- Published on 01 Jul 2020
- Project News
Industry 4.E Digital Workshops: Interactive for excellence in digital industry
Workshop Series: Creating Knowledge Impact through Knowledge Transfer for the Industry4.E Lighthouse Project Community
This workshop series, for members of the Industry4.E Lighthouse project community, focused on maximising project impacts. The workshops aimed to develop and share knowledge on good practice for strategic communications, dissemination and exploitation planning, implementation, and measuring uptake.
The workshops were designed to support the Industry4.E Lighthouse projects in optimising and implementing their communications, dissemination, and exploitation plans (DEPs) - shaping their potential for engagement and measurable impact. The workshops’ focus was tailored to the needs of the projects, starting with an in-person workshop at EFECS in November 2019 followed by a series of four webinars, adapting to the COVID-19 situation, run from May to June 2020.
The workshops were designed with interactivity and discussion in mind, with participants given the opportunity to sample tools which could be used in their own events.
This first workshop ‘Creating Knowledge Impact through Knowledge Transfer for the Industry4.E Lighthouse Project Community’ included a welcome note from ECSEL Programme Officer Berta Ferrer Llosá highlighting the importance of D&E activities, the key role of D&E in Horizon Europe, and the supports available. The workshop introduced the context of the Industry4.E Lighthouse, synergies between Industry4.E projects, and the role of the Lighthouse in providing support and assistance for the effective exploitation of project results, knowledge transfer, impact measurement, and communications. EC Policy was discussed, followed by an introduction to the AquaTT Knowledge Transfer Methodology.
‘Tools for successful project dissemination /exploitation (and sharing best practices)’ was held virtually on 12 May 2020. This interactive workshop presented successful and innovative exploitation tools (from CSA-Industry4.E D3.1), and also discussed exploitation strategy building and best practices. Various tools for management, goal definition, dissemination, and exploitation were presented. Participants shared their experiences and insights with various tools via Mentimeter, an online live polling platform, which helped to create an engaging and enjoyable workshop for all.
‘How best to fulfil communication and dissemination obligations solely using remote methods’ on 19 May 2020 and ‘How best to carry out “Exploitation” activities using remote methods’ on 26 May 2020 explored best practices for adapting existing communications, dissemination and exploitation plans (DEPs) in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation. With workplaces continuing to adapt to the crisis, more people are likely to be working remotely in future, with many employees also expressing a desire for this to continue. Both workshops explored best practice for achieving successful two-way engagement with stakeholders remotely. The challenges of virtually recreating the physical interactions, informal discussions, rapport and connection that happens more naturally at physical events were discussed in detail, with some of the opportunities created by the shift to virtual also explored.
Workshop 3 topics were directed by a pre-event survey on the participants’ backgrounds and their expectations for the webinar. Themes included: sharing project news, social media, events and stakeholder engagement. Theme contents covered strategic planning, target audiences, available tools, impact measurement, and useful online resources. Three breakout sessions were held where participants shared their experiences and tips for hosting remote events. Many found these sessions to be highly engaging and useful for encouraging debate virtually.
Workshop 4 focused on three themes: Paper to Electronic Assets – the e-Products necessary to support exploitation activities; Physical to Online Events; and Face-to-Face to Online Knowledge Transfer. Each theme covered virtual exploitation strategy objectives, digital tools and case studies, tailoring activities towards specific outcomes, metrics and measurement, and useful resources. The importance of engaging and maintaining the interest of participants for successful brokerage and social events was particularly highlighted.
The fifth and final workshop, ‘Sharing Success – Successful exploitation in Industry4.E Lighthouse projects’ rounded up the learnings from the previous workshops with examples of successful implementations from the Lighthouse Projects. This joint workshop was presented by project partners from SCOTT, Productive4.0, I-MECH, Mantis, Arrowhead Tools, as well as kambeckfilm (a provider of professional video services to EU projects). Topics included the implementation of hackathons, video production and target audiences, dissemination and communications methodology, and standardisation in an open source community.
The presenters included:
- Open Innovation and Stakeholder Engagement through Hackathons – Christian Kaiser – SCOTT. The team from scottproject.eu presented their Data Hack event to detail how hackathons work and used this to encourage their project partners to then run their own similar events
- Opening the gates to the digital future – Anna Laktionova - Productive4.0. In this presentation we learned how productive40.eu produced a video campaign which included the project vision, results, and partner interviews.
- Importance of Video for dissemination and communication – Markus Kambeck – kambeckfilm. Reinforcing points made in workshops 3 and 4, kambeckfilm.de showed that making a video that stands out from the crowd and publishing it is only half the work! A strategy focusing on target groups, and where to find them is essential, and to also consider using paid advertising to reach them.
- Dissemination & communication approach - Siranush Akarmazyan – I-MECH. The i-mech.eu team shared their approaches and lessons learned with workshop participants, and discussed their excellent videos which had been showcased in previous workshops.
- Successful dissemination and exploitation in the project - Leire Etxeberria – MANTIS. The exploitation results from mantis-project.eu were strong, with multiple partners cooperating and sharing outputs.
- Standardisation in an Open Source Community - Jerker Delsing – Arrowhead Tools. arrowhead.eu presented their strategy to place their framework on the open source Eclipse platform.
- Closing remarks on the workshop series by facilitators - Ivo Zeller and Olga Ormond– CSA-Industry4.E. Concluding remarks were made by partners from aquatt.ie and steinbeis-europa.de who facilitated the workshops.
