Two-day online sessions and parallel workshops with over 800 registered attendees from more than 50 countries framed the 2021 edition of NGI Forum, the flagship event that gathered some of Europe’s top Internet innovators, the open-source community and senior European Commission experts supporting the development of the Next Generation Internet (NGI). Many of the topics addressed, from key technologies for the Digital Decade to next Horizon Europe funding in NGI.
Fed4FIRE+ participated in the plenary session focused on NGI international collaborative projects as well as organized the workshop Fed4FIRE+ Free testbeds for the NGI Innovators on May 19.
NGI International
With the moderation of Iwa Stefanik (NGI Explorers) and together with Dan Kilper (CONNECT Centre), and Ana Bevc (Trace Labs) Fed4FIRE+ coordinator Peter Van Daele (imec – Ghent University, IDLab) took part in NGI International session which aimed to discuss the state of play and investigate the opportunities of international collaboration in the field of Internet technologies.
“NGI International” panel during the NGI Forum 2021
Successful examples of NGI international projects were showcased, such as linking testbeds across borders (Fed4FIRE+), EU-US testbed partnership (COSMOS and OpenIreland) and worldwide scale-up through NGI Atlantic (Trace Lab’s decentralized Food Data Marketplace).
Peter Van Daele stressed the critical importance of international collaboration to support experimentally driven research and its scalability. By bringing together worldwide testing facilities into the largest federation of NGI testbeds in Europe, Fed4FIRE+ enables innovators not only to validate their experiments but also to combine multiple resources, exploit wider technology domains and reach substantial knowledge by using one single free account.
The discussion led to the identification of further services that NGI can provide to support innovators in testing new ideas in a highly competitive digital environment, including coaching & mentorship, know-how and networking.
Fed4FIRE+ Free testbeds for the NGI Innovators
Fed4FIRE+ hosted a workshop with the aim to present the latest insights and share stories on the use of testbeds by the Fed4FIRE+ innovators.
After an introduction of the project by Peter Van Daele, Brecht Vermeulen, Fed4FIRE+ Technical Coordinator (imec – Ghent University, IDLab), featured the currently available testbeds, main tools and the upcoming Fed4FIRE+ Testbed Portal, an easy-to-use directory to match every innovator with the most suitable testbed by filtering the available technologies, properties, location and more.
Then two NGI innovators, Daniele Miorandi (U-Hopper) and Paulo Marques (AllBeSmart), presented their experiences with Fed4FIRE+ facilities for testing their projects, respectively Golden Owl and Fed4AI, and shared hands-on perspectives on Fed4FIRE+ features.
The presentation of the newly launched Fed4FIRE+ Open Calls concluded the workshop, with more insights about the 9th Open Call for “Medium Experiments” (deadline 7 September 2021) and Continuous Call for “SME&NGI Cascaded Experiments” (next deadlines 1 June 2021 and 15 June 2021).
If you are interested to learn more about Fed4FIRE+ and innovators’ projects, don’t miss:
- The presentation of Fed4FIRE+ and current Open Calls, 19 May
- Our Open Calls
- Demo Stories: the success stories presented by Fed4FIRE+ experimenters
- YouTube channels: Fed4FIRE+, U-Hooper and AllBeSmart
For more information, check the full recordings of NGI Forum 2021 plenary session and Fed4FIRE+ Free testbeds for the NGI Innovators workshop.
