The consortium has celebrated the plenary meeting in Eindhoven with some restrictions.The COVID-crisis strikes again and left some partners home while the Netherlands were suffering a partial lockdown and the application of some extra safety measures due to the uprising number of positive cases in the Country. Valencian partners, IBV and IVACE both participated in the meeting online.
The event was organized on November 22nd by Sport & Technology Cluster, who retransmitted the meeting from the “Orange Room” of the Dutch Olympic Committee in Eindhoven.
In the first part of the meeting the partners put their heads together to set up the pilot actions that will take place in Lapland and in Valencia. About the later, Vanessa Jiménez presented the results of survey made by IBV on Data Driven Innovation in Sports. This area has a great potential in the Valencian Community and it will be the tractor for the sport innovation in the following years.
The second slot was dedicated to Covid-19 impact on sport and physical activity. Each region presented a SWOT analysis on the topic. Also, all regions shared their most important good practices already identified and emerged during or due to the Corona virus crisis.
Most of the partners agrees on the fact that the Covid crisis has increased the use of open-air spaces to perform any physical activity and at the same time digital contents, from data monitoring to online communities, and wearables have increased the potential of digitalization in sport and in users.
“This is a great opportunity to spread data drive innovation in the sport ecosystem”, affirms Enrique Alcántara, head of sport Innovation at IBV.
There was also room to present the GPs (Good Practices) that each region has traced. In Eindhoven, two companies joined the I4S meeting, presenting their projects, Embebbed Fitness and PWXR.
Embedded Fitness is a company that provides interactive, customized exercising concepts, connecting the latest technologies to their motion equipment. Their serious gaming concepts brings exercising and entertainment together. PWXR provide a solution that connects full body XR gaming with sports, creating a virtual sports Arena for work-out and competition amongst friends.
The thematic activities of the project need to be ended by the first half of 2022. There are lots of activities planned in each region, such as seminaries, meetings or workshop with stakeholders or any other entity related with innovation in sports. Additionally, the partners intend to meet in Rovaniemi, Lapland (January 2022) and Lodz, Poland (Abril 2022) while the final conference is foreseen in June 2022 and it will be organized by IBV and EPSI.