ITEA 2 PO Preparation Days 2011

The Marriott Hotel Rive Gauche in Paris, France, was the venue for this year’s ITEA 2 PO Preparation Days, which took place on 15 and 16 February 2011.

The aim of this two-day meeting was to help organisations form consortia and generate preliminary outlines for projects by bringing together interested companies, research institutes and universities with innovative ideas for projects in ITEA 2.

Some 275 participants from 19 different countries attended the event.  French organisations were well represented, but there was also a strong participation from Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

Like last year, we received over 80 initial project ideas which were published on the restricted PO Days website before the event. Some 50 ideas were presented in the poster session and 55 pitch presentations were held in the parallel sessions.  After discussions, this resulted in a total of 25 project ideas.

A lot of positive feedback was received from participants during the event. This appreciation corresponded with the result of the online questionnaire that was sent to all attendees. Over 45% of the participants completed the evaluation and rated the event 3.9 on a 5-point scale.
Again, the scores for usefulness of the poster and brainstorm session – respectively 4.5 and 4.1- clearly show the value of the networking and brainstorm possibilities during the event.
The traceability of the projects, which was a point for improvement for this year, was increased by numbering the project ideas and the use of better signage. This was well appreciated. 
Compared with last year, 42% of the respondents evaluated this year’s event better and 51% similar.