On Community Engagement Events

The Community Engagement Events are an important part of the 5GASP Project, supporting the dissemination efforts regarding the 5GASP platforms and certification process and a close engagement with Network Applications developers such as SMEs, startups, teams of students and researchers, as well as specialists from bigger companies who can leverage the 5G technology and 5GASP platforms. Through the events, we are addressing current and potential future developers of Network Applications that can benefit from the project developments. In addition, we promote topics related to 5G in general and to 5GASP, in particular, to inspire, encourage and support technical specialists to build on 5G.

The 5GASP Project includes a series of online webinars, a program dedicated to Network Application developers, the Network Application Lab program, and events on-site, in-person events held in Romania and Portugal.

As a first effort to support education and ensure a baseline of understanding for people joining the 5GASP community, we created a series of short videos explaining the basic concepts in the 5G ecosystem.

The videos aim to be a clean-slate approach towards the basic concepts, using simple terms to explain the technology. They are aimed at an audience with general technical knowledge, such as students, developers, tech entrepreneurs and experts in other various technical domains.

The videos are published on the 5GASP YouTube account, in a dedicated playlist. We encourage everyone to view the video content, available here – Link to Youtube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpW5SBPkyk66X-GNpQVZb6A as a primer on all-things 5G for those who are interested in expanding their knowledge.

Furthermore, to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic and as a continued effort for community building, we organise a series of online events that offer information about the 5GASP Project and the 5G technology in general. In addition, we address current technical researchers, students, developers and tech entrepreneurs that will thus understand more about the 5G benefits and can grow to become developers of Network Applications in the future.

Entitled 5G – Technology updates & opportunities, the first webinar we organised was focused on the main concepts and knowledge necessary to understand 5G development. It went through the main concepts needed to work in the 5G space and offered participants the opportunity to ask questions to clarify any question marks they may have had.

The agenda included a presentation on the 5GASP Project delivered by Diogo Gomes, 5GASP Project Coordinator, Instituto de Telecomunicações Portugal. Marius Iordache, 5G Technical Manager at Orange Romania presented the major developments of the 5G technology and an overview of the commercial market – expected use cases and coverage developments. Further on, Dr. Christos Tranoris, Senior Researcher at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of Patras presented the Network Application concept and implementation and representatives of the University of Bristol – Dr. Syed Ali, Research Fellow at the Smart Internet Lab and Navdeep Uniyal, Senior Research Associate at the High Performance Networks Research Group, Smart Internet Lab – talked about Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

The event also included external guest specialist Eduardo Sousa, Software Engineer – OSM at Canonical who presented MANO – NFV Management and Network Orchestration. Kostis Trantzas – Researcher and PhD candidate at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of Patras presented details about Open Slice and Vesselin Arnaudov, Director, Advanced Development Center at VMware talked about Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tools.

The full event recording is available in the dedicated YouTube playlist:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcQeDJHHot8&list=PLviCCfHpC15ESO486m1byUb6OoZq_t4he

Entitled 5G – Support for next-generation applications, the second webinar presented more details about the 5GASP platform that is under development, offered a case study into one of the Network Applications that is included in the 5GASP Project. The event also facilitated a discussion panel on the status of 5G – both from a technological and from a commercial network expansion and applications perspective as well.

The full event recording is available in the dedicated YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lx3NZz5ajg&list=PLviCCfHpC15FIYWso3UoSpHN1uut94UQt 

Entitled Building Network Applications in the 5G Ecosystem, the third webinar was focused on presenting examples of Network Applications and presenting more in depth what it means to develop Network Applications on 5G infrastructures. Participants could ask any questions they had on the topic and also learned about the progress done with the 5GASP certification process and how they could get involved in the 5GASP community.

The full event recording is available in the dedicated YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbImcSUN7_0&list=PLviCCfHpC15GpCmdXtjH_rxCoOP61HxRH

An important milestone event of the project, 1st Network Application Lab event hosted by Orange Romania was held in a hybrid format. It was entitled 5G Network Application Lab Launch Event and its’ purpose was to present how Network Application developers can benefit from the platforms and processes developed in the 5GASP project. The event was also aimed at potential developers and thus aimed to inspire different use cases that can be addressed by showcasing the Network Applications that are part of the project, as well as invited guests, part of the VITAL-5G project.

The full event recording is available in the dedicated YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU-HXiahzjM&list=PLviCCfHpC15Hwfn50KtBlBYx5bSb98UVZ

Community building through engagement events is a principal part of the 5GASP project, and one of the objectives set forward at the beginning of 2021, at the projects’ debut. A continuous effort, sometimes challenging to implement given the fast-changing sanitary situations in 2021 and 2022, we, the project Consortium strive to achieve a wide reach to start-ups, scale-ups, academia and SME who want to build upon the 5G stack and deliver state-of-the-art Network Applications.