Shortly before Easter, the ‘Final Dissemination Event’ in the Digital Regions project took place: The project partners from eight European countries, who had met only once during the project period from 2019 to 2023 due to the pandemic, met in Ljubljana (Slovenia) to publish the final results of the project.
Digital Regions is an EU-funded project focused on Industry 4.0 and manufacturing. The main purpose of the project was to exchange best practices (good practices) between partner regions, as well as to improve effective collaboration between small and medium-sized enterprises ( SMEs), development agencies and technology institutes.
16 proven examples from European regions
Eight partners shared a total of sixteen best practices from their regions, wrote action plans and presented their innovation ecosystems (Campuls-digital reported on the project). The consortium leader, the regional network ERNACT, has now formulated a white paper for economic development agencies based on the project results.
In the roundtable, the Digital Regions teams from Hof, represented by Anne-Christine Habbel and Katrin Müller, Timisoara (Romania), and Biel/Bienne (Switzerland) presented their project successes, while Daniela Copaci, DIGITAL REGIONS project manager and ERNACT program manager, gave an overall overview of the project’s achievements. Also present from Hof were Susanne Lang, managing director of the Hochfranken economic region, and Dr. Heike Herfert, textile researcher at the Institute of Material Sciences.
Slovenian digital minister speaks welcoming speech
The Slovenian Minister for Digital Transformation, Dr. Emilija Stojmenova Duh, spoke the welcoming words and Ana Mihaljevic, Policy Officer at InterregEurope, went into detail about the last and the current funding period of the INTERREG program.
The cooperation of such a diverse partnership has several advantages: Diversity of knowledge and experience, common goals, the possibility to learn from each other, and greater opportunities for innovation. I believe that the efforts of the Digital Regions project benefited not only the manufacturing sector, but also all stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem of each region, including policy makers such as the Ministry of Digital Transformation.”
Dr. Emilija Stojmenova Duh
During a tour of the newly equipped Multimedia Labs at the University of Ljubljana, researchers presented the latest VR technology. In the Cybersecurity Lab, guests were able to watch live cyberattacks from a wide range of countries on visualizations specially created for this purpose. The 60 or so international guests also took home contacts for future collaborations.