COMMECT at the Synergy Days Conference 2023
The Synergy Days Conference 2023 took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 4 and 5 October 2023, and was a great opportunity for the COMMECT project to connect with other EU-funded projects and create synergies with them.
The event was well organised by SmartAgriHubs and was attended by over 300 people, including representatives of EU project members, digital innovators and various stakeholders from the European agri-food sector. Besides technical sessions focusing on relevant topics such as sustainable agriculture, 5G for smart communities and the relevance of EU policies, the conference also offered a wide portfolio of workshops, organised by EU projects.
COMMECT, together with its sister project XGain, organised two workshops, which focused on two of the main issues addressed in the project activities.
The first workshop, entitled "Connectivity, business models and socio-economic impact: What is the Interlink?" aroused great interest among many Synergy Days participants, as confirmed by a fully booked meeting room.
Digital transformation will play a very important role in the future of agriculture, forestry and rural areas in general. Enhanced broadband connectivity is of strategic importance for growth and innovation in all sectors of the economy. However, how to develop appropriate business models, assess potential investments and the environmental and socio-economic impact of XG connectivity, edge/cloud computing and digital technologies on rural communities is still an open question. Possible answers to this question were gathered during the workshop from an engaged audience, based on lessons learnt in other EU projects (e.g. QuantiFarms, to name but one). Thanks are due to Per Jonny Nesse of Telenor and Andrea Kerstens of TNO for chairing the workshop, on behalf of COMMECT.
A second workshop, entitled "What are the best digital technologies for my use case?", presented and discussed the decision support tool currently under development, designed to provide suggestions on the availability and suitability of technology proposals, including connectivity and computational aspects, in the context of different use cases in rural areas.
These proposals were selected taking into account socio-economic aspects, environmental impact and business models. The workshop organisers engaged with the participants in an interactive session during which a demo of the tools was presented. Of particular interest was the artificial intelligence (LLM) approach presented by Srdjan Krčo of DunavNET.
Finally, our COMMECT coordinator Maria Rita Palattella participated in the plenary session 'Synergy Projects', where her task was to summarise the main objectives and challenges of our project in 3 minutes. The workshop was well attended and Maria Rita Palattella was able to engage and inspire the audience through her short but captivating speech and interaction with the audience.
COMMECT is grateful to the Synergy Days organizers and all participants who made the success of the 2023 conference possible and already looks forward to the next edition in Barcelona!
