‘Developing in multi-cloud environment with the UNICORN project: cheaper, easier and more efficient’ was the title of the Final UNICORN demo event which took place on the 19th of November in Brussels.
The event was composed of the two parts: the internal morning session included presentations from the 11 SMEs that successfully completed UNICORN validation and shared their experience with the project partners.
Meanwhile, the afternoon’s SME workshops hosted a number of SMEs, as well as other attendees working with the SMEs (e.g., regional representatives, EC’s DG GROW, etc.).
During the SME workshop, UNICORN solution was once again presented, as well as innovative interoperable and portable language for composing high-level analytic insights – one of the UNICORN’s engines! Finally, some of the SMEs that already used and validated UNICORN, as well as Ubitech (one of the UNICORN’s demonstrators) were given the stage to share their success stories.
The event was concluded with the networking drinks and some more of the ‘UNICORN talks’.
Following the event, all the SME success stories were summarised in our short blog article which can be checked here.

On the 13th of November UNICORN was one of the most visible projects among the dozens of those who were invited by CEN/CENELEC to join their ‘Standards + Innovation: Boosting Innovation Through Standards‘ conference.

Besides having its own dedicated UNICORN project space and booth, giving a short talk at standardisation innovators’ pachakucha session, UNICORN also invited participating SMEs to join its third SME workshop!

The workshop was hosted in the UNICORN exhibition area and took an unexpected format: it was a series of UNICORN presentations, given at the beginning of the conference (for the SMEs that registered in advance) and offered during the breaks for smaller groups of visitors (who were invited after they passed UNICORN’s booth). Q&As and interactive discussions followed each of the presentation sessions. This time presentations concentrated around the innovation behind UNICORN’s unique solution and the business advantages encountered by the SMEs that already tested UNICORN.

Anyone interested in the latest innovations shall not miss the upcoming CEN/CENELEC ‘Standards + Innovation: Boosting innovation through standards’ event.

Here, you will have multiple opportunities to meet with our UNICORN team!

First of all, our Samarkhel Khan from DIN will give a short pechakucha talk presenting UNICORN’s input to European Standardisation.

If you are less into standards, but more curious how this all plays out in practice – visit UNICORN exhibition area and participate in our SME workshop. It is designed for SMEs but interesting for anyone curious what’s the innovation behind UNICORN’s unique solution. We will answer this question at 9:30 by the UNICORN’s stand. If you miss out on this one – we will have additional presentations during the coffee breaks!

No time to join the presentation? Don’t worry – pass by our booth for a minute, grab some of our communication materials and feel free to ask any questions that come to your mind. Our team will animate the booth and will be glad to meet you.

Do not forget – 13th of November, SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre, Brussels.

Today, the 24th of September, more than 100 industry representatives, mostly from German ICT SMEs, had a chance to learn about UNICORN!
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kölmel from Steinbeis gave a presentation titled ‘Methods of customer-centered innovation management as the basis for the personalized product (Service design based on UNICORN)‘.
The presentation was delivered at the 14th Scientific interdisciplinary Congress for Dialogue Marketing where six lecturers from different disciplines offered their insight into currently trending research topics.

On the 11th of September, UNICORN’s second SME Workshop was organised to present UNICORN and its success stories to the representatives of SME associations.

Collocated with the European DIGITAL SME Alliance’s General Assembly, the workshop attracted a number of SME associations to learn more about the UNICORN, its offer to businesses, and to be able to spread a message among their SME networks.

All participants attended the UNICORN presentation and received UNICORN “one-pagers”. The presentation highlighted UNICORN’s benefits for businesses and the first results achieved by the UNICORN SME adopters (winners of the Validation Contest). Workshop participants were also briefly introduced to the winners of the contest, while two SME success stories (Sirus and IT-Labs) were presented and analysed.

A discussion session took place after the presentations, concentrating on the issue of vendor lock-in, which was brought to the table by most of the attendees. Workshop facilitators explained how UNICORN contributes to solving this problem. An exchange of views and a Q&A took place afterward.

The workshop concluded with most of the SME associations convinced about the benefits of UNICORN: the word about the UCO Platform will be spreading among thousands of SME members!

If you are in Cyprus this time around and feel like having some pizza and discussing cloud computing – visit the UNICORN talk!

On the 18th of June, 6:30 PM DGD Cyprus invites anyone interested in cloud computing (geeks, experts, students or just curious individuals) to share a drink, grab some pizza and participate in the debate called Docker Containers and Orchestration!

Thanasis Tryfonos from the University of Cyprus will contribute to the debate by running the UNICORN talk, where UNICORN solution will be presented, stressing its orchestration functions.

Find more information here: https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/GDG-Cyprus/events/261457295/

Nordic Game conference is Europe’s leading largest games industry conference, attracting thousands of industry professionals annually. UNICORN was not only fortunate to be present in the conference, but also had a chance to address the conference’s SME attendees in the UNICORN workshop.

The Nordic Game Fast Track was opened by, and hosted by, UNICORN, with the workshop titled “Surviving Success: Using UNICORN Cloud Infrastructure”, by Miikka Lyytikäinen of Aniway (one of the UNICORN validator SMEs) and Erik Robertson of Redikod. Attending developers raised many questions which were answered in the Q&A session and later even followed up with participants by e-mail!

The track and room were all sponsored by UNICORN, exposing some 700+ participants to the poster and other communication materials. Finally, UNICORN was also featured in sponsor display materials reaching thousands of international participants!

Nordic Game conference, traditionally, took place in Malmö, Sweden on the 22nd-24th of May.