Brief description
Blue-Cloud is building and demonstrating the marine and maritime thematic access point to EOSC, to support research for understanding & better managing the many aspects of ocean sustainability, ranging from sustainable fisheries to biodiversity and marine environmental indicators.
The project is federating leading European marine data management infrastructures, horizontal e-infrastructures, and selected marine researchers to capitalise on what exists already and to develop and deploy the pilot Blue-Cloud through the following core services:
- A Data Discovery and Access Service
- A Virtual Research Environment
- Dedicated Virtual Labs to demonstrate the potential of the Blue-Cloud
The Blue-Cloud project will demonstrate the potential of collaborative Open Science in the marine domain, and also identify the longer term challenges for wider deployment in technical, organizational, and financial sense. Together, these will provide the basis for a “Blue-Cloud Strategic Roadmap to 2030" to chart the evolution of the services, also in the context of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
Our role
Trust-IT is the Project Coordinator and leads the activities on “Communication, Stakeholders Engagement & Uptake of Blue-Cloud VRE & services”.
Trust-IT ensures consistent and content-rich communication and dissemination of Blue-Cloud results to its relevant stakeholders, by using multiple integrated communication tools, for the roll-out of the Blue-Cloud services and demonstrate impact in the Blue Economy and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). This is done through a “Communication, Dissemination & Stakeholders Engagement Strategy & Plan” which covers several communication activities: branding, communication materials (flyers, videos, posters, amongst others), website, social media channels, newsletters, organisation of Blue-Cloud events and presence at third-party events, training activities, and the creation of win-win synergies to enhance the scientific and economic potential and exploitation opportunities of the Blue-Cloud services, demonstrators and applications.
A range of communications materials and key documents can be found on the official Blue-Cloud Zenodo community.
Impact
Organisation of the Blue-Cloud webinar series
The first webinar introducing all demonstrators took place in June 2020, followed by a dedicated series with a webinar for each demonstrator. Up to February 2021, the webinars have been reaching a diverse audience of 600+ individuals, where around 70% of participants are from academia and research infrastructures, followed by 14% policy & funding agencies, 12% from industry and 3% NGOs.
Policy events
Trust-IT lead the organisation of two policy workshops in July and December 2020, to guide initial steps towards building the Blue-Cloud Roadmap to 2030 and to exchange reflections on the preliminary results of early stakeholder dialogue with the Blue-Cloud Community.
A third “policy dialogue” workshop was held in November 2020 with over 20 representatives from different DGs of the European Commission (including DG RTD, DG GROW, DG DEFIS, DG MARE DG CONNECT, amongst others). Trust-IT also lead the coordination with All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance, resulting in 3 co-located events with the Atlantic community.
Participation in the EC-funded Horizon Results Booster with 9 other marine research projects, resulting in a joint policy brief titled "Nourishing Blue Economy and Sharing Ocean Knowledge" with key recommendations.
Results
Some of the communication and engagement results of the Blue-Cloud project in numbers:
- 1500+ combined followers on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- 670+ total users in the Virtual Research Environment, 230+ of which in the demonstrators Virtual Labs hosted in the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment.
- 200+ responses to the roadmap public consultations across 2020 and 2021
Onboarding your target communities to ensure uptake of research solutions requires a structured approach, deep analytical skills and the design and implementation of communication and engagement plans made up of a mix of techniques and tools.
If you need to identify and build the perfect audience for your research activity and boost your community, contact us, we’ll be happy to help.
