Activity

Report
2014

Contents
2 Word from the President
3 2014 Year in review
4 Highlights 2014
6 ENoLL & The World Bank
6 Living Labs & Research
7 Publications
8 Strategic Initiatives
11 Key events in 2014

A review of the activities

of the European Network
of Living Labs in 2014

Words from the President

Dear ENoLL Members, friends, colleague and supporters,

2014 marked a turning point in the ENoLL network
producing many new and positive changes for our
community.
Strategic meetings aiming at defining a 10-year strategy
for ENoLL were hosted and the adoption of the new
vision, "Empowering everyone to innovate," closed the
latest ENoLL General assembly that took part in
Manchester, 26th of February of 2015.

Empowering everybody to innovate:

advocacy to user / citizen / communitydriven innovation. Transformation of the

vision of innovation. Embrace knowledge
transfer, lead users, collaboration and
cooperation

The adoption of this vision is one of the results of a series

of strategic meetings that the ENoLL Board organized
during the second half of 2014, combining external key
players, ENoLL members and board members.
Over the past year there has been an increase in interest
in user-driven open innovation. Living Labs are quickly
evolving, ENoLL has to adapt and transform. Global

movement. We have identified that more and more of

our members have a strong influence in city and regional
innovation, actions and policy. Subsequently, other
important results to note in 2014 include the ENoLL
members approving important strategic actions,
decisions that will transform the network as it is today,
further strengthening the Living Lab community. Some of
these decisions will have immediate impact in many
members: The strengthening of the network and the
launch of the ENoLL Special Interest Groups (5 Special
Interest Groups (SIGs): Future of Living Labs (Research
and Vision); Urban Living Labs; Regional Living Labs;
Living Lab services for SMEs; and Health Living Labs. The
ENoLL SIGs are created to better facilitate the
cooperation of members with a common interest. The
ENoLL Secretariat will be distributing more information
about this topic very shortly. All this activities are being
operationalized in 2015 as a result of the ENoLL
community discussions in 2014.
Looking back at this busy and productive year we can
confidently say that we are moving in the right direction
and successfully building a stronger, more open, betterconnected and increasingly international network of
Living Labs. I would like to sincerely thank all our
members as well as the ENoLL Secretariat, Office & Board
for their continuing support and contributions.
Jarmo Elukka Eskelinen
Chair of the European Network of Living Labs

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

2014 Year in Review

The European Network of Living Labs

(ENoLL) is the international, non-profit
association of benchmarked Living Labs in
Europe and beyond, founded in November
2006 by 19 Living Labs, today grown to an
extensive network of 330 recognized Living
Lab members. 2014 was a special year for
ENoLL for many reasons. The network has
grown both in terms of new members and
global reach. During OpenLivingLab Days
(September 2014) ENoLL welcomed 25 new
network members at the conclusion of its
8th Wave from across the world. This
growth demonstrates a
continuing
reinforcement of ENoLL both in Europe and
across the world.

How to Join Us

During the year ENoLL has taken part in a

number of EU-funded initiatives, all of
strategic importance to our members in
fields such as smart cities, Future Internet,
open innovation, entrepreneurship, crossborder collaboration, education, design &
creativity. ENoLL and its members have
hosted events and workshops across
Europe participating in high profile events
such as the European Commissions
Innovation Convention, CAPS2014, FIA
Athens, Citisense, Cities of Tomorrow and
many others. Both the projects and events
have generated a lot of impact at both a
community and policy level.
Once again the ENoLL community came
together for its annual event in September,

re-launched as OpenLivingLab Days

(formerly ENoLL Summer School). The
four-day-long event is the cornerstone of
ENoLL activities and gathered more than
200 international experts and enthusiasts
in Amsterdam to share and gain
expertise on a wide set of initiatives
related to Living Labs and open
innovation.
The enhanced collaboration on Open
Innovation with the World Bank has also
to be spotlighted. The agreement aims at
bringing unprecedented global expertise
in the area of ICT to help the World Bank
and its clients increase civic participation,
advance public administrative capacity
and drive green growth. There have
been good results from this strategic
collaboration including the collaborative
process for the production of a
handbook to be published in 2015.
The Secretariat, based in Brussels, dealt
with multiple projects and activities
while guaranteeing efficient and
continuous support to the members.
During the last year the staff has also
welcomed two new employees, Lorna
Stokes from the UK and Zsuzusanna Bodi
from Hungary.
All this work would not have been
possible without the enthusiastic support
of our members. Living Labs were well
promoted on a local, regional and
national level thanks to the community
members who helped disseminating
tools, methodologies and best practices
from the network and beyond.
We look forward to collaborating
together in 2015 with the introduction
and implement of new initiatives and
stronger community collaboration.

ENoLL Governance
Elections for the new ENoLL Council
took place at the Annual General
Assembly of the association held in
Amsterdam on September 2nd, 2014.
ENoLL Council 2014
Chair: Jarmo Eskelinen (Forum Virium
Helsinki)
Treasurer: Lauri Tuomias (Haaga-Helia
& Finnish Network Living Labs)
Secretary: Pieter Ballon (iMinds)
Council Members
Tuija Hirvikoski (Laurea Living Labs)
Alvaro Oliveira (Lightning Living Lab)
Artur Serra (i2Cat Foundation)
Joanne Dobson (Coventry City Lab)
Adrian Slatcher (MDDA) **
Jokin Garatea (BIRD Living Lab)
Juan A. Bertoln (eLiving Lab)
Marco Combetto (Trentino as Lab)
Adam Olszewski (Poznan LL)
Annika Sllstrm (Botnia LL)
Ger Baron (Amsterdam Living Lab)
Ismael Perea (Consorcio Fdez de los
Rios)**
Esteve Almirall (ESADE) *
Piotr Krawczyk (JAMK) *
Esa Ala-Uotila (TAMK) *
New Council members
* Esteve Almirall, Piotr Krawczyk and
Esa Ala-Uotila were re-elected as
Council Members at the General
Assembly September 2014.
* * Adrian Slatcher replaced Dave
Carter and Ismael Perea replaced
Juan F. Delgado as Council Members
The ENoLL Office, Brussels

The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) is a community of Living Labs with a
sustainable strategy for enhancing innovation on a systematic basis. The overall
objective is to contribute to the creation of a dynamic European innovation system,
with a global reach. ENoLL aims to support co-creative, human-centric and user-driven
research, development and innovation in order to better cater for peoples needs.

Paolo Aversano
Zsuzusanna Bodi
Ana Garcia
Lorna Stokes

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Highlights
of our
activities

8th Wave of ENoLL Members Welcoming

Ceremony, Amsterdam 5th of September 2014

New ENoLL Members, the 8th Wave:

ENoLL grows through Waves of calls for membership.
Every year, candidate Living Labs are invited to submit an
application to join the ENoLL network, and following an
evaluation process, new members are welcomed to the
network. 2014 celebrated the 8th Wave of ENoLL
membership and a record number of new proposals.
During the 2014 application period, 85 pre-registrations
for membership were submitted from 22 different
countries - Argentina (1), Australia (3), Belgium (4),
Canada (2), Chile (1), Estonia (1), France (4), Germany (1),
Hungary (1), Ireland (3), Italy (39), the Netherlands (4),
Portugal (2), Romania (1), Russia (1), Saudi Arabia (1),
Scotland (1), Spain (7), Switzerland (1), Tunisia (1), United
Kingdom (5), United States (1) - to become new members
of the ENoLL network.

Adelaide Living Laboratory (Australia), InnovAGE

(Belgium), CareVille (Belgium), RehabMaLL (Canada),
Silver Living Lab (France), Streetlab (France), Runica
Domicile (France), Dublin LL (Ireland), TAGS (Italy),
St.E.SE.Geo (Italy), KLIO Lab (Italy), TIE-LL (Italy), Green
Schools (Italy), Crikhet Living Lab (Italy), Eindhoven
Living
Lab
(Netherlands),
CIC-West
Brabant
(Netherlands), Smart Jeddah Living Lab (Saudi Arabia)*,
Health Care Innovation Lab Orbital40 (Spain), IBIP Living
Lab (Spain), UAB Smart Campus (Spain), EVOMOBILE:
Electromobility living-lab (Spain), Energy Living Lab
(Switzerland), lab4living (UK), Manchester Digital
Innovation LL Lab (UK) and Innovate Dementia (UK).
The closure of the 8th Wave of membership brings the
number of recognized ENoLL Living Labs to just over
370.
*conditional acceptance

The evaluation process, as carried out in

every Wave for membership, resulted in 25
new accepted members to this global
community of Living Labs and to the
association of the European Network of
Living Labs.
On the 5th of September 2014, the ENoLL
announced the results of the 8th Wave of
membership and officially welcome the new
members approved during the proceedings
of our conference, OpenLivingLab Days,
hosted in 2014 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The 25 new Living Labs welcomed in the 8th Wave are

The map above illustrates of the status of the network

at the end of 2014 showcasing the world wide
distribution of the ENoLL recognized Living Labs.

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Highlights
number of academic conference paper submissions so far
(40 submissions with 18 accepted contributions) the 2014
edition of the conference illustrated the continual growth
and diversity in this new and emerging research domain.

OpenLivingLab Days 2014 2nd-5th September 2014,

Amsterdam the Netherlands
OpenLivingLab Days, formally the ENoLL Summer
School, is the annual summit of the worldwide Living
Lab community combing 4 days networking, sharing,
learning and exploitation of theory, methods & tools.
OpenLivingLab Days 2014 was organised in Amsterdam
from the 2nd-5th of September by ENoLL together with
the support of Waag Society & the Amsterdam City
Council. Hosted at the beautiful De Nieuwe Liefde in
central Amsterdam, the conference featured an exciting
programme including a research day, interactive
workshops & seminars, visits to local Dutch labs &
innovation spaces, supported and facilitated networking
& matchmaking activities and the worldwide summit of
our Living Lab community.
Attracting 200+ participants from around the world,
OpenLivingLab Days 2014 was the largest of the 5
annual summer events organised by ENoLL so far!
The conference started with the research day where
researchers from around the world presented their
academic research in the field of open innovation and
Living Lab methodologies. Attracting the highest

The conference continued with two days of dynamic

workshops and seminars for knowledge transfer and
building collaborations featuring workshop strands
relating to Living Lab as a Service, Living Lab Methods &
Tools, Smart Cities, Health & Wellbeing, Culture &
Creativity, Social Innovation, Manufacturing and more.
Opened officially by Ger Baron, CTO of the City of
Amsterdam, the final day, the Conference Plenary,
featured inspirational keynote speakers from across the
world. Marleen Stikker, president and co-founder of Waag
Society, delivered a thought provoking talk on our
openness and trust in technology. Sven Schade, Joint
Research Centre of the European Commission, presented
the inspiring case of Citizen Science. And Jarmo
Eskelinnen, President of ENoLL challenged our ideas on
Smart Cities asking whether it was time for us to restart.
A panel session on defining the foundations of a worldwide Living Lab collaboration followed in the afternoon
with creative inputs from Prof. lvaro de Oliveira (Europe),
Prof. Dr. Miriam de Magdala Pinto (Latin America) Dr.
Belinda Chen (Taiwan), Phil Donaldson (Australia) and
Brigitte Trousse (France).
Were already looking forward the 2015 edition hosted
together with Baakehir Living Lab in Istanbul, Turkey.
Save the dates: 25th 28th of August 2015! Visit
www.openlivinglabdays.com for information on past &
future editions of the event.

Social Media Highlights:

4200+ followers on Twitter & 577,600+ tweet
impressions!
2400+ fans on Facebook
3000 group members on LinkedIn
Monthly newsletter readership of 2500+
Workshops in action at OpenLivingLab Days
2014, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

ENoLL & The World

Bank: Strategic
Collaboration
Back on July 10th, 2012, the World Bank and the
European Network of Living Labs signed a Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) with the main objective of
bringing global expertise in the area of ICT to help the
World Bank and its clients improve public services,
increase civic participation and advance public
administrative capacity.
The 2-year successful collaboration has been focused on
a joint effort to develop knowledge, peer-to-peer
learning activities to support the development of
networked Smart City projects, and the sharing and
transfer of knowledge.
During 2014 the World Bank (and some of its
customers), ENoLL and long list of ENoLL members
collaborated in the jointly produced handbook called
Citizen-Driven Innovation: A guidebook for city mayors
and public administrators. The official version of the
handbook will be made available publicly for distribution
at the start of 2015. Furthermore, and also under the
scope of this collaboration, the World Bank launched the
international community of practice at the CitiSense
event in Barcelona in November 2014.
Visit www.openlivinglabs.eu
handbook.

to

download

your

Pieter Ballon, iMinds, Secretary of ENoLL and Chair of the

Scientific Committee for OpenLivingLab Days

Living Labs &

Director Living Labs iMinds, Secretary of ENoLL

Research
As a rather young and recent phenomenon, Living Labs
create numerous challenges and issues to be tackled by
both scholars and practitioners. It is necessary to add to
both the theoretical and practical knowledge on Living
Labs in order to advance the learning in this field.
During 2013 ENoLL launched a call for abstracts for the
ENoLL Summer School that consolidated in 2014 with a
call for full papers at OpenLivingLab Days 2014. In 2014 a
total of 40 papers were submitted by researchers and
following review from the Scientific Committee (made of
up Living Lab research experts, professors & other
representatives from research institutions) 18 papers
were accepted and published by ENoLL in a collection of
conference proceedings from the OpenLivingLab days
Research Day 2014 (September 2nd, 2014). The Living
Lab Research day was structured in 4 breakout sessions
related to Living Lab case studies and Living Lab theory,
methods and tools and attracted a large and varied
audience interested in discovering more about the
developments in this field. The proceedings can be found
on www.scribbed.com/openlivinglabs.
Additionally, and as part of the ENoLL strategic
discussions taking place in 2014, ENoLL has launched in
2015 the Future of Living Labs: Research and Vision
Special Interest Group, also in the path of consolidating
activities started during the ENoLL Summer School 2013
where Living Lab researchers informally started
organising themselves.

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Below you can find relevant publications from

ENoLL and our Living Lab community in 2014:
OpenLivingLab
Days
2014
Conference
Proceedings: Within OpenLivingLab Days a call
for papers was launched to address both
conceptual and empirical challenges and
stimulate discussion on a number of Living Lab
related topics. In 2014, researchers coming from
all over the world submitted a total of 40
papers. An international review panel led by
Prof. Pieter Ballon (VUB Brussels) assessed the
contributions and finally accepted 18 papers.
These were presented during the Research Day
of the OpenLivingLab Days and included into
conference proceedings The paper presented by
Yvonne Franz and entitled Chances and Challenges
for Social Urban Living Labs in Urban Research won
the Veli-Pekka Niitamo Prize for best academic
contribution. The prize, awarded during the
International Living Lab Conference on September 5th,
was given based upon the initial reviewers marks but
also the votes of all the participants collected in a cocreation manner during the event.

Researchers presenting their papers

at OpenLivingLab Days 2014, Amsterdam

Publications

ISJ A special Issue on Smart Cities: Interdisciplinary Studies

Journal on Smart Cities by ENoLL member Laurea University of
Applied Science was published in the Spring of 2014. This
publication aims to support those developing their cities and
regions or serving their citizens, public organizations both in
Europe and elsewhere. The publication presents a wide range
of research articles and practical papers, which discuss in
detail the smart city phenomenon from different points of
view and different contexts. Some of the papers examine
Living Labs related concepts for example co-creation, user led
service design, open innovation, augmented reality and eco
system business model.
CitySDKCookbook: CitySDK is a European-funded service
development kit for cities and developers that aims at
harmonizing application programming interfaces (APIs) across
cities. The project has recently published CitySDKCookbook, a
report overviewing the opportunities CitySDK APIs offer to
cities and developers. It showcases the experiences Helsinki,
Amsterdam and Lisbon have had with open harmonized APIs,
giving concrete examples of the use of the current CitySDK
APIs. Last part of the toolkit focuses on step-by-step guidance
for starting your journey with CitySDK or any other API.
Download the cookbook here or on the CitySDK website at
http://www.citysdk.eu/citysdk-cookbook/.

Why Living Labs?

Living Labs empower citizens, as end-users, to influence the development of innovative services & products that
eventually will benefit the whole society.
Living Labs allow industry to develop, validate and integrate new ideas, to partner with other companies and to increase
their chances of success during product and/or service launches.
Living Labs facilitate the integration of technological innovation in society and increase return on investments in ICT.

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Strategic Initiatives
In August 2011 the ENoLL General Assembly approved an
internal process called ENoLL project involvement
guidelines that explicitly describes rules for participation
of ENoLL in projects and the benefits for the community.
Through this process a part of the ENoLL Board (ENoLL
project WG) is regularly convened assess proposals and it
makes decisions about ENoLLs participation in different
projects and strategic initiatives. ENoLL participates in
projects (mainly European funded projects) to help
contribute to build ENoLL assets, support joint activities
in-between ENoLL members, and to strengthen
connections between ENoLL and local, regional, European
and non-European governments, policy makers, and other
relevant organisations and communities.
In 2014 ENoLL was involved in 14 different strategic
initiatives, contributing with dissemination, event and
workshop development, knowledge transfer and training,
community building, community management, brokering
activities, stakeholder engagement, project capitalization
and support for exploitation. At a lesser scale, ENoLL can
act as a single entry point to outreach different crosscultural communities at European scale. ENoLL acts as a
neutral and multi-stakeholder platform facilitating strong
synergies among different initiatives.
Europeana Creative enables &
promotes greater re-use of cultural
heritage resources by creative
industries. Europeana Creative sets
the
stage
for
fascinating
collaborations between contentproviding
cultural
heritage
institutions and creative industries stakeholders in the
education, tourism, social networks and design sectors. In
2014 ENoLL collaborated with Living Lab members
Barcelona Laboratori (Spain) and FutureEverything (UK) to
organise events promoting cultural heritage reuse
engaging with local developer communities and creative
entrepreneurs.
More
information
at
http://europeanacreative.eu/ and @eCreativeEU on
Twitter.
ECIM is a flexible cloud-based
solution designed to help support
smart, liveable and connected
cities by fostering and bringing
together state of the art

transportation services that make it easier for people and

goods to move between destinations as quickly, cheaply
and greenly as possible. ECIM facilitates cities &
businesses to easily migrate services to the cloud &
provides open cloud-based services to innovators. In order
to propose this all-new concept to Living Labs ECIM ran a
booth during OpenLivingLab Days 2014 presenting the
project to a large number of interested Living Lab
managers and visitor representatives from cities, both
European and non-European. ENoLL connected the
initiative with the Connected Smart Cities community at
the CSC Strategy Forum, where the project was presented
and new networking possibilities were put into place.
More information at http://www.ecim-cities.eu/ and
@ECIM_eu on Twitter.
CitySDK is creating a toolkit to enable a
more efficient utilization of the expertise
and know-how of developer communities to
be applied in city development. The toolkit
comprises of open and interoperable digital
service interfaces as well as processes and
usability standards. The project has recently published
CitySDKCookbook, a report overviewing the opportunities
CitySDK APIs offer to cities and developers and you can
download it here! More information at http://citysdk.eu/
and @CitySDK on Twitter
The SPECIFI project aims at
demonstrating the positive
impacts of a European
Creative Ring of Smart Cities and Regions, with real-life
Future Internet (Fiber-totheHome and wireless)
infrastructures. These scenarios include real-life users and
in 5 certified Living Labs active in 3 smart cities and their
surrounding regions. ENoLL has enthusiastically supported
SPECIFI and the Creative Ring launch throughout 2014
organising different activities. ENoLL and SPECIFI ran a
workshop during FIA Athens entitled Future Internet
boosting Creativity in Europe: scaling platforms, data,
tools, services and communities. This helped clarify the
role given to new FI technologies and creative
communities to support creative industries. The
consortium also participated in the conference New
Frontiers for European Entrepreneurs held in Brussels on
April 29th where the Creative Ring community was
officially launched. Other first-rate events and workshops
like Music Tech Fest and Connected Smart Cities Strategy
Forum facilitated dialogue with a varied audience, from
artists and creative industries to policy makers. More

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

information at http://www.specifi-project.eu/
@SPECIFI_project on Twitter.

and

ACE is a project working on delivering

targeted cross-border services to
highly innovative entrepreneurs,
start-ups and SMEs in the ICT sector
in order to accelerate their growth.
The ACE programme is supported by
cross border finance experts and
European innovation support networks EBN and ENOLL.
Organisations have the opportunity to test and develop
their products/services in cross border Living Lab testing
utilizing Living Labs from the ENoLL network in Belgium
(iMinds), the UK (Coventry University), Finland (Forum
Virium) and Luxembourg (Technoport). During the first
years application period 300+ applications have been
received, 120 shortlisted, 82 SMEs selected, 284 support
offers agreed, 50+ investment Pitches have happened and
400+ companies and investors attended the ACE Summit.
More information at http://www.europeanace.eu/ and
@EU_ACE on Twitter.
PELARS is a project about
learning and making. We are
studying how people learn about
science,
technology
and
mathematics when they use their
hands as well as their heads.
Were exploring real technologies
(kits, electronics systems &
sensor systems) and customised furniture both designed
specifically for the classroom that help teachers and
learners understand whats going on when people do
science and maths - innovative concepts derived from the
constraints & inspiring practices of real teachers
themselves. The project kicked off in February 2014 with
ENoLL leading the dissemination of the project and will be
collaborating with members to conduct Living Lab tests of
the tools and technology developed in the course of the
research. More information at http://pelars.eu/ and
@euPELARS on Twitter.
MyNeighbourhood aims at
creating a new and smarter
conception
of
the
Smart City that focuses on
people and their well being
rather than just ICT infrastructures and dashboards. In so
doing, MyNeighbourhood uses new technologies and user
data to help recreate a lost sense of neighbourhood that is
rooted in local place, common ties and personal

interaction. During 2014 ENoLL played an important part

bridging MyNeighbourhood with other smart city
initiatives, urban Living Labs and City Administrations
through its communication channels and especially
during a workshop on Human Smart Cities organised
at OpenLivingLab Days 2014. More information at
http://my-neighbourhood.eu/ and @MyN_EU on
Twitter.
JamToday aims to use game design
principles not just to create useful
and meaningful games, but also to
explain and design the context
(such as the classroom) where
games
can
be
effectively
implemented.
Each
year,
JamToday organises game jams in
multiple locations focusing on a
particular theme and each year a pan European
conference will be organized around one of the main
areas of application: improving ICT skills, adopting
healthier lifestyles and supporting learning of
mathematics. The project kicked off in January 2014: we
shared best practice and exploited the game jam toolkit
at OpenLivingLab Days 2014 in an exciting workshop,
engage experts from the ENoLL network in thematic
meetings for ICT skills and health and ENoLL will be
collaborating with members to organise game jams in
the
next
years.
More
information
at
http://www.jamtoday.eu/ and @JamTodayEU on
Twitter.
Fusepool
crosses
borders to provide
data
for
better
product/ service development and research. Fusepool
enriches data using common standards and tools for
analysing and visualizing data to get timely, contextaware and relevant information. The project concluded
in 2014 but you can learn more about the achievements
at http://www.fusepool.eu and @Fusepool on Twitter.
InnoMatNet is a project funded
under the NMP (Nanosciences,
nanotechnologies,
materials
and
new
production
technologies) theme of the EU
7th Framework Programme,
with the overall goal of
promoting collaboration, knowledge transfer, and the
creation of new alliances between materials
researchers, designers in industry, and others involved

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

in innovation. During the project timeline ENoLL

introduced Innomatnet resources to the Living Lab
community in both online and offline contexts, and
encouraged the use of such tools by organising dedicated
workshops like the 6th Innomatnet workshop Exploring
the role of local communities in materials research. From
best practices to policy that took place in Brussels on
January 21st 2014. Innomatnet concluded in 2014 with a
final recommendation report including the lessons learnt
during the 30 months illustrating the exploitation
possibilities of the projects results. Including a bank of
tools and case studies ready to be used & exploited by
others. More information at http://www.innomatnet.eu/
and @Innomatnet on Twitter.

Design for Europe is a European

initiative that aims to help people
use design to accelerate innovation
across Europe, boosting economic
growth and job creation. An
international consortium is building
a web platform, set of case studies
and programme of events to share
the knowledge and skills to innovate in business, the
public sector and policymaking. In 2014 ENoLL contributed
by hosting a Design for Europe workshop during the
OpenLivingLab Days 2014. The brand-new web platform
was presented to a large, interested Living Lab audience
and relations were established with experts from e.g. Cit
du Design, Basaksehir Living Lab and design initiatives like
Innomatnet. Thanks to this initiative the ENoLL office is
extending substantially its network of contacts in the field
of
design.
More
information
at
http://designforeurope.eu/ and @design_europe on
Twitter.
The Integrating Design for All in
Living Labs, or IDeALL project,
which is financed by the
Directorate General of Enterprise
and Industry of the European
Commission, aims to bring together
the Living Lab community with the
design community through Design for All. During the last
years they have been sharing methodologies and
experience thus defining a joint approach to user-centred
innovation through design. This collaboration has brought
about the design of an online platform used to collect and
share case studies, methodologies and best practices on
design and Living Labs coming from all over Europe. More
information on http://usercentredbusiness.net/ and
@User_Centred on Twitter.

10

CreatiFI is a project
introducing
FIWARE
technologies to very
large relevant communities of Creative Industries.
CreatiFI aims to attract a large number of developers to
participate in developing tools and services for creative
communities. This initiative is developing a large amount
of FIWARE prototypes and technically mature
commercial viable FIWARE tools for the Creative
Industries. A group of ENoLL members - Forum Virium
Helsinki, i2Cat, iMinds - are part of the consortium and
fully engaged to support CreatiFI developers and
entrepreneurs. Within CreatiFI ENoLL supports SMEs in
networking activities: building alliances for the future
exploitation of their applications, new products and
services. By doing so, ENoLL establishes a connection
with many creative industries, understanding their
needs and possibly proposing Living Lab methodologies
as a way forward to develop/test/launch innovation.
ENoLL finally links CreatiFI activities to the SPECIFI
project and enthusiastic work done to build a European
Creative Ring of connected, creative and smart
citizens/cities.
More
information
at
http://www.creatifi.eu/ and @creatifi on Twitter.

Finally, under the umbrella of FIWARE we are working

on two additional strategic initiatives:
CONCORD is the 5-year Coordination Action for
facilitating and supporting the FIWARE- FIPPP
programme. As part of the CONCORD project, ENoLL
strongly contributed to the FIWARE Smart City Strategy
and organised in collaboration with ENoLL members
leading CIP-PSP smart city initiatives, the Connected
Smart Cities Strategy Forum (Dec 2014). CSC Strategy
Forum brought together the FIWARE, FIRE and Living
Labs communities, setting up the foundations of the
Open and Agile Smart Cities initiatives announced in
2015 (Connected Smart Cities Conference). Follow
FIWARE activities at @FIWARE.
The FIspace project, which is one of the second-phase
FI-PPP projects, aims at developing and validating novel
Future-Internet-enabled solutions to address the
pressing challenges arising in collaborative business
networks, focusing on use cases from the Agri-Food and
Transport & Logistics industries. Check out the official
website or follow the discussion on Twitter:
@FIspace_eu
ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Innomatnet Workshop Exploring the role of local

communities in materials research. From best practices
to policy
The 6th Innomatnet workshop took place in Brussels on
January 21st. This workshop explored the importance of
involving and empowering citizens, local communities and
local creative industries/designers in material research,
bridging the gap between material industry and local
territory. Inspired by existing cases and best practices,
participants discussed about the role of Labs (Fab labs,
Living labs, other labs) in bringing materials research,
recycling and design closer to society. ENoLL Living Labs
like i2Cat and the EGG participated in the meeting, but
also partners like EBN, Create-Net, Waag Society, EBCN,
BEDA, European initiatives like the Creative Ring and
delegates of three EU directorates (DG Research, DG
Enterprise and Industry and DG EAC).
Cities of Tomorrow
The 2-day forum, Cities of Tomorrow, was organized in
Brussels on 17-18 February aiming to contribute to a
strengthened profile of the urban dimension within EU
Policies and emphasize the importance of investments in
urban areas and cities as agents for delivering EU policy
objectives. ENoLL actively participated in the event. One
stand was set up in a lively zone of the exhibition area and
participants had the opportunity to discover more about
FI-PPP initiatives such as FIspace, FI-CONTENT, and XIFI,
but also CitySDK and SPECIFI. Then, since the forum aimed
at consulting key urban stakeholders on the need for
more connected cities and communities a session called
European Smart and Connected Cities and Communities
was organised at the event, followed by around 80
people.
FIA Athens: Future Internet and Creativity in Europe

Key events in 2014

ENoLL General Assemblys in 2014

February 17th
June 13th
September 2nd
ENoLL Council Meetings in 2014
January 24th
March 11th
June 13th
September 2nd
December 8th
This session welcomed a number of projects and
initiatives, including several FI-PPP representatives to
discuss how to help Creative Industries increase the
effectiveness of their business processes through Future
Internet technologies. Several FI-PPP/FIWARE projects, CIP
Smart City projects (CitySDK, Specifi) and other relevant
initiatives (Visionair, Europeana Creative) joined the
discussion and contributed to a common objective.
The results of the discussion highlighted the value that
FIWARE can bring to many different sectors, cities and
Regions in Europe (in this case the Creative Industries) by
collaborating with other existing initiatives, finding
synergies and common exploitation possibilities. The
FIWARE accelerator Creati-FI was introduced as a success
example of previous collaboration in between FIWARE and
Smart City projects contributing to build the community of
FIWARE developers and SMEs while enriching the
European Creative Ring.

The European Future Internet Assembly (FIA) is a

yearly event supporting open interaction and crossfertilization between projects and researchers that
have recognized the need to strengthen European
activities on the Future Internet.
The 2014 edition of FIA was held in Athens from the
18th to the 20th of March. One of the most
dynamic and followed pre-sessions entitled Future
Internet boosting Creativity in Europe: scaling
platforms, data, tools, services and communities
was co-organized on March 18th by ENoLL and two
European initiatives: Visionair and the Creative Ring.

Innovation Convention & Artur Serra from i2Cat, March

2014

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ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Music Tech Fest in

Berlin with
SPECIFI, October
2014

Innovation Convention 2014

The ECs Innovation Convention, a two-day convention,
held in March in Brussels, provided a platform to debate
and inform policies that will contribute towards building a
strong research and innovation ecosystem in Europe.
ENoLL organised a fringe session during the Innovation
Convention on Open Innovation and Living Labs shaping
the cities and regions of the future. This interactive
session, attracting an audience of over 150 people,
explored how Living Labs are supporting and can support
cities and regions in embracing new technologies while
facing todays main societal challenges. Showcasing best
practices from the smart city projects CitySDK,
MyNeighourhood and the Creative Ring, the session also
included creative inputs from Eurocities and the inspiring
story of Barcelona, the City as a Lab.
Launch of the Creative Ring
The Creative Ring, a new experimental community for
sharing creative contents all over Europe, was officially
launched at New Frontiers for European Entrepreneurs,
an event focused on SMEs, innovation and
entrepreneurship held in Brussels at the EGG on April
29th, 2014. During his introductory speech Simon Delaere
(iMinds) officially launched the Ring, demonstrating its
composition of hubs, partners, tools and projects. He also
highlighted how this aims to bring together creative
industries in a community of communities fostering
interconnected and ICT-supported incubation centres.

SMEs in healthcare and other sectors. The workshop

brought together Fusepool users and developers
(including several ENoLL members) who shared
experiences and worked out sustainability aspects of the
platform ready to share the advances that it aimed to
solve real-world data challenges: to help SMEs better
adapt to and exploit technological and regulatory changes.
The Fusepool SME platform is based on the open source
modular software stack Apache Stanbol and a set of
reusable components for semantic content management.
The components are meant to be accessed over RESTful
interfaces to provide semantic services for content
management.
ENoLL & Living Lab Workshop at CAPS2014
In brief, CAPS (collective awareness platforms for social
innovation) are non-commercial, open Internet platforms,
connecting citizens to each other providing them with a
more effective way to spontaneously adopt more
sustainable behaviours and lifestyles thus tackling societal
challenges.

Linked Open Data event: Fusing and Pooling Data

On June 25th, 2014, ENoLL organised in Brussels a
workshop called: Linked open data event: Fusing and
Pooling Data. This workshop, final event of the Fusepool
project, p addressed the importance of big data and
showcased the innovation of a common data platform
that provides internationally accessible information for

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Fusing and Pooling Data in Brussels with Fusepool, June

2014

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Key events in
2014

BUILD Conference with the German Marshal Fund, June 2014

Living Labs have been long associated with CAPS so

collaborating to produce a workshop at the CAPS2014
conference held on July 1st at The EGG in Brussels was a
great opportunity to showcase what Living Labs had been
doing for numerous years in this field. After a welcome
and introduction by the ENoLL Chair Jarmo Eskelinen, the
session, Inspired to share Inspired by sharing, featured
interesting cases studies presented by Living Labs across
Europe including INNYCIA Platform by Lucia Aguilar Vega
(Consorcio Fernandez de los Rios, Andaluca), Citilab and
BcnLab by Artur Serra (i2cat, Barcelona), City Lab Coventry
by Sinead Ouillon (Coventry University) and finally the
Smart Citizen Kit by Frank Kresin (Waag Society, the
Netherlands). Presenters shared openly their lessons
learned in launching and managing their CAPS initiatives &
projects leading to an open interactive dialogue with the
audience.
Bilbao Urban Innovation and Leadership Dialogues
(BUILD) German Marshal Fund
BUILD was the German Marshall Funds first convening
focusing exclusively on urban policy and leadership issues.
100 civic leaders and urban practitioners from GMFs
network in the U.S. and Europe convened in Bilbao from
the 10th 14th of June to discuss strategies for leading
transformative change in cities. ENoLL President, Jarmo
Eskelinen spoke representing the network on Urban
Transformation addressing the challenges & opportunities
for achieving equitable and sustainable urban
regeneration.

Lab practitioners, experts, researchers and enthusiasts.

Read more on Page 4.
Apps&Culture Hack@Home: 2nd Europeana Creative
Challenge Event
As a part of the EU project Europeana Creative, where
ENoLL is a partner, a series of collaborative events was
hosted together with Barcelona Laboratori and the
Department of Culture of the City of Barcelona. In June
2014 our organisations, in coordination with a technical
expert from Europeana Foundation, organised a prehackathon community building in Barcelona including a
hands-on workshop for local developers on how to use
the Europeana API including advice & support on access
and restrictions to cultural heritage content reuse. In
September we co-organised the Apps&Culture Demo
Party which was hosted at the World Mobile Centre in
Barcelona. The event showcased the best of the creative
industries from the Europeana Creative Project and the
local Apps&Cultura initiative creating a celebration of
cultural and digital entrepreneurial projects from all over

OpenLivingLab Days 2014

The largest Living Lab event of the year took place in
Amsterdam from the 2nd to the 5th of September.
Organised by ENoLL with the support of Waag Society and
the City of Amsterdam the event attracted over 200 Living

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Europeana API workshops with Barcelona Laboratori,

June 2014

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

Europe.

Key

Successful "IoTogether" Remote Co-working Hackathon

coordinated by CREATE-NET
On the 20th of September 2014 the "IoTogether" Remote
Co-working Hackathon between Trento and Barcelona was
coordinated by CREATE-NET. The event, organised in the
context of SPECIFI, involved makers, designers and
hackers interested in the Internet of Things (IoT), and it
aimed at developing collaboratively wearables and smart
environments projects during an intensive day of work
and play. 8 teams were created by connecting 8 groups of
participants from the MuSe Museum of Science in Trento
and Fabra i Coast in Barcelona. Teams defined their own
project idea and started the prototype creation process by
developing physical objects - with FabLab tools - and
creating IoT solutions out of sensors and software
development. A Future Internet videoconferencing service
connected the two sides of the teams and sustained
plenary sessions.
ENoLL at Euromed Invest Academy in Thessaloniki
During the fall ENoLL established links with Euromed
Invest Academy, a European-funded initiative aiming to
develop and support partnerships between institutions
and businesses in the Mediterranean region with a special
focus on female entrepreneurs. ENoLL was invited to the
Euromed Invest Academy event on New Innovation
Networks and Role of BSOs", held in Thessaloniki (Greece)
from the 12th to the 14th of November 2014. Our
network was asked to present twice the Living Lab
community to a large audience of representatives of
Chambers of Commerce and female entrepreneurs of the
Mediterranean area. Around 100 people followed ENoLLs
presentations. The audience, unfamiliar at times with the
Living Lab concept, was extremely interested and eager to
discover more about our community. The event showed
the potential for collaboration there is in the
Mediterranean area, especially in North Africa and Middle
East, a trend has also been identified from within our
network.
CitiSense
On November 16th and 17th and as part of SCEWC (Smart
City Expo World Congress), the World Bank organised
CitiSense to showcase how urban innovation can bring a
wide range of benefits to municipalities. The goals were to
share innovative projects to enhance public service

14

events
in
2014
City Innovation Summit in Barcelona. Panel discussion
featuring Waag Society & FutureEverything, November
2014

delivery through technology-enabled collaboration with

citizens, and to promote interaction of experts and
partners with cities from all over the world. CitiSense
2014, attended by around 150 people, attracted a
combination of city policy officers and technology
specialists, representatives of some national innovation
agencies, innovation experts and community managers
from all over the world. The FIWARE participation at
CitiSense helped to establish new contacts with difficultto-reach audiences and to consolidate some existing
contacts and the World Bank officials through the
FIWARE information point set up in the networking area
of the event prior to the Smart City Expo launch.
City Innovation Summit
Organised back to back with the well-known Smart City
Expo (Barcelona Nov 18-20) the City Innovation Summit
(Nov 17-18) was a meeting space for experiences,
concepts and tools for innovative cities. ENoLL was very
proud of supporting this event (organised by the City of
Barcelona) that brought together public service
innovation, public-private innovation and social
innovation conceiving the city as a natural place for
innovation and experimentation. This event was
organised in 4 different tracks (economy, people, urban
and governance) and had great representation from the
Living Lab community & ENoLL members in the people
track.

ENoLL Activity Report 2014

How to Join Us?

1. Become an ENoLL Living Lab
If your organisation wants to become a
member of ENoLL and become a
certified Living Lab, contact us in order
to discuss how to join through the 9th
Wave Call for Membership (Feb-May
2015).
2. Become an Associated Member
Are you a university, company, research
institution, regional/local authority etc.
supporting the philosophy of user-driven
open innovation? Contact us on how to
become an associated member of ENoLL.
3. Join the online community
ENoLL is on Facebook, LinkedIn,
Slideshare, Scribd, Vimeo and Twitter
(@openlivinglabs) and we also publish a
monthly newsletter on all things relevant
to Living Labs and user-driven open
innovation. Join our social networks to
catch the latest news on events/calls, be
inspired and discover new interesting
activities & opportunities.
4. OpenLivingLab Days
Participate in the largest Living Lab gig of
the year! The next edition will be held in
Istanbul from the 25th to the 28th of
August 2015. Join us to share best
practice, discover new initiatives &
research, make contacts and be inspired.
Visit the website for more information:
www.openlivinglabdays.com

New Effective Member: Living

Labs Taiwan
Having launched in June 2008,
Living Lab Taiwan, located in Taipei, promotes open innovation in a live
environment involving real users. It is operated by Innovative DigiTech-Enabled
Applications & Services Institute (IDEAS), Institute for Information Industry (III),
a national research and development organization and the think tank of
national strategic policies helping the government improve global information
industry competitiveness. Leveraging the resources of technology, research and
application development capability of III, Living Lab Taiwan is a best place to
design, test, and verify service/business models of innovative ideas. The Living
Lab bridges the gaps between research, development and tangible applications
in a real world through the use of new people inspired tools and methods.
ENoLL was thrilled to welcome Living Labs Taiwan as an Effective Member at
the General Assembly hosted on the 17th of February. Their membership also
highlights the international grown of the network Living Labs Taiwan are the
first Effective Member coming from outside of Europe.
New Effective Member: Energy Living Lab
Following the September 2nd 2014 General Assembly
we Energy Living Lab as a new Effective Member to
ENoLL. Energy Living Lab is an open innovation
ecosystem dedicated to energy efficiency and the development of renewable
energy in Western Switzerland. It is composed of the University of Applied
Science Western Switzerland (host of the Living Lab), Chablais Agglo
representing the public authorities of this French-speaking region, private
companies in the field of energy, together with an association of users.
The goal of the Living Lab is to empower the users of energy and integrate
them into the innovation process, motivating them to participate, putting the
right tools in place to enable a bottom-up dialogue, and translating ideas into
sustainable commercial products or services.

New Associated Member: Krakw

Technology Park
Established in 1997 by the city
authorities,
Maopolska
regional
authorities and 3 Krakw based universities; Krakw Technology Park was
welcomed as an Associated Member of ENoLL on June 13th 2014 at the General
Assembly.
One of the most significant forms of operation of Krakw Technology Park is
provision of support to businesses at all stages of their development includes
the possibility of financing via the KTP Seed Fund, free advisory services,
training and the development of the technological aspects of enterprises. The
technology park also runs numerous projects for example the MITP (a centre
for developing new ideas & technologies, clustering ICT companies testing
ground for open innovation ideas and a platform for collaboration of the
academic, business and administration circles) and "SMART_KOM. Krakw in
Smart Cities Network helping to diagnosis, develop good practices and
strategy in addition to disseminating on smart cities.