Our Second Open Call Innovators Aboard their NGI Sargasso Transatlantic Journey to Create an Internet of Trust
"Welcome aboard!"
These were the first two words our NGI Sargasso second open call beneficiaries heard from the NGI Sargasso consortium at their OnCampus Welcome Day in the afternoon of the 7th of March 2024. Aboard an innovative Transatlantic journey to unleash the Future of the Internet with us.
The warm welcome was given by our project coordinator from the European Science Foundation, Emmanouil Detsis, to then dive into the OnCampus program to develop their projects with the NGI Sargasso support. Our OnCampus includes mentoring services, flipped classroom activities, LLP video lectures, interviews with relevant industry agents, inspirational talks from experts, and coaching. In fact, they could meet two of our coaches, Jordi Bosch i García and Juan Juan.
The mentoring includes webinars about topics such as fundraising and pitch deck. The flipped classrooms aim at asking "uncomfortable" questions to the teams to generate debate and taking advantage of the validations of the hypotheses. The LLP video lectures offer online recorded sessions explaining the whole theory of LLP by its creator Steve Blank, covering topics like value proposition and customer relations.
During the duration of each OnCampus program (it can be a 9-month, 6-month or 3-months program, depending on the option the beneficiaries applied for during our second open call), the selected innovators have the mission to conduct a minimum of 5 interviews a month with their ecosystem with the goal of putting their teams in front of the "real world". They also have the opportunity to attend inspirational talks from experts, such as the ones Glenn Ricart and Mirko Boehm offered to our first batch of beneficiaries.
All this activities are guided, supported and supervised by coaches, with the aim of ensuring the correct progress of the team and its alignment with the program’s objectives and milestones. Coaches guide the teams towards their business objectives in the short and long term, alerting to any misalignment or conflicts during project implementation. Together, we have to make sure we are in the process of building a human-centric Internet!
A new era of Transatlantic collaboration to shape Internet's future
The NGI Sargasso OnCampus program ambitions to create a space where innovation professionals come together, where entrepreneurship is celebrated, and where each project gets the impetus it requires to make a global mark. The program’s main goals were articulated to our beneficiaries during the Welcome Day, setting the tone for the forthcoming months:
- Cross-Collaboration and Networking: The essence of innovation often lies in collaboration. By fostering a space where beneficiaries can connect, share, and grow, the OnCampus program envisions a web of ideas that traverses oceans.
- Excellence and Impact Recognition: Every project deserves its moment in the sun. With a keen focus on recognizing excellence and gauging real-world impact, the program ensures that every innovative spark gets the acknowledgment it warrants.
- Business-Minded Support: Beyond ideation, the transformation of a project into a sustainable business model is crucial. Beneficiaries are provided with the necessary guidance and resources to think beyond the project, considering scalability and profitability.
- Global Exposure: In today’s interconnected world, a local idea can have global repercussions. Through the OnCampus program, each project is given the platform to be showcased on an international stage.
During the webinar, the innovators were also informed about the calendar of activities, the KPIs they have to achieve and the payment procedures, as well as about some communication guides to make the most out of their innovative projects.
The Welcome Day is just the start of this journey, and with it, a new era of Transatlantic collaboration has just begun!
NGI Sargasso Hosts a Panel at 4YFN 2024 Offering Equity-Free Funding Opportunities for Next Generation Internet Innovators
Those working in innovation and connectivity know that the annual February event is without any doubt the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and with it, its startup event, 4YFN. As a project focused on promoting the Transatlantic cooperation for Next Generation Internet (NGI) technologies, NGI Sargasso couldn't miss this relevant date. But not only we attended it, we organized our own NGI Sargasso panel to offer our equity-free funding opportunities for Next Generation Internet ideas.
The NGI Sargasso panel at 4YFN 2024: NGI Sargasso: Equity-free funding for your Next Generation Internet idea
On the 27th of February at 15:00h, at Pavilion 8.1, Stand 8.1 B55 of Fira Barcelona at 4YFN 2024, our panel was just starting. Teresa Barber, Innovation Project Manager at the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, introduced the session to the audience, giving the floor to Monique Calisti, NGI Outreach Office Director from Martel Innovate.
Monique presented the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative new opportunities and synergies, which objective is to "create a growing community at work to build an Internet of trust for all. An Internet that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security, and inclusion, while reflecting the values and the norms all citizens enjoy in Europe", she said. She also highlighted that the NGI has funded more than 1,000 innovators with inclusive and trust-based complementary technology building blocks, and added that the initiative is providing funding to support innovators including individual researchers, developers, start-ups and SMEs.
Teresa introduced our project, NGI Sargasso, remarking that our objective is:
To create a unique collaborative ecosystem to harvest EU-US and/or EU-Canada technology breakthroughs that aim to revolutionize the Next Generation Internet technologies, services and standards, and contribute to the evolution of the Internet according to a human-centric approach of the internet commons.
Virginia Gómez, European Projects Head at Sploro, explained the NGI Sargasso open calls requirements. Internet innovators have a date with us, because we are launching our third open call on the 15th of March, and we will accept applications until the 15th of May. As in our previous open calls, we are looking for Universities and RTOs, Foundations and NGOs, and Startups and SMEs from Europe and its Associated Countries, as well as from the USA and Canada. If you are interested, mark the dates in your calendar, together with our third open call webinars and matchmaking sessions:
- First InfoDay and Matchmaking Session: the 26th of March 2024.
- Second InfoDay and Matchmaking Session: the 10th of April 2024.
The OnCampus perks for the NGI Sargasso open calls beneficiaries were also presented by Teresa, who highlighted that:
The OnCampus program aims to support and grow tech projects while building a network of innovation professionals, promoting entrepreneurship, and boosting the project's deal flow. The program goals focus on cross-collaboration and networking, excellence and impact recognition, business-minded support, and global exposure.
Besides, NGI Sargasso selected innovators can get up to €100,000 equity-free funding for those joining a 9-month program. However, we also offer the option to join a 6-month program (€75,000) or a 3-month program (€50,000).
The panel finished with a discussion and Q&A session starring by three of our NGI Sargasso innovators from the first open call:
- EvORAN: Jordi Mongay Batalla, from the Warsaw University of Technology, spoke about what lies beyond in Open-RAN network evaluation. He is collaborating with Houbing Herbert Song, from the University of Maryland. Together, they are unraveling the mysteries of EvORAN - the Evaluation of Open-RAN Network Equipment Including Underlying. At our NGI Sargasso 4YFN 2024 panel Jordi took the stage to share the future of Open-RAN network evaluation.
- EBSI-CAN: Lluís Alfons Ariño, Deputy to Manager and Commissioner of Open Gov. and ICT for strategic planning of ICT and resources at Rovira i Virgili University, made us wonder about the potential of EBSI in cross-border credentialing. Lluís, along with Alex Grech and Klaudia Gyorgyi Farkas, from the 3CL Foundation, are exploring in their collaborative project just that with EBSI-CAN: EBSI and Verifiable Credentialing in Canada. At our NGI Sargasso event they delved into the governance, legal, technical, and business landscape of this groundbreaking initiative.
- D3ICA: Julien Bringer, the CEO of Kallistech, shared the answer to the question 'How can we democratize digital identity?' His project, D3ICA: Democratizing Decentralized Digital Identity through Cloud Agents, focuses on diversity, inclusion, usability, and interoperability. At our panel at 4YFN 2024, he uncovered how D3ICA is set to revolutionize the digital identity landscape.
More about NGI Sargasso
NGI Sargasso is a European Commission funded project, part of the Horizon Europe Programme. It aims to create a unique collaborative ecosystem to harvest EU-US or EU-Canada technology breakthroughs to revolutionize the Next Generation Internet technologies, services and standards. It also aims to contribute to the evolution of the Internet according to a human-centric approach of the Internet commons through five open calls to fund 90 Transatlantic teams to redefine future Internet working with topics such as trust and data sovereignty, digital identity, internet architecture renovation, decentralized technologies, and standards with a budget of €4,800,000.
In addition, the NGI Sargasso project is part of the umbrella initiative, the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative, launched by the European Commission in 2016, which supports this vision of building bridges internationally.
More about 4YFN 2024 and Mobile World Congress 2024
4YFN is the event partner of MWC Barcelona, the world’s largest and most influential connectivity event, bringing together the latest innovations and leading-edge technology alongside today’s most influential visionaries.
This means this congress not only brings all the players you need for a winning digital startup together (like investors and corporate innovators), but it also springboards startups onto the radar of the most powerful decision makers in the connectivity ecosystem – such as CEOs from global mobile operators and frontier tech companies.
All this helps new business ventures sprout the wings they need for a breathtaking launch.
