The first physical consortium meeting of the knowlEdge project took place from 17th to 19th of May 2022 in Espoo, Finland, and was hosted by the coordinator VTT. Nearly 30 participants from the project partners were able to discuss the project’s progress, achievements and upcoming plans and challenges. Topics covered included updates from the technical work packages and issues of general interest, such as exploitation, evaluation and standardization.
The meeting was particularly important for the continuing progress of the project, since during the height of the global COVID pandemic physical meetings were not possible at all. Therefore, the discussions highlighted overlapping issues and gaps and helped clarifying relationships between various partners’ contributions.
While much has been achieved through online meetings and workshops by the consortium and demonstrated by the range of deliverables produced since the project began in January 2021, everyone realized that virtual meetings cannot always fully compensate physical meetings and the social experience this brings for the quality of collaboration in a complex European project.