EUREKA Clusters joined forces at the Smart City Expo World Congress
At the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) in Barcelona on 17-19 November 2015, ITEA took part in a joint stand together with the EUREKA Secretariat, the EUREKA Clusters Celtic-Plus, EURIPIDES² and EUROGIA2020 and the Spanish funding authority CDTI.
There was a strong EUREKA involvement, also thanks to the Cluster presentation of EURIPIDES² Chairman Jean-Luc Maté in one of the parallel sessions of the event. And the separate B2B meetings directly planned with Linda van den Borne, PR&Communications officer at ITEA, gave the opportunity to explain the programme in a more personal setting.
Last year, during the EUREKA Swiss Innovation event held in Basel on 19 November, the EUREKA Clusters committed themselves to encourage and facilitate collaborative innovative proposals addressing Smart Cities. In line with this, ITEA organised an International Customer and End-user Workshop on Smart Cities last September. The Smart City event in Barcelona was the first occasion for all the Clusters to join forces in one booth to encourage the Smart Cities theme. With very positive results.
The event gathered over 14,000 attendees around the Smart Cities theme. Many participants showed interest in EUREKA and its Clusters; the bottom-up and business impact-driven approach was highly appreciated. EUREKA Clusters are clearly a good entry point for Smart City projects driven by industry, focused on innovative systems, solutions and services.