8th FIWARE Global Summit in Gran Canaria

Just a few days ago, the 8th FIWARE Global Summit took place in Gran Canaria (Spain), hosted and supported by SPEGC and Cabildo Gran Canaria with the collaboration of CidiHub, FIIHub, Best In Gran Canaria and Innovalia. The first physical event after 2.5 years saw more than 400 attendees from Europe, Colombia, India, Japan, Martinique, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the USA, among others, bringing more than 150 speakers on stage giving about 300 presentations including insightful contributions from FIWARE Platinum Members Atos, AWS, Engineering Al Madinah Region Development Authority (MDA), NEC, Red Hat, Telefónica and the Global and Keystone Sponsors Fundingbox, CleanCarbon, Red Hat, and Telefónica. Today, FIWARE Foundation is proudly sharing the latest and the most significant news of the FIWARE Global Summit 2022.

Meet FIWARE new Members, adding up to 550 worldwide

FIWARE Foundation announced 5 new members, among those the 8th FIWARE’s Platinum Member  Madinah city (Saudi Arabia). During the Grand Opening Ceremony of FIWARE Global Summit, the agreement was duly signed by Mr. Ulrich Ahle, Chief Executive Officer, FIWARE Foundation, and Mr. Abdulrahman Ibrahim, Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Madinah Region Development Authority (MDA). By signing the membership agreement, Madinah became the first city in the world to hold a FIWARE Platinum Membership obtaining additionally a seat in FIWARE’s Board of Directors, next to the city of Vienna (Austria), the city of Herne (Germany), and 12 further board members. FIWARE Foundation thus recognizes the regional leadership and the human and technological commitment of the Madinah Smart City Program (MSCP) and its platform, Raseel, the first smart city platform implemented in Saudi Arabia, and powered by FIWARE. MSCP will have an active role in the evolution of the FIWARE framework and become a powerful force for open innovation and developing open-source standards. Moreover, MSCP will boost FIWARE’s member and partner ecosystem by co-creating and deploying open source technologies.

FIWARE Foundation could not have developed its global ecosystem successfully without its extraordinary members, partners and individuals. This year, FIWARE awarded four new Distinguished Members, FIWARE’s top Evangelists 2022: Giovanni Coppa, Head of Data Centre and Cloud Innovation, WOBCOM, Vincent Demortier, Creative Technologist, Faubourg Numérique, Roberto Di Bernardo, Head of Open Government R&D Unit, Engineering, and Dr. Lanfranco Marasso, Smart City Program Director, Engineering.

During the Summit, the FIWARE Executives and representatives of Red Española de Ciudades Inteligentes (RECI) proudly signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). RECI, the biggest network of smart cities with more than 80 city members, is committed to sharing experiences, collaborating on a sustainable management model, and improving quality of life through environmental protection and sustainability. Thus, this collaboration will enable FIWARE Foundation not only to develop Open Source technologies for Smart Cities, but also to further strengthen its position in the Spanish region.

Think global, act local

FIWARE Foundation announced the recent opening of five new FIWARE Innovation Hubs (iHubs). FIWARE iHUB UPB (Medellín, Colombia), La Lonja de la innovacion (Huelva, Spain), Nivid Technologies (Sterling, USA), Madinah Innovation Lab (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and iHub Base (Tokyo, Japan), all of them proudly presented to the FIWARE global community at the Grand Opening Ceremony, September 14. FIWARE iHub network keeps growing with the arrival of these new iHubs adding up to 31 iHubs around the world.

Offering more business value to FIWARE Ecosystem: now with 10 Accelerators and next-generation FIWARE Marketplace

Every year, FIWARE Global Summit brings not only the latest highlights on Open Source innovations and implementations, references in Smart Cities, AgriFood, Industry, Energy, Water or Tourism, trends of the future with Digital Twins, Data Spaces, and meanwhile almost 1,000 Smart Data Models, but also provide to its global community with a variety of extraordinary formats of activities, ranging from technical roadmaps to open calls, from expert talks to business matchmaking workshops, from networking to interdisciplinary negotiations. Also, newly launched projects got introduced and results from running ones presented, for example:
 

This September, the Summit presented 10 Accelerator Partners on stage, among them: Agorize, BWCon, Funding Box, GATEWAY49, Innoloft, ISDI Accelerator, Polo Tecnologico, Scientifica, Wobcom, Zabala. FIWARE Accelerator Program helps high-potential startups and enterprises to develop and bring onto the market innovative smart solutions to boost their business. Organizations gain professional visibility and business opportunities for their ambitious and marketable solutions “Powered by FIWARE”.

An important moment in the Summit program was the presentation of the recently launched FIWARE Marketplace with its roughly 200 solutions - and counting. FIWARE Marketplace helps users and their customers find innovative and the best open-source-based products and services to grow revenues by identifying customer needs and scalable solutions leveraging FIWARE technologies and the FIWARE ecosystem. Marketplace offers are provided by FIWARE users, may it be companies, organizations or cities, and are FIWARE validated. FIWARE Marketplace is therefore the comprehensive shopfront of all FIWARE validated products that are regularly updated, promoted and featured through different classical and digital marketing channels such as Social Media, Newsletters, conferences, brochures, and also brought to trade shows and presented to the media, press or to analysts.

Meet the new format champions from FIWARE Global Summit

FIWARE Global Summit, for the first time in 4 years, added new formats to this yearly lighthouse event, from specific matchmaking sessions to tracks showing “FIWARE around the World”, presentation of successful use-cases and insights from meanwhile more than 50 Impact Stories and FIWARE’s Smart Cities book with 250+ city references. Some of the most successful new formats included:

Walk of Fame  - a new exclusive format of the exhibitor’s place that presented 16 organisations covering all FIWARE’s five focus industries: Smart Cities, Smart Industry, Smart AgriFood, Smart Energy and Smart Water. It became the most visited spot at this event, successfully used during day-long opening hours. Summit Sponsors and exhibitors populated their individual ‘walls’ building excitement around their latest FIWARE-based offerings holding more than 400 meetings.

Data Spaces World Café - was planned to be held as the recognized ‘journey’ concept, covering six of the most pressing questions when it comes to the realization of Data Spaces in cities and regions.  Specialists and thought leaders like Dr. Lanfranco Marasso (Engineering), Lea Hemetsberger (DKSR), David Scuderi (AWS), Ricardo Martins & Hugo Serra (Deloitte), Dr. Silvia Castellvi (IDSA),  Gerard van der Hoeven (iShare), and Cristina Brandtstetter (FIWARE) decided on the spot to run the World Café as a joint workshop. Results will be soon published in a Whitepaper enriched by best practice insights from each individual thought leader and data spaces expert.

The 8th edition of FIWARE Global Summit was organised with meaningful support prior and during the Summit by eight Media Partners like bee smart city, Cities Forum, Cities Today, Our Future Water, polisMOBILITY, Renewable Matter, The Smart City Journal, and Thought Lab.

Save the date! We will soon be back…

FIWARE technologies have been firmly anchored in Vienna’s Open Source scene for years. Now, FIWARE Global Summit is coming to Vienna, with more than 150 companies and organizations welcoming more than 700 attendees to showcase the newest in Open Source innovations. Exhibits are found at the Walk of Fame traveling as well to Vienna, including some parts of Smart World by FIWARE (built of Lego(R) bricks). The convention will occupy the majority of the Vienna Municipality area, including the famous ‘Festsaal’, to offer a ‘nobel’ environment for business opportunities and innovation.

The message goes to the global FIWARE Community and anyone who is interested in transforming markets for the better based on recognized Open Source technology and standards: FIWARE Foundation is inviting to the next FIWARE Global Summit that will take place in Vienna, Austria, from 12-13 June 2023 (with a rich side program running 12-15 June) under the motto "From Data to Value”.