During the past decade, the concept of telework has undergone a major change. Instead of working in one place away from the office, we now focus on distributed and mobile work at various locations during flexible working hours. Nowadays, the activities are mediated by increasingly sophisticated communications technologies. E work is becoming increasingly common as a result of general economic, technological and organisational progress. For a large number of employees and entrepreneurs all around the world, the information network already is a very natural working environment and therefore it is of major importance to exchange the knowledge about these issues.

Therefore, the EC-Bridge initiative aims at mobilisation of various actors and stimulating high-level debates and cooperation on eCollaboration, and eLogistics, Research Networks and Broadband solutions in the context of Mobile Worker and User applications between Europe and China.

This will be achieved through organisation of international conferences in Beijing and Shanghai dedicated to these issues. The presentations will include descriptions of the novel European and Chinese products & solutions, as well as successful EU-funded projects in the area of eCollaboration & eLogistics, Research Networks and Broadband solutions for mobile user. Dedicated workshops and seminars will be organised during the conferences in order to stimulate debates and pave the way to partnerships establishment between the European and Chinese actors.

In addition to the conferences, exhibitions will be organised in order to demonstrate eWork best practices and technology achievements of European and Chinese industries.

The consortium will also develop trend-mapping studies to define the current status of eCollaboration & eLogistics, Research Networks and Broadband solutions for mobile user in China 2004.

Two Centres of Excellence dedicated to the EC-Bridge project issues will be deployed in Beijing and Shanghai in order to facilitate events organisation at first, and then promote eCollaboration, eLogistics, Research Networks and Broadband solutions for mobile user and worker on a self-sustainable basis in China. The project activities will target major industry actors, politicians at regional as well as national levels, key decision-makers, and international actors developing, using and promoting new methods of work in their respective countries.

The project activities and results together with the partnering opportunities will be widely disseminated through the project website, newsletters, publications, conferences proceedings.