European Silicon Valley – new campus opens in Lyon

Opened by the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region and Laurent Wauquiez’ flagship project, the “Campus Region” is a central plank of the ambitious project to make the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region the European Silicon Valley.

 

The digital potential of the region

The  Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region is the leading French Tech Region with four certified territories as well as being France’s second region in terms of ICT products and services. The region similarly ranks first in research & development and second in engineering.

 

Above all, the region numbers about 15,000 companies in the digital sector and has 123,000 employees working in a digital business.

 

Opening in September 2017

 

Campus Région will propose 16 courses hosted by 7 different schools such as Digital Campus, CESI, EM Lyon, ESDES, IT Akademy, Signs and Formations, École 101 or École 42, the latter of which are free coding schools.

École 42 is expected to welcome around 120 young adults with no diploma requirements in its first year. In total some 500 students are expected to be hosted at the  Lyon Confluence campus site.

 

Campus Region is targeting a total of 3 to 4,000 students by 2020. Despite being based in the Lyon Metropole, Campus Région is nonetheless a regional project, as it will offer off-campus innovative training courses which will be spread throughout the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region from the start of the 2017 academic year.

 

The project

A global digitalization strategy amounting to more than 650 million euros of funding over the period 2017 to 2021 has therefore been set up in the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes region with the aim of accelerating the creation of the European Silicon Valley.

The objective of this funding is to help companies make the digital transformation as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

 

Campus Région must facilitate the decompartmentalization and exchanges by combining initial and continuous training for students, researchers, employees and managers, institutional players and start-ups.

 

The French Tech Region urgently needs reinforcements as nearly 2,000 positions were not filled over the last 12 months in the digital industry.

In addition to filling those positions, 4,000 recruitments per year are planned for the next few years in the engineering / IT and consulting, consulting and service industries.