The 6th FIWARE Summit in Genoa, Italy has come to an end and it is with great gratitude towards the entire FIWARE community that we look back on a successful event. On May 21st and 22nd, over 450 attendees; community members, as well as key players from the Italian ecosystem, gathered in Genoa’s Conference Center located inside Porto Antico’s historical Cotton Warehouses, for the 5th installment of the FIWARE Global Summit. Sometimes it truly does take a village (or in this case, a city) to bring an event to life, which is why the FIWARE Foundation would like to extend its appreciation to the City of Genoa, as well as Platinum Member and Premium Sponsor of the event, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA, for their continued support.

Innovation & Disruptive Solutions

Opening the Summit was none other than Marco Bucci, the Mayor of Genoa. Mr. Bucci has previously stated that “Technology is part of the identity of [Genoa] through its industrial and cultural history”. He added that the city is “particularly happy to host an event designed to promote opportunities for meetings, exchange, and knowledge among the professionals, entrepreneurs, and developers”. 

During two action-packed days, 114 speakers took the stage to present their projects, FIWARE-powered platforms, and solutions, and to discuss trends and the latest developments in FIWARE technology. Day one consisted of a conference style set-up with a variety of tracks focussed on the domains of Smart Industry, Smart Agrifood, and Smart Cities, as well as the FIWARE iHubs Network. It also featured a full-day Developers Track and a Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) workshop, both of which ran in parallel to the conference. 

Interesting topics discussed included the role of FIWARE Digital Innovation Hubs to consolidate and expand the FIWARE Community, FIWARE as the open standard for Agrifood application integration, the (non-)technical challenges of moving towards a Common European Data Space, and Sensors and Security in the context of FIWARE technology, as well as a look at Smart Cities from both the demand and offering side. 

On two day, the focus shifted more towards real-life use cases, the Smart Energy Track made its first appearance, and some interesting Cross-topic Sessions were thrown into the mix. First introduced during the Global Summit in Malaga in 2018, the sessions on Blockchain, AI, and Data Usage Control, to name a few, were aimed at showing attendees how trending topics in technology are being integrated into the FIWARE roadmap. 

We will be uploading speaker presentations over on the FIWARE Slideshare for you to revisit some of the content that was presented over the two-day event. Photographs of the event can be found here. 

As with every FIWARE Summit, the Exhibition Area is definitely one of the highlights of the event. For community members, it is a great opportunity to showcase their products, solutions and FIWARE-ready IoT devices to the world. For attendees, it is the perfect place to familiarize themselves with existing commercial offerings around FIWARE. Premium Partner, Engineering, was well represented with a total of 8 booths. They were joined in the area by European Data Incubator, Data Market Services, NEC, the University of Genoa, Snap4City, StoneOne AG, TeamDev, and the University of Genoa.

Also present in the Exhibition Area were a number of FIWARE iHubs, which play a fundamental role in growing the global community of developers, companies, and cities adopting and contributing to FIWARE. It was, therefore, the perfect opportunity to speak to an iHub in your area: FIWARE Zone (Seville/Málaga, Spain), FIWARE Rioja (Logroño, Spain), Future City iHub (Amersfoort, the Netherlands), FIWARE Innova iHub (Perugia, Italy), UDG FIWARE iHub Western Switzerland (Geneva, Switzerland), and Detecon FIWARE iHub (Cologne, Germany).

The Summit closing ceremony also marked the announcement of the winners of the Open Innovation City Hackathon. Consisting of three challenges (Blue Economy, Silver Economy, and Hi-Tech) the aim of the Hackathon was to create innovative projects to support and further the development, resilience, and sustainability of Genoa, as well as the well-being of its citizens.

Together with moderator Lanfranco Marasso (Smart City Program Director, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA), Giancarlo Vinacci (Council Member of Economic Development, the Municipality of Genoa) and Lucia Schifano (Public Official, Liguria Region) took the stage to present the winners of each category with their certificate.

‘See from Sea’ (Antonino Galletta, Alessio Catafalmo, Valeria Lukaj, and Francesco Martella) won the Blue Economy Challenge. ‘Connettiamoci’ (Teodora Trapani and Martina Silani) took home the prize for Silver Economy. Hi-Tech was won by Mohamad Alameh and Hassan Mokalled for their ‘ICARP’ project. Four students from Scuola don Bosco took the stage to present ‘On the Boat’, the winning project of the Hackathon4School. The Stakeholders Award was won by the ‘SilverCity’ project (Sara Martino, Carlo Adornetto, Gloria Sardo, and Gaia Stefanelli). Last but certainly not least, ‘GoSport’ won the special Hackathon4School prize awarded by Engineering, fittingly taking home new bikes as their prize. 

On October 23rd and 24th 2019, the FIWARE Global Summit will be heading to Berlin, where the FIWARE Foundation is also headquartered, in collaboration with the Smart Country Convention. Watch this space for more information on the event, its agenda, how to participate and secure tickets.