How and why developing a closer and closer collaboration between the Media and the University has been the key issue of a conference organized by UNINETTUNO in the framework of the Eurovisions Festival on the 22nd October last.

And the first results were achieved at the conclusion of the works with the proposal made by the Festival’s President, Michel Boyon, of launching a partnership between Eurovisions and UNINETTUNO University aimed at promoting the spreading and democratization of the access to knowledge through satellite TV and other media tools. After the welcoming address of the Secretary General, Giacomo Mazzone, the sentence quoted by Professor Gamaleri, called to moderate the debate, opened the discussion: if it is true that: “The illiterate of the future will not be those who will be unable to read and write, but those who will be unable to learn” it will be essential to spread knowledge by creating a global network, in a completely modern perspective in which the University and the communication means go side by side.

A project put into practice by UNINETTUNO’s model of which the Rector, Maria Amata Garito outlined the grounds and the achieved results, both objects of her latest book “L'università del XXI secolo tra tradizione e innovazione (The University of the XXI Century between Tradition and Innovation)”. And, if the University must be so, Rodolfo De Laurentiis stressed the importance of spreading UNINETTUNO’s expertise and courses to enhance the cultural background of the peoples that can access them. The bright star of the Conference was the speech of Furio Colombo: the University – he recalled – has always been a “communication centre” relying on the “knowledge” tool and on communication means to spread the learning created by itself.

“You do not become a distance university because you communicate, but you communicate at distance when you already are a university that has lecturers, a community and a doctrine to reach very far away people.” And the long wagon trains of refugees who walk along the routes of Europe are as new blood flowing in the veins of the Old Continent and transmit – according to Colombo – knowledge from one place to another. The speeches of Alberto Gambino, Maria Pia Rossignaud and Maarten Van Aalderen – in their respective field of competence – outlined the need to enhance the efficiency of collaborative groups by sharing the knowledge acquired by each member.