Report: Workshop Connected Technologies for Social Good

On  February 14-15 2018, the ChiC consortium organised a two day workshop in Brussels with the COST community in order to discuss the Connected Technologies for Social Good. The workshop saw 60 people attending and an overwhelming social media coverage.
The main objectives of the event were to:

• Give the opportunities to the members of different but synergic communities (including: COST, CAPS, DSI, SI) to share knowledge and goals towards a technology oriented to the social good.
• Address the sustainability of technology for social good by discussing its various aspects such as political, community, technological and economic sustainability.
• Introduce the new CAPS projects to the community

The event’s agenda and speakers’ presentation can be found here.

Highlights of the event:

Day 1

• Welcome of the Director of COST, Mr Ronald de Bruin
• Introduction to the event and keynotes by Dr Monique Calisti, coordinator of ChiC, the CSA for CAPS
• Keynote speeches
  • Loretta Anania presented the new initiative of DG-CONNECT, the Next Generation Internet and how CAPS created a digital revolution for social innovators and communities, and how the next “big ticket” for an internet of values are blockchain technologies and NGI.
  • Massimo Leone continued with a philosophical approach to connectivity and connectedness. He talked about the marketing power of connection and ICT, its implications in our everyday lives and the meaning of connection and connectedness (the state of being connected).
  • Anni Hellmann focused on the role of Social Media, stressing both the positive and negative sides. She told to the audience that Social Media is a specific priority in the European Commission at the moment, in particular now that the attention is on fake news but there is much more than that to be discussed.
• The keynote speakers were followed by an interactive session, presented by Karina Marcus from COST and using the Open Space Methodology. The topic chosen for discussion by the audience were:
  • Creation of an European Network of Open Data Lab
  • What can and should do Policy makers at European, regional and local level to support DSI?
  • Engaging communities, civic society and citizens in the long run in a sustainable and inclusive way
• Following this session, Dr. Mara Balestrini talked about Making Sense initiatives and focused her presentation in the pilot case of Barcelona. Dr. Balestrini started from the Bristol approach, which enables technologists, businesses, artists and local people to work together to address relevant community issues using digital tools.

Day 2

• The day began with a welcome from Rossella Magli, who presented the COST initiative. COST is an EU-funded programme that enables researchers to set up their interdisciplinary research networks in Europe and beyond.
• Dr. Antonella Passani then provided a summary overview of main results from CAPS projects, explaining that ChiC mapped the DSI ecosystem founded in Europe and created a output catalogue that is a single entry point from the CAPS projects and will be completed with a scientific output catalogue.
• Dr. Stavroula Maglavera reported on the Digital Social Innovation (DSI) Manifesto.
  The DSI Manifesto aims at fostering civic participation into democratic and social processes, increasing societal resilience and mutual trust as core element of the Digital Society.
• Socrates Schouten from WAAG spoke about the digitized commons and the DECODE project. He also discussed the systemic change undergoing in the present time with a shift from platform corporation owed by a single company and managed in a centralized way and platform cooperativism that is using online platforms following a cooperative approach.
• Oliver Gadja then presenting crowdfunding and other alternative sources of funding for tech for social good, and introduced the Stars4All project, which is an incubation platform for light pollution initiatives (local or global working groups fighting or creating awareness about light pollution). He also illustrated the main segments to build a crowdsourced business model.
• The morning session was closed by Monique Calisti announcing, on behalf of Fabrizio Sestini, the Blockchain for Social Good Prize, which aims to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralized solutions to social innovation challenges leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLTs).
  • Deadline to submit applications: 25 June 2019
  • 5 awards of €1 Million each, corresponding to different social application areas
• The rest of the workshop was organised in collaborative working groups using the morning speeches as inspiration for the discussions. The three speakers from the morning hosted roundtables to discuss more in deep what was faced in the presentations.

The event was closed with Monique Calisti announcing the next appointments, including the 2nd DSI Fair, which will take place in Rome 6-7/6/2018. She also announced the Connected Technologies for Social Good Magazine, which will be out before the 2nd DSI Fair.