ITEA PO Preparation Days 2015: Bigger and Better in Brussels!

The beautiful, historic and exceptional venue Le Plaza in Brussels was the scene of the very inspiring PO Days 2015, held on 22 and 23 September. A perfect setting as the PO Days were already exceptional in themselves in many ways; the number of registrations were higher than ever, an all-time record total of 74 project ideas were submitted before the event, over 60 project ideas were presented during the poster and/or pitch sessions and the first six Project Outline drafts already created in the system during the event.

Online networking

This year the Project Outline preparations for the second Call of ITEA 3 already started well before the actual PO Preparation days. In May, the updated networking tools of the ITEA Community website were launched, enabling interested parties to upload their project ideas, search for and invite partners, join project ideas and already start the first discussion. During the PO Days project idea contacts had the opportunity to meet the 269 participants from 18 countries face-to-face, continue the discussions and consortium-building and fine-tune their project ideas.

Main players

The tried and tested programme enabled all participants to get the most out of their participation in the event. For the newcomers and others that were interested, the plenary presentations of Vice-chairman Philippe Letellier, Programme coordinators Erik Rodenbach and Marc Sturzel and Office Director Fopke Klok included an introduction to ITEA, the PO Days, the Call process, the websites and the legal and financial aspects.

During the poster session about 60 project idea leaders presented their idea to the interested participants in a more personal setting, enabling them to get to know each other a bit better, before presenting their idea in one of the two parallel project idea pitch sessions to a bigger crowd. The rest of the days, participants were given plenty of opportunity to further discuss the project ideas and form the first project consortia.