From 25-27 September 2018, the fourth Nordic Edge Expo & Conference took place in Stavanger, Norway. The Nordic Edge is an annual event showcasing the latest innovative solutions from the Smart City community and thus the ideal meeting place for the project partners of the Horizon 2020 Smart Cities and Communities programme including representatives from mySMARTLife. 4500 visitors from all across Europe and even beyond attended this three-day event to present outcomes, exchange knowledge and meet with project partners. Apart from the official event, several side-events were organised around this largest Smart City event in the Nordics.
“Smart with a Heart” was the theme of this year’s Nordic Edge Expo and Conference. To us, the EU-funded Horizon 2020 Smart Cities and Communities (SCC1) projects, being smart with a heart has many different meanings. During all three days of the exhibition, mySMARTLife was represented at the SCC1 a joint stand, organised by Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum (project partner for either dissemination, communication, exploitation or project management in the projects Triangulum, Remourban, SmartEnCity, mySMARTLife as well as the tender SCIS) in close cooperation with Stavanger Kommune (project partner of Stavanger/Triangulum). The stand featured all 12 Lighthouse projects (Triangulum, Remourban, GrowSmarter, Replicate, SharingCities, SmartEnCity, SmarterTogether, mySMARTLife, Ruggedised, IRIS, MAtchUP and STARDUST) as well as the two tenders Smart City Information System (SCIS) and the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC). At the stand, project, tender, city and technical representatives had the chance to meet each other, to talk to and inform visitors about the overall SCC1 community, the individual projects and the solutions developed therein and to illustrate the progress that we have made via the joint SCC1 Multitouch Tool that hosts information about all SCC1 projects.
The main SCC1 contribution to the Conference took place on Thursday, 27 September: the “Lighthouse Cities Programme”, an entire day of six public and five internal parallel sessions focusing on the challenges and outcomes of the SCC1 projects. The public session “Trial, Innovate, Scaling Up. Lessons learned from Europe ‘s Smart City Lighthouse Projects in a European Context”, moderated by the European Commission’s DG Energy Policy Officer Jens Bartholmes, informed about first results and lessons learned from the projects. Another public session focused on hands-on stories from the City Coordinators of Vienna, Milano, Nottingham, Cologne, Stavanger and Tartu. With the title “Communication – How to make «invisible» projects visible”, communication representatives of various SCC1 projects, Lighthouse - and Follower Cities presented their findings from their prior internal workshop to the public as well. Moderated by facilitator Josh Stinton (Outspire), the results of the internal discussions were graphically illustrated – putting a lot of heart into it - by Kristof Braekeleire and then pitched to the public by the individual project or city representatives. In parallel to these public sessions, the SCC1 group met at different internal sessions focusing on topics such as big data or business models and finance.