Knowledge Safari to Hunt Future

The PRO-IDEAL PLUS project has organised for the first time interactive workshops in Mexico and Colombia to inform, involve and engage future participants to the FP7 ICT programme. The two Knowledge Safari workshops involved 35 stakeholders each (researchers, industry, institutions). They were held on 9 November 2010 in Pachuca (Mexico) and on 11 November 2010 in Medellin (Colombia).


The co-creative events were designed and facilitated by the Italian team of FUTOUR. The Knowledge Safari workshops adopted innovative participatory methodologies that fostered networking, clustering, team building and knowledge sharing by stimulating connective intelligence and contactivity.

Each event lasted about four hours and generated over 300 ideas to effective and successful collaborative projects. The level of engagement and attention among the participants was extremely high and this led to a strong motivation and curiosity relating to the possibility to participate in future FP7 ICT projects.

The Safari addressed a number of issues related to R&D cooperation with the EU and the process to create successful ICT proposals. At each new station the participants analyse its specific issue or question, they discuss and create a series of ideas. This circular brainstorming allows an in depth analysis of the various perspectives and the creation of an incremental, wiki-like picture of the knowledge and experience of the participants. Ideas discussed can be seen in the Safari reports from Mexico and Colombia.

Next Safari stop, Cuba!
The next PRO-IDEAL PLUS event is scheduled to take place in La Habana at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. On 15th March 2011 there will be an ICT Forum to support Cuba-EU dialogue for ICT R&D cooperation while on 16th March 2011 there will be the third Safari to co-create successful future ICT collaborative research projects with Europe.