Category Archives: News

Connected Smart Cities Conference – Check USEMP supported session

The Connected Smart Cities Conference (https://www.fiware.org/event/connected-smart-cities-conference/) takes place in Brussels on January the 22nd, 2016.

At the conference Marita Holst together with Ana Garcia from LTU will chair a session on Living Labs and Open Innovation. As part of the presentation will share reflections on experiences from Botnia Living Labs and discuss experiences from implementing FormIT in the USEMP project.

Living Labs and Open Innovation

Moderators: Ana Garcia, ENoLL Director & Marita Holst, Botnia General Manager, Luleå University of Technology

Speakers:

  • Olavi Luotonen, Experimental Platforms, Net Futures, DG CONNECT, European Commission
  • Bror Salmelin, Adviser for Innovation Systems, DG CONNECT, European Commission
  • Lieve Bos, Innovation, Pre-Commercial Procurement / Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PCP/PPI), DG CONNECT, European Commission
  • Hugo Goncalves, SELECT for Cities, Forum Virium Helsinki, Finland
  • Davor Meersman, City of Things, Antwerp, Belgium
  • Marita Holst/Anna Stahlbröst, OrganiCity and inputs from Botnia, Sweden
  • Louise Overgaard, City of Aarhus
  • Olha Bondarenko, City of Eindhoven
  • Ingrid Willems, iMinds, CreatiFI (tbc)
  • Mikael Grannas, Mayor of Sipoo, Finland

USEMP wins big in ICT 2015 exhibition

Last week, 20-22 October 2015, the ICT event took place in Lisbon, Portugal. The ICT event was organised by the European Commission to present the new Commission policies and initiatives with regard to Research & Innovation in ICT.  Overall more than 5000 delegates participated in the event including Commissioners Oettinger (responsible for Digital Economy and Society) and Moedas (responsible for Research, Science and Innovation) as well as the Portuguese President!

During the three days event, a conference, networking sessions, numerous parallel sessions and an exhibiton took place… and USEMP was there!

Positioned at booth i15 of the Innovation and Creativity Area of the exhibition, USEMP partners  demonstrated the project and the USEMP tool – DataBait – informing users on the digital trail they leave when using services as Facebook or simply browsing through the internet.

While in all three  days of the event and exhibition, people were passing by our booth and asking for more information, we were amazed when the winners of ICT 2015 exhibition were announced and among the featured 100 best-in-class results of European ICT Research & Innovation, USEMP booth was voted as the Best Exhibition Stand !

What an honor that was!

From all the partners of the project, thank you all for the support and soon you will hear more news from USEMP and DataBait!

Check the pictures bellow and don’t forget to check the video ICT 2015 Exhibition, Prizes Ceremony Video (hint, USEMP is at 1:43 with George Mourikas receiving the award and David Lund presenting USEMP to the press).

USEMP Computing Now editorial published

USEMP team has published a new editorial titled “Privacy Awareness and User Empowerment in Online Social Networking Settings” for Computing Now magazine January 2015 edition. Symeon Papadopoulos (CERTH) and Adrian Popescu (CEA) have described the technical challenges and state of the art in online privacy awareness for Online Social Networks research (examples include: homophily principle, location mining from image content, usability challenges) based on USEMP research work. David Lund (HWC) and Sanja Ilic (VELTI) from USEMP industrial partners have provided valuable insights on the industry perspectives on privacy and user empowerment. The editorial along with related video material is available online at Computing Now 2015 edition.

David Lund video (HWC) on industry perspectives for online privacy awareness

Sanja Ilic video (VELTI) on industry perspectives for online privacy awareness

 

Secret Research Guidelines for A/B Testing and the More

Research on Facebook data

Great to see that such guidelines are considered, though from the perspective of the guineapigs (us) we need both consent and transparency, even if the data is anonymized. The reasons are, first, that methodological rigor requires that the findings can be tested by peer researchers, and, second, that those to whom the inferred knowledge will be applied will be affected without having an inkling how their minds and moods are being nudged.