By Jesús Cañadas, National Innovation Office, Spain
Following the previous year’s support activities to Future Internet in Spain, the Administration (mainly Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism) and the ICT industry (AMETIC – Spanish ICT industries association – through the Future Internet Spanish Technology Platform, es.INTERNET) have kept on providing information and encouraging national SMEs participating on FI-PPP as well as on national calls. Periodic coordination meetings have been held in order to plan and organize strategy and events.
Highlighted actions are:
- The heroes of the Future Internet (Madrid, 21st May 2015)
- International conference on Future Internet (planning in progress, expected date: October 2015)
The heroes of the Future Internet (Madrid, 21st May 2015)
FIWARE accelerate programme is already working and delivering first results. During 2014, Spanish Future Internet ecosystem has organized different events and workshops focused on presenting and giving information about FIWARE and its accelerators (13th May, 24th September, 15th-17th October 2014). The strategy for 2015 still considers giving information about the remaining opportunities (last open calls), but mainly focuses on the results and the experience acquired by the beneficiaries of the programme, the SMEs that are actually working and developing their projects and business with FIWARE under EC support. 21st May’s event have highlighted entrepreneurship.
The event has been organized by AMETIC through Watify (European entrepreneurship campaign) and es.INTERNET, and was supported by the Madrid city Hall and the Ministry of Industry. The brief opening session, with representatives from industry and different levels of the Administration (Ministry and city Hall) left patent that the Spanish success on the Future Internet European programmes are not fruit of chance, but of a coordinated work between industry and Administration, covering European, national, regional and local levels.
The main session consisted on speeches from some selected projects and SMEs funded by FIWARE programme: KOIKI, PGPlaning Plice, StoormFlow, 3DENT, INEVIO, Smart-TV solutions in e-health, STEPLA, Plactherm and WIIM were projects exposed by their own promoters and developers, the real protagonists of the Future Internet.
The second session gave the floor to some of the accelerator’s representatives. FINODEX, FABULOUS, SOUL-FI, CREATI-FI, IMPACT, FICHe, INCENSe and FI-C3 commented also the details and particularities of each, results, new opportunities, and calendar. This session ended with an additional speech to explain future FIWARE commercial development (topic of interest for SMEs and participants in FIWARE programme)
Planning International conference on Future Internet (expected October 2015)
The Ministry of Industry is planning a conference to show the Spanish ICT technological ability and its enormous potential, tackling topics as Future Internet, 5G, Smart Cities or Industry 4.0 and adopting an international framework (focused on Latam).
Plan includes high level institutional speeches, exhibition area and plenary session addressing main topics.
