SWForum.eu, the H2020 EU research project to create a European forum of the software research community, has concluded its long journey begun in October 2019. Led by TECNALIA, the largest applied research and technological development centre in Spain, and supported by a team of four partners, including Trust-IT, the objective of SWForum.eu was to raise awareness and strengthen the competitiveness of the European software Industry by facilitating a sustainable European forum for stakeholders representing scientific researchers, providers, developers, operators, and policy-makers relevant to software technologies, digital infrastructures, and cybersecurity. Under the coordination of TECNALIA, the international consortium was formed by Trust-IT in Pisa, Italy; Conceptivity in Switzerland; Politecnico di Milano in Italy, and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
Born at the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic, SWForum.eu successfully navigated the associated challenges by hosting a comprehensive series of webinars, which remained available to researchers and practitioners alike as a lasting project legacy on the project website. The webinars covered a vast range of topics, ranging from trustworthy software to cutting-edge methodologies like DevOps. The post-webinar reports included recommendations from experts that remain a project legacy on the website and on our Zenodo community.
The consortium focused on important current issues in software technologies, such as contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, by organising events such as the WEGreen Workshop on Engineering Green and Sustainable Software in the Computing Continuum, with onsite logistical support from Trust-IT.
A highlight of the project was the establishment of the SWForum.eu Fellowships Programme. Trust-IT utilised its proven TRUST-Grants™ platform to engage six Fellows, experts in subjects ranging from data science to cybersecurity to EU policy. Collectively, the Fellows published over seventy articles in the SWForum.eu Discussion Forum, which remains a valuable legacy of the project and provides insights on the entire range of topics confronting the software community in Europe today.
Another exciting highlight of the project was a European Commission event featuring Open Source Workshops for Computing and Sustainability, with primary logistical support provided by consortium partners TECNALIA and Trust-IT. Likewise, SWForum.eu consortium partners TECNALIA and Trust-IT provided logistical support and session leadership in the European Commission event on Concertation and Consultation on the Computing Continuum. Here, the consortium presented its Research Roadmap, outlining recommendations for the future research policy of the European Commission. The roadmap was only one of the many reports and analyses produced by consortium partners for the community.
The project concluded in June 2023 with an event designed to bring together top European software technology experts in a discussion of The Way Forward: Workshop on Future Challenges in Software Engineering in Milan, Italy, hosted by consortium partner Politecnico di Milano with logistical and outreach support by Trust-IT. In an intense, highly interactive workshop, the researchers and practitioners discussed the challenges facing software technologists in the coming years in four focused topical sessions: security in the computing continuum; software engineering and artificial intelligence; software engineering for quantum computing; and sustainable software engineering.
Trust-IT constructed and managed the SWForum.eu platform, which remains a rich legacy of information for software technologists in Europe. In addition, Trust-IT was responsible for outreach and dissemination, building a community with nearly four hundred Twitter followers and over a thousand LinkedIn followers.
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