is their global stage. Everyone who uploads their video to YouTube has access to a global audience of more than 1.5 billion monthly viewers in 90 countries. Creators use YouTube to amplify their voice, build their business, and share their passions with diverse communities around the world. As Justine Ryst, YouTube’s Southern Europe Partnerships Director, said: “Europeans are using YouTube to turn their creativity into a career.” And Europe on Stage is the perfect occasion to inspire the next generation of YouTube talent.