On 25 September 2013, the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership programme, FI-PPP, held an information day at the facilities of the University Foundation in Brussels on the Open Calls by FI-PPP phase-2 projects. The Open Calls aim to incorporate new project partners and enhance the projects’ capabilities.

Around 100 participants joined the event and witnessed presentations by all phase-2 projects: the use case projects FI-CONTENT 2, FI-STAR, FIspace, FINESCE, and FITMAN as well as the capacity building and infrastructures project XIFI. The session was organized in two parts, a plenary and three parallel breakout sessions.

Plenary session

In the plenary, general aspects of the Open Calls were presented, covering both on project level and on programme. The plenary was opened by Milon Gupta from Eurescom, who represented the CONCORD project, which supports and facilitates the FI-PPP.

He provided a brief overview on the goals and structure of the FI-PPP programme and described the commonalities of the Calls by the different phase-2 projects. All Open Calls, he explained, have in common that new participants will join the respective project and the FI-PPP programme as partners, typically for about one year, and that the selection of proposals will be based on an open and fair Call process according to EC rules.

FI-CONTENT 2

Pieter Van Der Linden from Technicolor presented the Open Call by FI-CONTENT 2, which will open on 30 September 2013 and close on 8 January 2014. He explained that FI-CONTENT 2 covers three different sectors: Social Connected TV, Smart City services, and Pervasive Games. The FI-CONTENT 2 Open Call targets innovative developers who can complement the three platforms by creating new applications or providing missing technologies to extend the capabilities of any of the platforms and which can be tested in any of the six trial locations. Mr. Van Der Linden emphasized the project’s focus on experimentation and the involvement of users in real-life settings. FI-CONTENT 2 has allocated 1.35 million euros for this Open Call and is expecting to allocate 100,000 – 250,000 euros per proposal.

FI-STAR

The FI-STAR project, presented by Halid Hrasnica from Eurescom, has reserved around 1,3 million euros for its Open Call which opens on 26 September 2013 and closes on 20 November 2013. The call is structured in three different categories to attract new partners to join the FI-PPP use case on eHealth: adding new functionality to the platform, develop innovative applications, and support dissemination activities. Mr Hrasnica informed the proposers that the maximum funding requested is 180,000 euros, that a minimum of three proposals will be selected in the first category, a maximum of three in the second, and one will be selected in the third category.

FINESCE

Fiona Williams from Ericsson presented FINESCE’ Open Call which already opened on 16 September 2013 and will close on 13 November 2013. FINESCE, the phase 2 project focused on Smart Energy, will launch different experimentation activities in its 7 trials all over Europe in January 2014. Ms Williams explained that the FINESCE Open Call covers two different areas: the first targets small organisations including web-entrepreneur with their own creative ideas for energy-related services and applications. To the first area, 250,000 euros are allocated, and the second area is focused on the expansion of the current trials, with a total funding of one million euros and maximum amount per proposal of allocated 350,000 euros. Some expected specific topics for this open call were also presented, including the usage of Serious Games for engagement and training purposes.

FIspace

FIspace, the phase 2 project providing a B2B collaboration platform to make businesses more efficient, was presented by Elies Prunes from Atos. FIspace is implementing 8 different trials all over Europe, covering the areas of AgriFood and logistics. The project is organised in three domains called Farming in the Cloud, Intelligent Perishable Goods Logistics, and Smart Distribution. FIspace has allocated around 1.2 million euros in its Open Call to develop domain-specific apps for each of the 8 trials.

FITMAN

Sergio Gusmeroli from TXT e-Solutions presented the FITMAN project, which is focused on the application of Future Internet technologies in the manufacturing domain. FITMAN is organized in three domains: Smart Factories, Digital Factories, And Virtual Factories. Its open call aims to incorporate three proposals (one per category) with up to three partners each that could perform experiments in any of the existing 11 trials. Mr Gusmeroli emphasized that FITMAN does not look for new trials, but for ICT solutions that could improve the existing trials.

XIFI

The plenary was concluded with a presentation by Maurizio Cecchi from Telecom Italia, who provided an overview on XIFI’s Open Call, whose deadline is 27 November 2013. The XIFI project is focused on building the infrastructure to support the experimental use of all FI-PPP Generic Enablers and Specific Enablers. Its Open Call targets network infrastructure owners who could expand the FI-PPP core network that XIFI is developing, either by location or by capability. Around two million euros have been allocated to fund these additional partners who will join XIFI in the second year of the project.

Breakout sessions

After a short break the potential proposers joined one of the three breakout sessions to receive more details about each of the Open Calls and get into direct contact with the project partners. The presenter from the phase 2 projects explained their Calls in further detail and answered questions by potential proposers.

Further information

Presentation slides on the FI-PPP Open Calls are available on the Info Day page.

For a regularly update list of Open Calls with links to the Call pages see the
How to Participate page.