How to Participate

We know that time and financial resources are very tight for SMEs, especially for more senior strategic and technical resources typically participating in NESSI.  Thus we know from practice that participating in meetings, and even regular telecoms, can be very difficult for our community thus for 2009 we shall focus community effort around the NESSI SME Group Linked-in forum.  Please join us.  A core steering group will still telecom monthly and will interact strongly with the forum and where applicable invite others to attend but we hope most can be achieved through an on-line social network.

SMEs – key to NESSI’s future

Today, European SMEs employ more than 74 million people while at the same time generating the majority of radical innovations and technological breakthroughs. As such, SMEs constitute one of the pillars for economic and social development in Europe. In January 2007, NESSI’s Steering Committee continued its road to the future of services by highlighting the need to ensure that SMEs become actively involved in the definition, evolution and implementation of NESSI.

A Strategy dedicated to ICT SMEs

A large proportion of European SMEs are ICT stakeholders, delivering ICT solutions. Therefore, full participation of these ICT SMEs is key for NESSI and NESSI has drafted a strategy to reach out to ICT SMEs. 

Though SMEs using services are equally important to NESSI, a clear separation is made between the two different roles of providing services versus using them, and therefore a separate community dedicated to user needs has also been foreseen in NESSI. This SME strategy focuses on the ICT SME stakeholders who deliver ICT solutions.

The activity is under the umbrella of the NESSI Steering Committee and the emerging SME Working Group.  The goal of NESSI’s SME Strategy is to formulate and represent ICT SMEs’ interests throughout the NESSI environment, from Committees to Working Groups to Strategic Research Agenda. At the same time, the strategy aims to ensure that SMEs are not only informed but can also, if they so choose, become actively involved in the future of NESSI.

A Working Group to channel the activity

Recognising that one barrier to SME participation is the cost and time involved in attending physical meetings, the Working Group’s aim is to implement the SME strategy while at the same time setting up an environment that will foster remote collaboration, active participation and limit the need to participate to different meetings.

This approach complements the existing activities of NESSI, as  in parallel all NESSI Working Groups remain open to SMEs who wish to get more involved in a specific Working Group. The NESSI SME Working Group will not focus on domain specific issues but on the contrary will highlight the cross-cutting issues that directly relate to SMEs, independently of a specific application domain.

One important area of activity for the SME Working Group will be, for instance, to analyse, convey and foster implementation of “SME friendly” approaches of NEXOF, the NESSI architecture.

A step by step strategy

The strategy calls for different phases:

• Assessment of the SME Community in NESSI. This task has been defined to profile the existing NESSI SME constituency more precisely in terms of sector, interests, size, knowledge/implementation of software and services
• Enlargement of the SME Community in NESSI. As mentioned earlier, the current constituency should be increased to ensure full relevance of SME views. This step is critical to the success.To view details, please download the SME Working Group Manifesto.
• Support of the SME Community within NESSI. This task aims to detail the interaction between SMEs and the NESSI bodies and Working Groups.
• Engagement of SMEs within the environment of NESSI. The goal of this task is to elaborate and convey the SMEs point of view to the NESSI entities.
• Engagement of SMEs beyond the environment of NESSI. This aims to link and coordinate, when relevant, the activities of the SME Community Group with respect to related initiatives in other ETPs or at national level.

How to Participate

We know that time and financial resources are very tight for SMEs, especially for more senior strategic and technical resources typically participating in NESSI.  Thus we know from practice that participating in meetings, and even regular telecoms, can be very difficult for our community thus for 2009 we shall focus community effort around the NESSI SME Group Linked-in forum.  Please join us.  A core steering group will still telecom monthly and will interact strongly with the forum and where applicable invite others to attend but we hope most can be achieved through an on-line social network.

SMEs – key to NESSI’s future

Today, European SMEs employ more than 74 million people while at the same time generating the majority of radical innovations and technological breakthroughs. As such, SMEs constitute one of the pillars for economic and social development in Europe. In January 2007, NESSI’s Steering Committee continued its road to the future of services by highlighting the need to ensure that SMEs become actively involved in the definition, evolution and implementation of NESSI.

A Strategy dedicated to ICT SMEs

A large proportion of European SMEs are ICT stakeholders, delivering ICT solutions. Therefore, full participation of these ICT SMEs is key for NESSI and NESSI has drafted a strategy to reach out to ICT SMEs. 

Though SMEs using services are equally important to NESSI, a clear separation is made between the two different roles of providing services versus using them, and therefore a separate community dedicated to user needs has also been foreseen in NESSI. This SME strategy focuses on the ICT SME stakeholders who deliver ICT solutions.

The activity is under the umbrella of the NESSI Steering Committee and the emerging SME Working Group.  The goal of NESSI’s SME Strategy is to formulate and represent ICT SMEs’ interests throughout the NESSI environment, from Committees to Working Groups to Strategic Research Agenda. At the same time, the strategy aims to ensure that SMEs are not only informed but can also, if they so choose, become actively involved in the future of NESSI.

A Working Group to channel the activity

Recognising that one barrier to SME participation is the cost and time involved in attending physical meetings, the Working Group’s aim is to implement the SME strategy while at the same time setting up an environment that will foster remote collaboration, active participation and limit the need to participate to different meetings.

This approach complements the existing activities of NESSI, as  in parallel all NESSI Working Groups remain open to SMEs who wish to get more involved in a specific Working Group. The NESSI SME Working Group will not focus on domain specific issues but on the contrary will highlight the cross-cutting issues that directly relate to SMEs, independently of a specific application domain.

One important area of activity for the SME Working Group will be, for instance, to analyse, convey and foster implementation of “SME friendly” approaches of NEXOF, the NESSI architecture.

A step by step strategy

The strategy calls for different phases:

• Assessment of the SME Community in NESSI. This task has been defined to profile the existing NESSI SME constituency more precisely in terms of sector, interests, size, knowledge/implementation of software and services
• Enlargement of the SME Community in NESSI. As mentioned earlier, the current constituency should be increased to ensure full relevance of SME views. This step is critical to the success.To view details, please download the SME Working Group Manifesto.
• Support of the SME Community within NESSI. This task aims to detail the interaction between SMEs and the NESSI bodies and Working Groups.
• Engagement of SMEs within the environment of NESSI. The goal of this task is to elaborate and convey the SMEs point of view to the NESSI entities.
• Engagement of SMEs beyond the environment of NESSI. This aims to link and coordinate, when relevant, the activities of the SME Community Group with respect to related initiatives in other ETPs or at national level.