At a three-day virtual partner meeting of the Interreg North Sea Region project “Futures by Design”, participants from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden and Germany exchanged information on the current progress of the project and planned future activities together. The meeting was hosted by the Belgian project partners Blenders, Open Manufacturing Campus (OMC) and Sirris, so the focus was particularly on project implementation in the Flemish region.
The “Futures by Design” project aims to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North Sea region in digitisation with specially developed and free tools for more effective data-based work in order to generate added value for the company. Interested SMEs can register online and work individually with one of the six project partners from the regions of Friesland and Groningen (Netherlands), Cambridgeshire (United Kingdom), Antwerp (Belgium), Halland (Sweden) or the district of Osterholz and surrounding districts in north-western Germany via the virtual transnational Horizon Scanning and Knowledge Transfer (HSKT) Hub.
The partner meeting began with an overview of the project results to date in the partner countries, followed by a preview of the activities planned for the coming months. Later on, the focus was on the digital tools developed by the Dutch project partner JADS. These enable SMEs to analyse their existing data-based work in order to identify new solutions and implement sustainable, innovative processes. Finally, the participants of the partner meeting had the opportunity to exchange experiences with Bart Wuyts (CEO Blender, Chairman OMC), Hilde Crevits (Deputy Prime Minister of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister for Economy, Innovation, Employment, Social Economy and Agriculture) and other regional Belgian stakeholders.
In the following weeks, the project partners of “Futures by Design” will support participating SMEs in the North Sea region in analysing and optimising their use of data. If you are a company and would like to find out more about the project, please contact us at fbd@aconium.eu or visit our website.