On September 27th and 28th the project partners of Inno4Sports met in Rovaniemi to catch up on sport innovation.
After months of online meetings, a small representation on the Inno4Sports consortium came back to face to face meetings in Lapland. Giuseppe Caprara and Vanessa Giménez from Instituto de Biomecánica (IBV) Valencia, René Wijlens and Marc van der Zande from Sport&Technology Eindhoven met with Pirkko Sivonen (Lapland Regional Council) and Ben Taylor (Lapin AMK) in Rovaniemi, Lapland, during two days of intense work related with Inno4Sports ongoing topics.
The first session of the meeting was a workshop in which Nord Brabant, Lapland and Valencian Community shared experience on Sport Data Driven Innovation, after the previous workshop celebrated in Valencia and In Rovaniemi. This Pilot Action implies that the partner will check and test how personal data is used in Valencia, then a mixed public and personal data could be used in Lapland and create projects in collaboration with The Netherlands. Marc van der Zande commented: “This pilot is bridging all activities to interregional level.”
The second session was a plenary meeting in which the rest of the partners (IVACE – Valencia, MSE Cluster and University of Debrecen – Debrecen, Verde Klaster – Poland and EPSI – Belgium) joined on line. Nowadays the I4S has two different open fronts: the second phase of the project itself, that includes the Action Plan implementation and the “new” project extension, related to COVID topics. This action is related with targeting recovery actions after COVID crisis: if we look at the sport sector it is highly affected, on the one hand negatively but at the same time in a positive way too.
“I4S consortium strongly believe that sport will grow after COVID with increased experience, new habits, more opportunities and a strong focus on health and wellbeing related to sport and physical activity” said Giuseppe Caprara, Innovation Manager at IBV.
The third session included the participation of Kristian Sievers of the Regional Council of Lapland, with a presentation on innovation opportunities in the Artic region.
Once in Rovaniemi IBV also had time to meet Heikki Hannola from Lapland University of Applied Sciences at Santa Sport facilities. The outstanding sport center was in those days also the host of the European Junior and U23 Weightlifting Championships, with a huge representation of young athletes from all over Europe.
Next project meeting will be in Eindhoven on the 22nd of November. From The Netherlands, a delegation of the project will join the annual EPSI Annual Conference “CONNECTING EUROPEAN AMBITIONS IN SPORT & ENTERTAINMENT” that will take place from 23rd to 26th November at the Circuit Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium) – both physically and virtually through several business-oriented online sessions, focusing on open innovation, smart specialization, smart venues, broadcasting and other topics related to sport and innovation.
“The following months will be intense and busy for the Inno4Sports”, follows Caprara. “We are already working on final event that will take place in Valencia on June 2022, but there are lots of scheduled events on the way. The next year will be crucial for I4S”, he concludes.
