Kick-off meeting with all partners

In-person meetings, NCI Dublin

Representatives from all the consortium members met in Dublin for 2 days of in-person meetings, hosted on the National College of Ireland (NCI) Dublin campus, starting on Tuesday, March 21. 

Tuesday was the first official meeting of all of the Digital4Business partners, commencing with an ‘executive summary’ of the project hosted by Horacio Gonzalez-Velez of NCI. This was followed by a series of speeches from some important stakeholders in the project, including Ireland’s Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris, Dr Kevin Marshall of Microsoft Ireland, Paul Healy (CEO of Skillnet Ireland) and  Dara Calleary, Minister of State for Digital Transformation, before an opportunity for attendees to network and take photographs.

Attendees

Attendees included Cecilia Castellani, Marco Amici, Sara Toticchi and Laure Joachim of Adecco Group; Eva Cibin of Akkodis; David Fitzgerald, Gillian O’Grady, Anne O’Connell, Carmella Sutton, Donna Boyne, Susan Kelly, Carmel Somers, Jamie Meegan, Dave Feenan, Aideen Edwards and Sarah Watson of DTSL; Jeff Sheridan, Richard Domegan, Fionnuala Mahon, Aoife O’Driscoll and Nick Cloake of Matrix Internet; Horacio González-Vélez, Michael Bradford and Teresa Murray of National College of Ireland; Roberto Henriques of NOVA IMS; Ikram Khatir of Nokia; Nédra Mellouli-Nauwynck of Paris 8; Valerie Rousselin and Olivia Caslin of Skillnet Ireland; Brian Cochrane, Ramona Chiritescu, Kim Schierke, Gerard McNamara and Lorcan McNamara of Schuman Associates; Steven Duggan, Alexandre Chevrier de Corcelles and Larissa Fernandes of Terawe; Florian Frank of UDS, and Maria Cristina Garbui, Andrea Zanellati and Anita Macauda of University of Bologna amongst others.

After a coffee break, the focus moved to the project management and delivery of Digital4Business in the agreed upon timeframe. Each of the partners were briefly introduced, and administrative and financial issues were also discussed. The project work plan, quality assurance plan and the steering committee were also among the topics of conversation at this point.

After an hour’s lunch break, the partners arrived back at NCI to touch on programme development and setup. UDS presented material on digital learning platform options, teaching tools and learning materials. This was followed by details about UNIBO’s “train the trainer” programme. After another quick coffee break, the partners participated in the final section of the day, discussing a market needs analysis which was undertaken in order to appropriate curriculum design and employability strategy. After a hard day’s work, all participants were given the opportunity to dine together and relax ahead of another important day.

On Wednesday morning, participants returned to the NCI campus for a series of branding and communications workshops led by Matrix Internet. These were very interactive sessions compared with the previous day, and gave all participants the opportunity to voice their opinions and ideas for how to optimise the marketing, delivery and execution of the master’s degree. This took participants up until lunch time, after which participants returned once more to NCI to discuss business strategy and contractual agreements and also the rollout of the programme, student recruitment strategy and the employability programme.

Overall, it was a very fruitful and engaging two days, with participants returning home with better clarity and an improved vision of what Digital4Business will look like going forward.