The first project year of IoSense – successful start, impressing commitment, substantial results

Successful start: The official project kick-off ceremony on May 19 at Infineon Dresden, Germany, with high-ranking guests on national and European level as well as representatives of 33 project partners from 6 countries was well recognized by regional and national media. Right from the beginning, the project IoSense had set up an internal and external communication strategy. Already in M1 the project website as well as social media channels were installed. An electronic newsletter as part of the public communication to increase the visibility of the project and optimize the stakeholder identification and integration process was set up on a biannual basis. It is reporting about major activities regarding the project particularly highlights, achievements, success stories and announcements.

Impressing commitment: Cooperation activities are taking place on two levels: vertically within work packages and horizontally within the demonstrator communities along the value chain. Meeting structures and regular alignment processes were set up. The IoSense consortium came together in Leuven for the M6 meeting, October 5-6, 2016, to discuss the progress that had been achieved in the first 6 months of the project. Members of each consortium partner were present to discuss preliminary results and decide next steps. All work package leaders presented their main achievements since the start of the project and gave an outline of the upcoming tasks. The M12 meeting taking place April 27-28 in Madrid is the next consortium milestone to present substantial results and prepare the reportings of the first project year as well as the first project review in June.

First achievements: All milestones were reached and all deliverables were completed according to the project work plan. Specifications and requirements definitions of the demonstrators addressed in work package 1 are completed. Interfaces and hand-overs to the other work packages are defined, supply chains were described. Also all the other work packages have commenced their development and evaluation efforts. 

The IoSense Advisory Board (IAB) had its kick-off meeting December 14, 2016. The members of the IAB had been nominated by the IoSense project partners as a group of senior experts, not directly involved in the day-to-day work of the project, to act as project-internal review team. The IAB reviewed the IoSense goals and objectives, particularly focusing on "Ambition" and "Impact" of the project, and provided this assessment to all project partners for comments and actions. 

Furthermore first dissemination activities started. The intentions and the concept of IoSense were presented in the Project Village at the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2016 in Rome, Italy on 23-24 November, 2016, at Smart City Expo World Congress 2016, the world’s leading event for smart cities with more than 16000 visitors and at the IoT Solutions World Congress 2016 in Barcelona October 25-27, 2016. IoSense project partners have already published their first project results at various significant conferences and journals.