The second plenary meeting was held on the 6th of June as a hybrid meeting; some of the participants participated through Teams and some met face to face.
– I am so happy that everything went so smoothly also with the hybrid meeting settings, Andrea Saracino, the Sifis-Home project leader comments.
An enthusiastic attitude
The meeting was very special. Some external advisers also attended. Each work package had carefully prepared a presentation and the Sifis-Home goals stimulated a lot of interesting discussion.
– The enthusiastic attitude is evident in your work, commented Adviser, a Professor for Cybersecurity (TalTech-University) Olaf Manuel Maennel at the meeting.
– The ambitious are high; a lot has already been done and even more work needs to be done to achieve the goals, Maennel continued.
Adviser, Innovation Area Manager (TIM) Valla Massimo agrees:
– People have started to pay attention to security and safety views. People really have a lot of technology at home, and they are increasingly connected to the internet. It is also very good that the project pays attention to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a deep understanding of these things.
– I feel very positive that the advisers have recognized the value in what we are doing, Andrea Saracino, the Sifis-Home project leader comments.
Increase accessibility
– I feel very positive that the advisers have also recognized the value in what we are doing. It has become clear that we are producing a lot of material and great content. It is also a delight to have such an active advisory board, we are all very happy for this, Andrea Saracino says.
– If we look at the comments we have received, there are two important issues: the first one is that, given the hype there is around this project and its topic, we should expect the EU Commission to be extremely demanding at the time of the review, which calls for even higher quality work and attention to all the details.
We should push for more popularized concepts to gain the interest of current and future smart home users.
Andrea Saracino
– The other very important element is the need to increase the accessibility of our project result, Saracino emphasizes.
– This requires consideration of more frameworks and IoT projects where to integrate SIFIS-Home with (or to integrate with SIFIS-Home). On the other hand there is a need to reach the general public. This last point is extremely important and calls for an upgrade of our dissemination and communication strategy. As Francesco Di Cerbo (SAP) phrased it, SIFIS-Home is going to be more relevant for the common citizens than it is for the research community. We should thus push for more general and popularized general concepts to gain the interest of current and future smart home users, Saracino comments.
New era in meetings
A hybrid meeting worked very well, there were no technical issues. But this new era brings with it new kinds of unexpected challenges too: how to take a photo with all the participants? It was surprisingly difficult to take a combination picture of a screen shot and the physically present participants.
– I hope we can have the next meeting with everybody physically present… and with a better camera! Saracino laughs.