Estonian president to speak in House of Commons, at Google conference

Photo: Dmitri Kotjuh / Järva Teataja

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves will make a working visit to the UK to attend the Google conference Zeitgeist 2013 and give a speech in the House of Commons.

Ilves will at the organizers' invitation take part in the Zeitgeist conference organized annually by the Google Ideas think tank that brings together leading thinkers to reflect on the current state of the world. The president will speak about the Estonian e-state success story and the opportunities and challenges of e-democracy. The conversation will be hosted by Google Ideas founder and director Jared Cohen, co-author of the recently published book "The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business" that analyzes how the digital age will affect our world.

The president will visit the House of Commons at the invitation of the British-based think tank The Henry Jackson Society. He will meet with the leaders of the society and give a talk on cyber defense and the challenges a 21st-century state has to be able to deal with to British parliament members, policy-makers and opinion leaders. The conversation will be hosted by Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, one of Britain's foremost cyber defense and security policy experts and a former governor of BBC.

While in London Ilves will also give an interview to CNN's business program "Quest Means Business."

The president will return to Estonia Tuesday night.