Delegation from RENAM (Dr. Peter Bogatencov and Mrs. Olga Popcova) participated in ICT 2018 event that took place in Vienna, Austria on December 4-6, 2018. It was organized by the European Commission and the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This research and innovation event attracted 4800 visitors (science community members, policymakers and ICT-enthusiasts) and was focused on the European Union’s priorities in the digital transformation of society and industry. It presented an opportunity for the people involved in this transformation to share their experience and vision of Europe in the digital age.
The programme featured influential speakers and debates around the EU’s digital policy, sessions on Horizon 2020 Work Programme calls, exhibition with EU-funded research and innovation successes, European initiatives to develop a competitive ICT ecosystem, workshops on Digital Innovation Hubs, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity.
The pan-European network GÉANT has been invited to exhibit in the EC Village, showcasing the positive impact of GÉANT and NREN partners on the research and innovation community.
Representatives of EaPConnect partner organisations (ASNET-AM of Armenia, AzScienceNet of Azerbaijan, GRENA of Georgia, BASNET of Belarus and RENAM of Moldova) have attended this event. During the meeting of EaPConnect project managers with EaP NRENs representatives, there were negotiated main topics and preparation activities for forthcoming discussions on the project progress in Brussels with the EC authorities.
It was a great opportunity to participate in Face2Face Brokerage event – a series of one-to-one meetings, supported by the Enterprise Europe Network, to engage with the academic and research community, decision-makers, as well as business representatives and explore international opportunities for collaboration. There were several interesting discussions with the representatives of Austria, Germany, Israel, Romania, as well as with members of currently ongoing international projects on possibilities for future collaboration and preparation of new joint project proposals.
A joint booth of EOSC-hub, OpenAIRE, RDA Europe and FREYA projects has been opened in the EC Village. These four projects presented implementation of the European Open Science Cloud, as well as EOSC-hub resources that can support advanced data-driven research. RDA (Research Data Alliance) Europe showcased its solutions, the RDA Recommendations & Outputs focused on enabling open data sharing.
It was important to visit this booth to know how OpenAIRE engages all stakeholders for an effective Open Science implementation, learn more about best practices, tools and services available to make science more open, and understand how to benefit from the above initiatives at the national level. Funded by the EU since 2008, OpenAIRE promotes open scholarship across scientific disciplines and thematic domains, cross-border in Europe and beyond. It does so by operating a dual infrastructure: a social pan-European network of experts (National Open Access Desks – NOADs) and a technical branch which continuously develops services that promote opening up, sharing and reusing research outcomes.