Dear all, I hope that all of you have enjoyed a nice entrance in 2015! 2014 has been a rather important year where we have achieved a lot of things together. We have to consolidate the results in 2015 and go further. This email is intended to share with you the global picture. First of all, 2014 has been the year in which we have consolidated the FIWARE architecture. This, as all of you know, has meant to purge the catalogue of FIWARE Generic Enablers in order to create a more solid and comprehensive technical architecture made up of components contributed by organizations, each of which characterized by making a strategic bet on the technologies they are contributing. We have to make sure that the proposed FIWARE architecture evolves by integrating new GEs, also making the integration among existing GEs much stronger, overall bringing more added value. A lot of focus has to be made on simplicity and documentation. Actually, our target should be that developers fall in love with our technology when they try it. We are not still there but we have to (an we can) get there! We adopted the strategic decision of ensuring the ability of an open source reference implementation for each GE in the FIWARE architecture. In 2015, we have to go a step further and build a truly open source community around FIWARE. This will have impact in the way we will be organized and governed. It will also mean enabling contribution by third parties. Success will only be achieved thanks to the active contribution of all FIWARE partners in this transformation. Firstly, getting involved in the discussion about the open source community policies and procedures we will implement, but later through active engagement in the transition. We started to build a strong value proposition around FIWARE. This value proposition has shown to be particularly strong in the vertical domain of Smart Cities and also in the IoT (Internet of Things) space. I'm happy to share that FIWARE is actually experiencing a great momentum in both areas. In the case of Smart Cities, rumors say that the EC may soon publish a series of recommendations and best practices in which FIWARE would be explicitly mentioned. The EC has invited several cities to a meeting that will take place in Brussels, January 23, where an action plan for Smart Cities using FIWARE will start to be discussed. In the case of IoT, discussions are taking place within EIRC (European Research Cluster on Internet of Things) community to adopt FIWARE as common foundation for an IoT platform. We have also started promotion of FIWARE results in GSMA. These is momentum we have to exploit and make grow! One of the unique selling points in our value proposition is the FIWARE Lab. 2014 has not only been the year at which expansion in Europe has started but also when countries beyond Europe have arrive to us willing to join and expand the footprint of FIWARE Lab in their countries. Relevant to mention is the recent incorporation of Mexico. Interestingly enough, some organizations are starting to approach us showing their interest to join the FIWARE Lab by contributing their resources (without that requiring funding from FIWARE). I take the opportunity to thank all the teams involved in the operations of the FIWARE Lab for their great (and many times rather demanding) job. The experience demonstrates that there is a lot of potential to engage other countries/regions and this is one of the areas where 2015 promises to be exciting! As you know, the FIWARE Acceleration Programme was launched last September. This was cornerstone in the now called FIWARE PPP (formerly know as Future Internet PPP). Thanks to the active role of FIWARE Accelerator projects, but also the support provided by the FIWARE partners, particularly through the series of Startup Weekend FIWARE special edition events, FIWARE has raised a lot of interest among entrepreneurs in Europe. The results of the first Open Calls launched by the FIWARE Accelerator Projects have gone beyond the initial expectations. You can find a good summary of numbers linked to these Open Calls looking at [1]. This means there will be soon hundred of SMEs/startups working with FIWARE technologies, many of them experimenting on the FIWARE Lab. We have to make them fall in love with FIWARE and become our first ambassadors! Therefore, providing them the necessary training, coaching and support has to be one of our first priorities! All 2014 was sprinkled with our presence in many events. An excellent summary can be found in the blog post with which we closed 2014 (see [2]). We have to be able to combine both global relevant events as well as events focused locally in each country in 2015. Besides our presence in Campus Party Brasil in a matter of weeks [3], we will make a strong bet for a highly visible presence both at 4YFN (the entrepreneurs-oriented event linked to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, see [4]) and CEBIT (see [5]). Both events will take place in March and we need the engagement of all partners in them. Regarding events focused locally, I would like to share with you the experience with the multi-site event co-organized with the Ministry of Industry in Spain (see [6]). This event was instrumental in gaining a strong endorsement of the Government in Spain but also reaching a high awareness among Spanish Entrepreneurs (as a proof of this, it happened that a rather large number of SMEs/startups from Spain submitted their applications to the FIWARE Acceleration Programme). We should seek for similar events in other countries in Europe. At least in Germany, France, Italy and Finland, Israel as well. I encourage partners in those countries to come up with the design of a local-focused event. At Telefónica, we are happy to share the lessons we learned and to contribute ideas that may help you to maximize the return, also to get involved if required. Let's join forces and leverage each other! Last but not least, our family of brands, marketing material and website experienced a evolution towards a more professional, market and product oriented image thanks to Ogilvy. We have to go further in 2015 with even more elaborated contents ... this will certainly require the contribution of you all! In summary, a lot of challenges but also a lot of opportunities. I hope that you share with me this excitement because of the great year ahead of us! Let's rock! -- Juanjo [1] - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jeF3Xy7I_6MdQE1OaFII0HGH1CUU44S7B-tAqvR4Vqw/edit?usp=sharing (please be careful not to edit) [2] - http://www.fi-ware.org/2014/12/30/a-year-of-innovation-fiware-in-2014/ [3] - http://beta.campus-party.org/ediciones/brasil/2015/ [4] - http://www.4yfn.com/ [5] - http://www.cebit.de/ [6] - www.fiware.org/multisiteevent/ -- ______________________________________________________ Coordinator and Chief Architect, FIWARE platform CTO Industrial IoT, Telefónica email: juanjose.hierro at telefonica.com twitter: @JuanjoHierro You can follow FIWARE at: website: http://www.fiware.org twitter: @FIWARE facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FI-WARE/251366491587242 linkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/FIWARE-4239932 ________________________________ Este mensaje y sus adjuntos se dirigen exclusivamente a su destinatario, puede contener información privilegiada o confidencial y es para uso exclusivo de la persona o entidad de destino. 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