The FIWARE community is growing and reaching far in Mexico. Beginning of September 2016, the two international EU-Mexico collaboration projects FIWARE Mexico and SmartSDK have been successfully kicked-off in Mexico City.
Hosted by the Tecnológico de Monterrey, partners from Europe and Mexico worked together 3 days to discuss strategies and bootstrap plans for promoting the growth of a FIWARE-driven innovation ecosystem in Mexico. This shall strengthen the collaboration between Europe and Mexico within the overall ICT landscape and open up new directions for future collaborations.
The great hospitality of our Mexican partners and the enthusiasm of all organisations involved in the two projects have been core ingredients to animate productive discussions and define a comprehensive set of activities that will be geared, especially within the next couple of months, at creating awareness and visibility about FIWARE-driven efforts both in Europe and in Mexico. This will facilitate know-how transfer and effective collaborations to be developed in a forward-looking perspective. Targeted workshops, seminars and training sessions will be organised and broadly advertised soon via all SmartSDK, FIWARE Mexico and FIWARE media channels.
While the European partners are opening up access to the already established FIWARE community and help it growing, the involvement of top-notch partners on the Mexican side is key to ensure effective engagement of relevant Mexican stakeholders.
Background
The FIWARE Mexico initiative aims to enhance FIWARE-driven collaboration between Europe and Mexico, based on the adoption, deployment and improvement of FIWARE in Mexico as a framework that will open up new horizons for future cooperation in the ICT domain.
As result of the negotiations between the European Commission and the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), together with the ICT Research and Innovation Centre (INFOTEC) and Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM), a FIWARE Lab node was created in Mexico in 2014. The Mexican FIWARE Lab node operated by INFOTEC is part of the FIWARE infrastructure, which facilitates the use of the FIWARE platform for local innovative players.
However, to move beyond the Lab context and create a truly accessible FIWARE-centered ecosystem for all innovative Mexican stakeholders and ensure a sustainable collaborative environment between Europe and Mexico, it is necessary to develop and implement the proper interaction, collaboration and communication tools, processes and activities. This is where the FIWARE Mexico project comes in.
A highly qualified and dynamic team of competent and expert partners both from Mexico and Europe gathered together within the FIWARE Mexico consortium: the ICT Research and Innovation Centre (INFOTEC), the Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) and the Corporacion Universitaria para el Desarrollo de Internet (CUDI) from Mexico, Inmark Europa and Telefonica Investigacion y Desarrollo from Spain, Martel Innovate from Switzerland, and Create-Net from Italy.
FIWARE Mexico in action!
FIWARE Mexico is establishing Working Groups to engage innovators from the industry, research communities and end users, such as Smart Cities players, in the FIWARE ecosystem. In parallel, dedicated FIWARE technology’ training programmes are being implemented for developers, integrators and contributors, embracing the whole open source community, which will facilitate the adoption of FIWARE technologies and the development of applications to be commercialized in Mexico and Europe. Moreover, synergies between the European and worldwide FIWARE community will be fostered via close cooperation, coordinated promotional/communication efforts and via know-how transfer about success stories and good practices guidelines for increased stakeholders’ engagement.
Together with the SmartSDK project, FIWARE Mexico contributed to organize a first workshop in Mexico City on 7th September gathering more than 80 participants: Developers, Researchers, Entrepreneurs, Technology Transfer officers, Policy makers, Investors, Regulators, Academics, International representatives interested in cooperation between Mexico and Europe on Research and Innovation in ICT.
“This first appointment has been a great success” says Professor Miguel Gonzalez Mendoza from ITESM that hosted the workshop. “The level of interest raised by this first FIWARE workshop among key players in the Mexican R&I scene indicates great potential for the growth and uptake of FIWARE in and for Mexico. This appointment is the first of a series of events, so stay tuned on all our communication channels!”
Since the kick-off, FIWARE Mexico is at work to roll down the rich program of activities planned within the project scope, which include, among others:
- The “Train the trainers” program, to create a Mexican FIWARE Generic Enablers expert community, who will be then involved in the trainings to students, developers and SMEs in Mexico;
- A rich schedule of events with two Open FIWARE Camps (one in Europe in 2017 and one in Mexico in 2018) as the key highlight appointment;
- A wide range of actions aiming to facilitate the knowledge transfer and the analysis of the key success factor learned within the FIWARE community towards the emerging Mexican innovation ecosystem;
- A continuous effort to establish durable and strong relationships between the Mexican and the European key Next Generation Internet players.
Join the FIWARE Community
We launched our website www.fiwaremexico.org and Twitter account @fiware_mexico, which will keep the broad audience and overall FIWARE community constantly updated about the FIWARE activities in Mexico. Events, trainings and workshops will be promptly advertised through these channels so as to promote EU-Mexico cooperation in FIWARE. At the same time, we are supporting networking and knowledge sharing across the whole FIWARE ecosystem by promoting the FIWARE social media channels such as FIWARE Facebook page, FIWARE Community and FIWARE LinkedIn Group.
Visit our website, follow our Tweeter account to stay tuned with all the FIWARE activities between Europe and Mexico.
Media Contact : media@fiwaremexico.org
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