Online ITEA PO Days
ITEA Community clearly showed its agility at the Online ITEA PO Days 2020
On 7 September, ITEA 3 Call 7 opened with the Online ITEA PO Days 2020, which was held from 7-11 September
2020. As it was not possible to get together with the ITEA Community, this year the ITEA PO Days were organised
online. Over five days, participants were able to learn more about ITEA, its upcoming Call, the submission
process and, most important of all, new project ideas. Despite the change in format, the ITEA Community clearly
showed its agility and made a big step towards a set of high-quality project proposals for the ITEA 3 Call 7!
A changed format, continued high interest
ITEA rose to the challenge to put the PO Days
into an online five-day event, enabling the
participants to join different sessions of
interest. Over the days, four live webinars
were organised covering the established
programme elements of the annual PO Days,
including the introduction to the Online ITEA PO
Days, instructions and Q&A, the ITEA Awards
of Excellence ceremony and the closing final
results and conclusions. National priorities
and eligibility criteria were presented by Public
Authorities in dedicated online information
sessions and during each of the five days there
was room to discuss project ideas in online
workgroup sessions and shape them into initial
project proposals.
A total of 77 project ideas were presented
via the ITEA Project idea tool, online posters
and video pitches. The high number of online
workgroup sessions gave our Community
members the chance to meet online and start
shaping a consortium and further develop the
ideas towards successful Project Outlines. A
record number of 338 participants from over
20 countries joined the online event, with
the highest participation coming from Turkey,
the Netherlands, Germany and Canada, but
countries like Korea showed a strong increase
in participation as well this year. In addition
to established participants from previous
years, the Online ITEA PO Days have been able
to attract 51% newcomers which shows the
openness of the Community once again. We were very pleased to welcome Singapore for the
first time.
Encouraging figures
For the Online ITEA PO Days 2020, extra features
were created to facilitate the online event and
project creation, like online poster and pitch
areas, online working group session overviews
and country information sessions. The 79 online
workgroup sessions that were held over the five
days resulted in 18 final-results presentations in
the closing webinar on Friday.
The project ideas were clustered by 7 societal
challenges, i.e. Safety and Security, Smart cities,
Smart communities, Smart engineering, Smart
industry, Smart health and Smart mobility.
Although each challenge was well covered, the
number of Safety and Security project ideas
was remarkably high (24), showing the impact
again of this year's ITEA International Customer
Workshop on this topic. As in previous years,
Smart health (15), Smart engineering (13) and
Smart industry (10) remain important topics for
the ITEA Community as well. Although a Eureka
Clusters AI Call had already been organised in
June earlier this year, AI remains a big topic in
ITEA 3 Call 7, covered by 27 out of 77 ideas.
A new ITEA Vice-chairman
The Online ITEA PO Days offered the perfect
opportunity to welcome and introduce the new
ITEA Vice-chairman, Jean-François Lavignon. He
succeeded Philippe Letellier, who was the ITEA
Vice-chair since 2008. Jean-François Lavignon
took the opportunity during his debut to say
how very excited he is to work with the ITEA
Community and to add new chapters to the ITEA
research and business success story. He will
apply his previous experience, from industry as
well as from coaching SMEs, to the benefit of the
ITEA Community.
ITEA Awards of Excellence
On the third day, resigning ITEA Vice-chairman
Philippe Letellier hosted a special webinar
dedicated to the ITEA Awards of Excellence. This
year's award winners are:
- ENTOC - The next stage in virtual engineering
and commissioning
Philippe Letellier: “ENTOC has developed
a seamless engineering tool chain for
manufacturing equipment in complex
production plants to increase efficiency,
maturity and innovation. They deserve an
ITEA award for this project because they
impress us on the level of innovation they
deployed in this project.”
- Flex4Apps - Deep customer understanding,
backed by data.
Philippe Letellier: “Flex4Apps is another
ITEA success story on the important topic of
the full digital loop offering monitoring and
analytics of modern systems made available
to companies of any size (SME to large
enterprise). I have appreciated a lot their
hyperscale and microcare abstraction. They
are awarded for the unique level of impact
and exploitation.”
- MOS2S - New forms of engagement in
entertainment and society
Philippe Letellier: “MOS2S is a multimedia
project which developed new ways of
engaging audiences for new entertainment
experiences but also to enhance our
E-Democracy. MOS2S deserves an award for
its societal innovation and exploitation.”
- PS-CRIMSON - A one-look overview of the city
in 5 seconds
Philippe Letellier: “PS-CRIMSON delivers
full-scale solutions to merge dynamic 2D
and static 3D data in a smart-city platform
for situational awareness. PS-CRIMSON is
awarded for its worldwide level of exploitation
and unique business partnerships.”
ITEA congratulates the ITEA Award of Excellence
winners for contributing to a better society!
Online ITEA PO Days 2020 in numbers
- 338 participants from 20 different countries
- 77 project ideas were presented via the
ITEA Project idea tool, online posters
and video pitches
- 79 online workgroup sessions held
- 18 final project ideas presented
Looking back at the Online ITEA PO Days
Turning a physical event into an online event
is a challenge, with expectations aligned
to a ‘normal’ physical event. We asked all
participants to share their evaluation and
suggestions for improvements and with a
3.5-score on a 5-point scale (where 3 is good
and 4 is very good), the online event was well
appreciated.
The Online ITEA PO Days created new
opportunities in a way that attendees did not
need travel and be away from the office for
Online ITEA PO Days 2020
multiple days. This resulted in a higher number
of participants from both Korea and Canada
and a higher number of participating countries
in general. Nevertheless, the general tendency
expressed by the participants is that the online
event was successful, but the spontaneous
encounters and interactions were sorely missed.
Face-to-face meetings contribute stronger to
shaping a consortium and developing ideas
towards a successful project proposal.
Greet Bilsen, Katholieke Univerisiteit Leuven:
“Both formulas have their advantage; the online
formula makes it easier to prepare and jump
into the relevant sessions (losing less time),
whilst the physical event allows for 'unexpected'
contacts and discussions.”
We highly value the feedback received, and we
take comments and suggestions into account
to further improve the ITEA PO Days, online or
physical. Of course, we can’t foresee the longterm,
but we will surely move back to a physical
PO Days event when it is safe to do so.
ITEA 3 Call 7
Already during the Online ITEA PO Days event,
the 7 first Project Outlines for ITEA 3 Call 7 were
initiated in the Community website! At the
deadline of 10 November, 35 Project Outlines
had been submitted, with a total effort of 3967
person years. Currently, all these POs are being
reviewed. On 11 December the consortia will be
informed whether they will be invited to submit
a Full Project Proposal.
More information
https://itea3.org/onlinepodays2020/index.html