Nils Hempelmann, Open Geospatial (OGC) and DEMETER WP5 (Pilot Management) Leader
The DEMETER pilots cover a wide spectrum of sub-sectors: arable crops, irrigated crops, fruit production and livestock (poultry, dairy, animal welfare). These pilots are used to demonstrate and evaluate how innovations and extended capabilities benefit from the interoperability mechanisms and integrate with the set of DEMETER core enablers. The core enablers are needed for creating any DEMETER applications and thus mandatory for any interested stakeholder who wishes to expose or share his/her own resources.
Based on feedback collected in individual interviews with each of the pilots, it became apparent that frequent cross-pilot and cross-work-package interactive sessions would provide a major improvement from a coordination as well as progress perspective. A series of online workshops focusing on DEMETER ecosystem deployment have been organized by WP5 (Pilot Management) and WP7 (Multi-Actor Ecosystem Development) with the objective of bringing together enabler providers, the technical work packages, enabler users, and the pilot developers who integrate the enablers in their pilot. With up to 80 participants from the pilots and the technical work packages attending the first workshop, this concept will further enhance intra-project communication and interaction.
The workshops are structured into three parts with different respective focuses:
Part 1 is centred on general needs, concerns, experiences, and open issues. Each pilot briefly presents their status and current experiences during development. Questions are answered directly in the meeting and on a Mural board. Mural is an online tool that enables visual collaboration, and participants can post their needs, concerns, and the proposed actions to be taken to support them regarding the enablers they are currently and prospectively using.
Part 2 of the workshops focuses on technical issues, again with the help of a Mural board which includes an issue tracker in which issues from the pilots can be collected; clustered according to the categories: bug, high priority, discussion, and enhancement; and answered by the technical support team. The discussion in the workshops focuses on different demonstrations of the pilots, sharing examples of their work to further showcase the integration of the DEMETER enablers.
Part 3 is the so-called “genius bar” and designed to allow specific issues and users to share their screens to demonstrate any open issues that they may have encountered. This results in a very productive open discussion on the technologies being utilised and tools to allow users to track and record tasks.
Figure 1: Workshop participants’ feedback
In these workshops, pilots are encouraged to present the status of the DEMETER enablers’ integration and demonstrate the current status. Technical partners demonstrate to the pilots how to integrate the core DEMETER components, and how to expose pilots’ assets and resources by means of the DEMETER enablers, through overviews of the installation steps, and live integration walk-throughs. This co-creation workshop series was identified as a useful session that the participants are eager to continue on a regular basis.
