VICINITY project at “Arendalsuka 2017“ Organised by Arendalsuka

Saturday, August 12, 2017 (All day) to Wednesday, August 16, 2017 (All day)
Arendal, Norway

Arendalsuka is the main arena in Norway for municipalities, organisations, decision-makers and politicians to meet up to discuss, inform, influence and lobby. This annual event takes place in the very picturesque city of Arendal in mid-August. VICINITY was represented through participation from Hafenstrom. There were conducted meetings and discussions with universities, representatives from municipal healthcare agencies, representatives from the Norwegian Public Road Agency as well as both Norwegian and European agencies focusing on funding research and innovation. Some very interesting meetings did also take place between Telenor (the largest telecom operator in Norway) and several of the partners within IoT, sensor development and deployment. There were also numerous other meetings and conversations with other participants that worked within fields related to mobility and smart cities.

However, it is sufficient to say that VICINITY is receiving a lot of interest. The concept of device agnostic cross-domain communication opens for a number of new value-added services. Almost everybody immediately realized the potential without having it laid out in front of them. One of the most welcome aspects were the support for the upcoming GDPR, with privacy by design as a central element. The most asked questions were related to how to integrate, how to manage the virtual neighbourhood, and how to expand on the value-added services. These are the kind of reactions that tells us that VICINITY offers some very needed functionality to an increasingly complex world.

VICINITY was represented by Asbjørn Hovstø and Flemming Sveen of HITS.

Work Packages affected by or contributed to the goals were:

  • WP9 (Dissemination of Results & Exploitation ) was the main focus
  • WP7 (On-site Deployment and Pilot Installations) related activities were initiated.
  • WP2 (Standardization Analysis and VICINITY platform conformity)
  • WP5 (Value-Added Services Implementation)

 The meetings and talks were mainly conducted with these organizations. Some of them had several meetings during the period spent in Arendal. Others are omitted because they were not relevant to VICINITY or it was non-committed talks with other interested parties.

 Feedback:

 The activities that took place at the Arendalsuka was all directly or indirectly tied into tasks and deliverables that are defined in the VICINITY project.

 Arendalsuka has been proven to be an arena that is well suited for gathering information about relevant topics, meet up with premise provider and create networks that are relevant for future activities. Arendalsuka offers numerous opportunities to identify the needs of potential stakeholders, to inform relevant media outlets and communication personnel about ongoing activities, as well as getting in touch with influencers from other fields of work.

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