The second local ULALABS workshop took place on February 27 at Linköping University

Date: February 27, 14-16

Location: Zenit Building, Linköping University, Campus Valla

The second ULALABS Local Workshop was hosted by Linköping University on Thursday, February 27, on Campus Valla. Over 20 participants from academia, representatives from the public administration from Linköping and Norrköping, companies, the business network Linköping Science Park, and two local testbeds (Testbed Ebbepark and Testbed Kungsgatan), as well as the innovation platform ‘Ride the Future’, took part in the workshop and shared experiences and insights.

Aiming for the joint objectives previously outlined in the UAB blog post, the workshop started with a brief presentation round and activities to support the mapping of the local ecosystem in the region. Following a presentation of the Ulalabs project, actions and results of the first year of the project, as well as ECIU@LiU, we learned about ongoing activities and planned initiatives from Testbed Ebbepark, Climate Neutral Linköping, Testbed Kungsgatan, and Norrköping Municipality.

Participants of the workshops engaging in the local ecosystem mapping.

Future Vision & Strategic Challenge Board

Based on an exercise exploring the Future Vision for the European Lab of Labs, participants shared their expectation of potential transformative impacts that this meta-lab could contribute, ranging from opportunities to collaborate with new international partners and to obtain new perspectives to increase robustness and accelerate development and innovation processes, as it would mean to benefit from a broader range of experiences.

Building on an initial Strategic Challenge Board, participants contributed with numerous of additional Global Challenges. They shared their perspectives and outlined both strategic and specific challenges, including those currently addressed in local initiatives and others considered relevant and of interest for learning from others.

Learning Toolkits

In the final interactive part of the workshop, participants outlined a broad range of skills needed to address the abovementioned challenges. These included prioritization, development of joint strategies, citizen engagement. They also identified relevant tools, such as short and flexible courses and visualization tools to support future learning processes.

The workshop generated a vast range of interesting seeds for our future work within the ULALABS regional and European Ecosystem, and provided a promising starting point to the second year of the project.