Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Over 200 events scheduled. Councilor Cocco: "Let's go beyond the borders of the city to send a message to all of Italy: digital is not an accessory but an essential resource"

Milan, May 8 2020 - Milan Digital Week is back, the event promoted by the Municipality of Milan - Department of Digital Transformation and Civic Services - and created by IAB Italia, Cariplo Factory and Hublab. A completely online edition themed "City transformed". From Monday 25th to Saturday 30th May 2020, Milano Digital Week starts again from reflections on the transformations of daily life, with a reduced possibility of physically enjoying spaces, of experiencing interpersonal relationships, of being part of a community. Hence the need to reformulate the event, in an even more collective way: a project on the connective capacity for transformation of the city.

The edition, which already has over 200 events scheduled, will take place entirely online on the platform www.milanodigitalweek.com and represents an opportunity for reflection and discussion for citizens, institutions, companies, universities and research centers, students and millennials with particular attention to contemporary and prospective issues.

“In these two months our lives and our habits have been completely turned upside down – comments the councilor for Digital Transformation and Civic Services Roberta Cocco – It is undeniable that digital has played a fundamental role in allowing the country not to block completely but to find in technology and innovative solutions the winning formula to continue working, studying, relating and living in a different daily life. We will talk about this precisely in the online Milan Digital Week, an edition that goes beyond the borders of the city to send a message to all of Italy: digital is not an accessory but an essential resource".

“Digital” has pervasively entered everyday life in the last three months. In a world that has suddenly reduced its many relationships, starting from the physical ones, digital has made its assets available to activate a different paradigm, which started from needs that could no longer be satisfied and transformed the connections of the entire Planet. Work, training, relationships, and indeed free time in places of culture and entertainment, outdoors, and much more: all the pillars of an active life which, from one moment to the next, have been reset to zero in the forms we knew so far. Digital, already essential in many aspects starting from the productive fabric, has proven providential for daily life.

The themes of the third edition: Work, what will come and what perhaps will no longer be there, the necessary transversal skills and the new economies, governance and development hypotheses (geopolitics, social innovation and planning), 8 Hackathons focused on eight of the 17 challenges linked to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, supported by eight companies: a real discussion meeting - sponsored by SDG Global Action - to see how thought and knowledge can help us in defining the new paradigms that are waiting or that we will probably have to invent.

Education, mainly linked to the world of universities and lifelong learning, Sustainability and Environment (new ecosystems and urban strategies), Health and Privacy (access, ethics and necessary technologies), Inequalities (models and practices for a more equitable future, maps of social and digital inequalities), Art, Music and Culture (new art markets, live performances, concerts and live cinema), Media (Infotainment, Fake news, new languages).

If the protagonist remains Milan and the many connections inside and outside Italy, however, it will be a platform and a digital direction that will create a schedule with different formats: talks, conferences, lectio magistralis, webinars, hackathons as well as access to the MDW archive with insights on the site or on external platforms (blogs, articles). A six-day marathon - designed and curated specifically for the event - aimed at citizens, professionals, young entrepreneurs, professionals, curious people and enthusiasts of all ages who want to discover the many faces of digital Milan, or the digital world in general .

The MDW, just two months ago, was focused on "Augmented City", a laboratory for a sustainable transition, with over 600 events already defined by a call for large participation. From this call, a good part will still participate, comparing themselves with the ongoing transformations and the scenarios that will have to be designed collectively. At the end of the year, the call will be launched for the next Milan Digital Week, scheduled for March 2021: a project to reconnect the threads of the old and the new within this new Millennium which has already profoundly changed at its beginning.