Dear AIOTI Community,
As another year comes to an end, we wish to share with you our summary for 2021 and our outlook for 2022. We believe we had a successful year for AIOTI, a year in which we have largely delivered on priorities established at the beginning of the year.
Positioning for impactful relevance
We started the year with our traditional joint Management and Steering Board meeting to sets the scene for the year ahead and agree our priorities. During the year, we held three bi-monthly events, with interesting external speakers and launched our Business Forum and Slack channel for more direct communication between the members.
At the end of November, we held our successful second annual signature event with over 200 participants and 20 prominent speakers. We also organised a several topical workshops and made numerous publications and deliverables.
Part of an integrated EU ecosystem
AIOTI has signed memorandum of understanding with StandICT and with Climate Chain Coalition, worked actively in the Transcontinuum Initiative, Gaia-X and 6G IA.
We worked on Smart Networks and Services partnership work programme and foundation of the Joint Undertaking (JU) within 6G IA as A Board member and contributing as well as Governing Board member of the JU. That set the scene for the launch of the calls worth over 240 million EUR that will be also open to our members.
EU funding calls matchmaking
Successful matchmaking for Horizon Europe (HE) calls also showed where we can contribute and provide more support to our members. Besides that, we provided input to other EU funded programmes, such as the Recovery and Resilience Fund, that earmarked over 134 billion EUR for digital across the EU.
AIOTI was also preparing its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda under the leadership of our Research and Partnership Group that will pave the way for input into HE 2023/24 work programme.
Our Digital Innovation Hub network SCoDIHNet successfully continued its work, supporting hubs wishing to participate in Digital Europe programme funding calls.
Policy discussion contributions
Our work to influence policy was also extensive, notably in the area of EU data, AI and security, all of which was consolidated through further outreach to EU institutions, with significant participation from our members.
Membership growth and execution
We held our two general assemblies, on 22 June and 14 December and we are ending year on a high note, with close to 200 members, compared to 155 at the end of the last year. This demonstrates attractiveness of our work and visibility of our deliverables that are appreciated externally.
By end of April 2021, we aligned ourselves organisationally, and hold elections for the leaders of all our working structures, including the Management Board to strengthen the leadership and provide a new outlook. Three new groups were launched Digital for Green, Logistics and Testbeds with some significant contributions made already within this year.
We like to use this opportunity to wish you and your families all the best for the upcoming year-end holidays and successful and healthy 2022.
Jürgen Sturm
AIOTI Management Board Chairman
