'FIWARE Global Summit' puts Gran Canaria in the international focus of innovation and digital transformation
The international congress on digital transformation Fiware Global Summit was successfully held in Gran Canaria between september 13th and 16th, hosted by the island’s governing body via two of its core companies/initiatives, the Economic Development Agency of Gran Canaria (SPEGC) and ‘Best in Gran Canaria’, and externally supported by other regional stakeholders such as CidiHub, FIIHub and Innovalia.
This meet-up represents a unique opportunity to showcase Gran Canaria’s efforts to become a smart island in fields such as tourism (eg. SITGRAN, the island’s public-private tourism data partnership), water management (Aquagran), automated fire alerts control (Alertagran), virtual powerplants management tools via IA, smart ports, etc. The island has consistently evolved to improve the efficiency of public services by means of increased digitalization at various levels, thanks to the ‘Gran Canaria Inteligente’ initiative. This public collection of projects, financed by Cabildo de Gran Canaria, comprises more than 20 projects and eur 20 million of investment that has already been exhausted or is currently at the planning or tendering stage.
The ’Best in Gran Canaria’ team, which had a unique corner in the business & exhibition area, surrounded by other 15 global companies, held more than 30 meetings with participants and companies. The latter showed great interest in the potential digital testing & scaling up options on the island, given that Gran Canaria represents a sizeable market (850,000 inhabitants and 4.5 million tourists per year) with a reasonable talent pool (eg. 6,200 students are currently enrolled in STEM studies). As a matter of fact, the island offers, on top of low taxation and dedicated funding for smart solutions, a cost-controlled sandbox to develop, test & deliver digital solutions that can be sold to the world from the operating facilities on the island.
More than 120 speakers participated in the congress and in the complementary events. They shared their expertise with the audiences, a total of 375 digital agents and members of the FIWARE ecosystem, including companies, public administrations, professionals, developers and end-users.
The event consisted on business conferences, presentation of case studies and training and plug sessions, which are some of the activities that were included in the industrial connection and networking sessions of the Global Fiware Summit 2022. Fiware Global Summit also served as a driving force for other related initiatives linked to the use of open source. On the one hand, through the holding of several training sessions on Fiware technology, meetings of European projects based on Fiware and, finally, an open day organized by the Spanish Government's Data Office and the Spanish Gaia-X hub.