“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!