Look Out World, Here It Comes!
At the end of the OPAALS project, we can reflect on both the network we have built up, and the work that we have accomplished.
The atmosphere at the final conference in Brazil demonstrated more than anything the value of a strong network. The participants of the OPAALS event mostly knew each other well, and from breakfast to dinner, and sometimes at the pool, old friends mixed easily without the sharp divisions between disciplines that were a characteristic of our faltering communication four years ago. We have become a mature inter-disciplinary network that stretches a long way around the globe and has close ties.
As to our work, the accompanying ICT event in Brazil heard important case studies from OPAALS. More importantly, the Zaragoza workshop in June, as a practical demonstration of applications, was to be a final practical proof of the theoretical progress that has been made. The architecture of the distributed operating system has provided the foundation stones; new concepts of trust and accountability can now provide operational tools; and social science is being understood as a key part of ICT research. So many issues and facets have been progressed, not least the understanding of the applications interface with SMEs and end users, and the vital role of Regional Catalysts for involving them.
As an emerging technology, many issues and problems still remain, and more will become apparent as the technology moves ahead into application. Our network has, and hopefully will continue, to make a positive contribution to the science of Digital Ecosystems.
As the OPAALS project draws to a close, we diverge from the customary reporting of research developments within the various workpackages and focus instead on the significant events marking the culmination of our work -- SMEs in the Context of the PPPs, the third OPAALS Conference, ICT for Socio-Economic Development and our Dissemination Toolkit -- which we also look upon as carrying that work forward.
Image from Wikicommons
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The Importance of SMEs in the Context of the PPPs: A Practical Case in the OPAALS Project
On 29 June, an OPAALS workshop entitled ‘The Importance of SMEs in the Context of the PPPs: A Practical Case in the OPAALS Project’ was held in Zaragoza, Spain.
The event was hosted by OPAALS partner Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón (ITA). Its purpose was to enable SMEs and policy makers to exchange information and views on the importance of and opportunities for SMEs to become involved in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). The event afforded SMEs the opportunity to report on their findings from testing and validating the OPAALS software over the past few months. It also provided OPAALS partners the opportunity to hear SME recommendations for the OPAALS community as it progresses its plans for the sustainability and governance of the community and software after the funded lifetime of the project.
ITA, Zaragoza, Spain
The event began with a welcome from Mr. Fernando Beltran, Vice-Chair of the Science, Technology and University Ministry of the Regional Government of Aragon.
This was followed by an address by Dr. Florent Frederix, DG Information Society and Media at the European Commission, who is the Project Officer of the OPAALS project. Dr. Frederix focused on The Internet of Things (IoT) as part of the European economic recovery plan and explained the place of the Future Internet (FI) and Future of Manufacturing (FoM) in future funding instruments. ICT, he stated, is key to Factories of the Future (FoF) – a particular focus area of the Internet of the Future (IoF). He added that Future Internet and Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) are part of this plan in large scale applications demos and trials across sectors such as smart energy grid, e-health, content, transport mobility and logistics as well as utilities and environment.
Mr. Ignacio Hernandez of ITA, spoke on Enterprise Network Projects and SME support actions in European Projects in Spain, emphasising that Europe has a powerful opportunity to compete with the US via SME enablement. More information can be found by emailing actiic@ita.es.
Mr. Enrique Esteban of the Enterprise Europe Network in Spain gave the example of the INNOVA programme for open innovation, which provides companies with subventions so that they can apply for EC proposals. More details are available here.
Ms. Ana Alonso spoke about the work of Red Aragon - 7PM an organisation co-financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation that works with R&D organisations to get EC funding for R&D via joint technology initiatives.
Dr. Paolo Dini, then spoke about the objectives both old and new of the OPAALS FP6 NoE, explaining how the asymmetry in information and opportunity that centralised servers cause in our markets formed the raison d’etre for the OPAALS project and its predecessor the DBE. Dr. Dini explained that it was decided to prioritise the completion of the peer-to-peer platform to a usable state for SMEs over the completion of Open Knowledge Space (OKS). A static super-peer infrastructure has therefore been implemented. The ‘dynamic’ and ‘virtual’ parts have not implemented. However, integration of the various components of the architecture has been achieved at the design level. And the Sironta P2P application and collaboration tool was completed. Dr Dini also explained how the social dimension and democratic processes are an essential ingredient of sustainable development and more efficient participation of stakeholders in the socio-economic system.
Following the event, Dr. Dini stated, "It is heartening to see that the early emphasis of Digital Ecosystems research, in 2003, on the collaborative and social aspects of economic life has grown along with Web 2.0 phenomena, free content, and the increasingly wide acceptance of business models based on Open Source. Similarly, in the DE adoption strategy at regional level, the critical role played for the past 6 years by 'Regional Catalysts' such as Instituto Tecnologico de Aragón in facilitating dialogue and collaboration between academia and business is resonating strongly with current PPP and Open Innovation trends in Europe and beyond."
Mr. Jason Finnegan of TSSG, Waterford Institute of Technology, went on to deliver a high level overview of FLYPEER and the components of the OPAALS software environment. Mr. Thomas Kurz of Salzburg University of Applied Sciences delivered an overview of EveSim, the OPAALS simulation environment. Prof. Dr. Pedro Bueso of the University of Zaragoza went on to give insight into regulatory issues and strategies for Digital Ecosystems. Mr. Manu Arjó of TechIdeas delivered a presentation on Sironta an open Source collaboration tool specifically for document publishing and focussed on their journey from research to market with this tool.
Next was the turn of the SMEs namely: Ms. Ana Pena Garcia of Dailcom, Mr. David Munoz of Gábilos, Mr. Manuel Benedi of Europa Active Club who had all cooperated with ITA to test and validate the software. All had used the OPAALS software as middleware to create/ deploy their services. They agreed that they saw improvement in the software since the days of the DBE project while recommending that the partners provide better documentation to support the various components.
Mr. Francisco Lacueva of ITA then did a real time demonstration of an integrated use case.
Mr. Javier Val, OPAALS Project Coordinator at ITA closed what had turned out to be a very successful and well received event.
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Third OPAALS Conference
The Third (and final) OPAALS Conference took place from the 22nd to the 23rd of March 2010 in Aracaju, Brazil, and was organised and hosted by OPAALS Brazilian partner, IPTI. The setting was spectacular: on the Atlantic coast of the state of Sergipe, in the country’s northeast. Between sessions, conference delegates took a dip in the hotel swimming pool or, if time allowed after each day, a swim in the ocean directly across from the hotel. Apart from the unbeatable conference environs, Aracaju itself offered an equally rich and varied setting: from the colonial market in the town centre, which sells everything from local produce to homeopathic remedies to live animals; to an aquarium featuring the region’s sea-life; to expansive shopping centres, good restaurants and bars. Despite the temptation of sun, sand, surf and sea-life (or seafood) the conference itself was a resounding success: a diverse group of papers that reflected the project’s multifaceted progression, and a lively audience that kept discussions incisive and engaging.
Atalaia Beach at Aracaju, Sergipe, Brazil (image by Tito Garcez, Wikipedia)
The first session of the opening day saw papers on regional roles in knowledge transfer towards economic development; progression on OPAALS Digital Ecosystem (DE) transaction implementation; and an overview of the project’s research framework for interaction computing. After a break, papers continued with research on transformation semi-groups as constructive dynamical spaces; exploration of the role of value networks for software innovation; and continued implementation of a trust-overlay framework for DEs. Following lunch, speakers presented developments on working towards the idea of autopoietic computing; practical approaches to identity in DEs using claim-verification and trust-modelling; and complexity in conceptualisations of user interface. The day’s final session offered an intriguing approach to the natural-computing challenge of a spam-detection server model, based on the closing mechanism of the Dionaea Muscipula, or Venus Flytrap; followed by a comparative study among collaboration networks on the OPAALS wiki.
The conference’s second day opened with a paper on fostering social technologies’ sharing capacities in a Brazilian case study of the OPAALS Open Knowledge Space (OKS); a social-network analysis of the Irish biotechnology industry and its implications for DEs; and advancement on utilisation of knowledge resources in the OKS. Following a break, papers were presented on further research in context-aware visualisations in the OKS; and on p53-mdm2-related research in the natural sciences: regulatory pathways in numerical and experimental analysis; and Lie group analysis of an Ordinary Differential Equations model. After lunch, papers returned to the realm of social and computing sciences with an exploration of socio-technical concepts and adoption in knowledge-and-learning DEs; a preliminary comparative analysis of DE adoption at the local level; and research on an integrative typology within the diffusion of social media and knowledge management. The last session of the conference closed with a paper on collaboration networks for innovation and socio-economic development, with European and Latin American perspectives on DE research, local readiness, deployment strategies and their policy implications. In addition to many project partners coming together, we were happy that Ms Cristina Martinez Gonzalez, Head of the FInES Cluster (to which OPAALS belongs) in unit D4 of DG-INFSO, was able to attend the conference and participate in its many fruitful discussions.
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ICT for Socio-Economic Development Workshop
The ‘ICT for Socio-Economic Development’ Workshop, on the 25th and 26th of March, followed the OPAALS conference at the same location in Aracaju, Brazil, and had at its core the concept that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enables users to participate in a rapidly changing world in which work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to varied and developing technologies. Workshop speakers addressed a range of topics and debates surrounding this premise, but converged on the idea that ICT tools can be used to find, explore, analyse, exchange and present information responsibly and without discrimination. And with the further goal of employing ICT to give users quick access to ideas and experiences from a diverse range of people, communities and cultures.
The workshop was preceded the day before by a fascinating and moving visit to the nearby village of Laranjeiras, Sergipe. Here, conference and workshop participants came face-to-face with local reality, namely the socio-economic conditions and existing ICT services in rural, northeastern Brazil from the perspectives of schoolchildren, their teachers and a local government representative. The day concluded with lively and memorable expressions of enduring local culture: Cacumbi, São Gonçalo and Taieira dances performed by Laranjeiras folkloric groups.
Laranjeiras, Sergipe, Brazil (image by Niall Brennan, OPAALS)
The workshop’s opening address was given by the Sergipe State Secretary for Development, Science and Technology, Jorge Santana de Oliveira; a representative from the Information Society and Media Directorate General for European Commission, Miguel González-Sancho; and the Secretariat of Science and Technology for Social Inclusion at the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, Roosevelt Tomé Silva Filho.
The first session, ‘Knowledge in Cyberspace’ focussed on the importance of immaterial assets for underdeveloped communities, as well as how to preserve and exploit their economic potentials in sustainable and participatory ways. Issues such as intellectual property, patents, free knowledge, biodiversity, social capital and cognitive development were discussed by Peter Drahos in ‘Knowledge as a Fifth Freedom’ and Jonathan Low in ‘Information Ownership in an Information Age’.
‘Socio-economical Scenarios Driven by Knowledge’, the day’s second session, discussed the importance of networks in establishing efficient, sustainable and innovative environments composed by micro actors. Speakers addressed the potentials of conceiving and implementing new business and innovation models -- illustrated by two case studies of knowledge networks and the importance of ICT to those networks -- currently being used to improve socio-economic conditions in underdeveloped regions of Brazil and India. Jonathan Cave began with ‘Network Economy, a Post-modern, Semantic Economy’; Larissa Barros presented ‘Case studies in Social Technologies Network (Brazil)’; and Jayanta Chatterjee concluded with the case study ‘DEAL: Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture and Livelihood (India)’.
ICT for Socio-Economic Development Workshop (image by Neil Rathbone, OPAALS)
Day two of the workshop opened to opportunities for research funding in ICT by Cristina Martinez Gonzalez, Head of the FInES Cluster in unit D4 of DG-INFSO; followed by Moacyr Martucci and Cecilia Yamanaka Matsumura, who addressed the FIRST and FORESTA projects’ creation of technological links between Latin America and Europe.
The next session, ‘Governance and Sustainability’, was premised on the idea that DEs are virtual environments where users can share and collaborate with each other in sustainable ways, producing high-level social capital and socio-economic development. At the same time, the strategies and mechanisms necessary to produce these networks are largely unknown, rendering issues like governance, trust and the possibility of rewards crucial to address. The session presented the main principles of DEs as a concept, and discussed the elements required to establish a self-sustaining, virtual environment promoting social and economic development. Speakers included Paolo Dini on ‘Digital Ecosystems’ and Man-Sze Li on ‘Governance and Sustainability: the New Cause’.
The workshop’s final session was ‘ICT for Well Being and Accessibility’, which addressed possibilities for ICT to create new and powerful ways of improving our well being by facilitating access to services such as health, education and government transparency. The session also aimed to provide policy makers with possibilities for management and decision-making to enable the provision of better offers of public services. The increased use of ICT, however, has to be accompanied by inclusive policies and approaches for people at risk of exclusion or lagging behind in the information society, such as people with disabilities or elderly, in order to avoid increasing the difficulties that they face in access to services and social participation. Jutta Treviranus, in her talk ‘Well Being and Accessibility’, addressed such a scenario, where the intensive use of ICT in our daily lives includes both many potentialities and risks for different people.
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Downloadable Toolkit Now Available
As part of our winding-up and public-dissemination activities, a toolkit of introductory and dissemination materials is now available to help first-time travellers to DEs and OPAALS understand the project, who is involved and how to engage. It offers valuable resources that will help you understand how to deploy and benefit from a DE in your region.
Included in the toolkit are resources relevant to some and all according to the capacity in which you might want to engage with DEs and OPAALS: Digital Ecosystems and OPAALS, where there are overview presentations, media packs and various presentations given to different communities of interest, as well as newsletters (like this one) with project information and updates; Engagement and Interest Groups, where we have made available extensive project-specific reports and presentations according to knowledge and professional interest; Communication and Dissemination Resources provide information that we have used to conceptualise and communicate DE 'brands' and identity to the larger world; and Use Cases and Cluster Projects illustrates how DEs could be put to use by SMEs for different purposes and in various regions, with links following to active DE cluster projects. However, we encourage you to browse all areas of the toolkit. To visit the toolkit, go here.
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