(PDF) FLAME D6.3: FMI Ecosystem Engagement Strategy and Plan

WWW.ICT-FLAME.EU

Grant Agreement No.: 731677

Call: H2020-ICT-2016-2017

Topic: ICT-13-2016

Type of action: RIA

D6.3: FMI Ecosystem Engagement

Strategy and Plan

29/05/2017

Monique Calisti, Adriano Galati, Alessandra Scicchitano, (Martel);

Dirk Trossen (IDE);

Michael Boniface (IT Innovation Centre)

FLAME will establish and grow a sustainable Future Media Internet (FMI) ecosystem to ensure

broad socio-economic impact creation through a comprehensive and well-articulated

engagement strategy and plan based on a rich set of dedicated activities.

This document describes the core strategy and plan, as defined in the first months of the

project activity, which ensures a comprehensive and effective approach for the creation and

growth of the FMI ecosystem by supporting FLAME partners in their promotional and outreach

activities.

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Work package

WP6

Task

Task 6.1

Due date

30/04/2017

Submission date

v1: 29/05/2017; v1.1: 03/01/2018

Deliverable lead

Martel

Version

1.1

Authors

Monique Calisti, Adriano Galati, Alessandra Scicchitano (Martel), Dirk Trossen

(IDE), Michael Boniface (ITInnov) and contributions from other FLAME partners

Reviewers

Steven Poulakos (DRZ), Joan Garcia Espin (BIO)

Keywords

FLAME ecosystem, engagement strategy and plan, marketing and communication

Document Revision History

Version

Date

Description of change

V1.0

29/05/2017

First released version

V1.1

03/01/2018

Cross-reference corrections

DISCLAIMER

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation

programme under grant agreement No 731677.

This document reflects only the authors’ views and the Commission is not responsible for any use that

may be made of the information it contains.

Project co-funded by the European Commission in the H2020 Programme

Nature of the deliverable:

R

Dissemination Level

PU

Public, fully open, e.g. web



CL

Classified, information as referred to in Commission Decision 2001/844/EC

CO

Confidential to FLAME project and Commission Services

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

FLAME will establish and grow a sustainable Future Media Internet (FMI) ecosystem to ensure broad

socio-economic impact creation through comprehensive and well-articulated set of dedicated tools

and activities.

Within FLAME, work package 6, is dedicated to “Future Media Community Engagement and Impact”

and aims to establish and sustain the growth of the FMI Ecosystem, through engagement of

stakeholders for broad socio-economic impact creation of FLAME. The objectives are specifically to:

 Ensure broad visibility of FLAME by disseminating and communicating results to all target

stakeholders.

 Reach, stimulate and engage relevant stakeholders for participation in FLAME’s ecosystem and

adoption of FLAME’s approach via dedicated community building instruments and activities.

 Support the establishment of the FMI ecosystem around FLAME and ensure liaisons with related

initiatives (e.g. 5G-PPP, NEM, Creative Hubs, NGI, etc.) to foster its sustainable growth.

 Support SMEs and start-ups through a set of dedicated activities aimed at accelerating business

value creation.

 Align FLAME efforts to relevant standards and open source initiatives, fostering contribution to

them as appropriate and relevant to planned exploitation or project’s outcomes.

This document describes the core strategy and plan, as defined in the first months of the project

activity, which the FLAME partners are following to ensure a comprehensive and effective approach

for the stimulation of the FMI ecosystem.

After a presentation of the FMI ecosystem core traits, including a characterization of the FLAME value

proposition and target stakeholders, this document presents the set of means and actions that we

have implemented and plan to implement ranging from stakeholder engagement to community

building, including targeted communication, preparation of promotional material, participation to and

organisation of events, and specifically engagement of third-party organisations, through open calls

and unfunded experiments.

This document, which will evolve in line with the development of the overall project work and activities

in close collaboration with all other FLAME work packages, is written primarily as a guide for the FLAME

project partners and for key stakeholders in the Future Media Internet ecosystem to have a clearer

understanding of the intended engagement and promotional activities.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 THE FUTURE MEDIA INTERNET ECOSYSTEM .................................................................... 9

2 THE FLAME ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY ........................................................................... 18

3 THE FLAME ENGAGEMENT MACHINE IN ACTION ........................................................... 35

4 ENGAGING THIRD PARTY ORGANISATIONS INTO THE FMI ECOSYSTEM .......................... 45

5 CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS ................................................................................... 51

6 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 52

7 APPENDIX A – THE FIRST FLAME FLYER ......................................................................... 53

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1. FLAME'S POSITIONING IN THE FMI MARKET. ....................................................................... 10

FIGURE 2: FLAME OPERATIONAL PHASE ............................................................................................. 11

FIGURE 3: A STEP-BASED APPROACH TO BUILD THE FMI ECOSYSTEM .................................................. 12

FIGURE 4: A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH OF THE FLAME ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY. ........................... 19

FIGURE 5: TIMELINE OF FLAME OPEN CALLS ....................................................................................... 48

FIGURE 6: THE FLAME FLYER (FRONT) ................................................................................................. 53

FIGURE 7: THE FLAME FLYER (BACK) ................................................................................................... 53

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1: CONSORTIUM PARTNERS FROM INDUSTRY AND EXTERNAL ADVISORS IN THE EIB. ................ 13

TABLE 2: MAPPING OF FLAME OFFERINGS ONTO STAKEHOLDER GROUPS............................................ 16

TABLE 3: STAKEHOLDER GROUPS IDENTIFIED FOR ENGAGEMENT. ....................................................... 17

TABLE 4: LIST OF FMI EXPERIMENTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE REPLICATION DELIVERABLES. ........... 35

TABLE 5: LIST OF FMI EXPERIMENTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE REPLICATION MILESTONES. ............. 36

TABLE 6: LIST OF FUTURE MEDIA COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT DELIVERABLES. ................ 36

TABLE 7: LIST OF FUTURE MEDIA COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT MILESTONES. .................. 36

TABLE 8: GANTT CHART OF PHASE 1. .................................................................................................. 39

TABLE 9: GANTT CHART OF PHASE 2. .................................................................................................. 41

TABLE 10: GANTT CHART OF PHASE 3. ................................................................................................ 44

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ABBREVIATIONS

CDT Centre for Doctoral Training

CTN Comité Técnico de Normalización

DoA Description of Action

DWG Dissemination Working Group

EaaS Experimentation-as-a-Service

EIB Experimentation Impact Board

EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute

FLAME Facility for Large-scale Adaptive Media Experimentation

FMI Future Media Internet

ICN Information-Centric Networks

ICNRG Information-Centric Networking Research Group

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IETF Internet Engineering Task Force

IOS International Organization for Standardization

IoT Internet of Things

IRTF Internet Research Task Force

ITU International Telecommunication Union

MEC Multi-access Edge Computing

NFV Network Function Virtualization

NGI Next Generation Internet

NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology

OTT Over-The-Top

PIML Personalized, Interactive, Mobile and Localized

QoS Quality of Service

RC Release Candidate

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RoR Rate of Return

SDN Software Defined Networks

SDO Standards Developing Organization

SFC Service Function Chaining

SFC WG Service Function Chaining Working Group

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1 THE FUTURE MEDIA INTERNET ECOSYSTEM

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The demand for multimedia internet services continues to grow exponentially, driving the dominant

role of the Future Media Internet (FMI) into the next generation of media and service delivery systems.

Consumers are increasingly watching audio-visual content through on-demand online services (e.g.

Netflix, BBC iPlayer) whilst new multimedia applications are driving production and consumption

patterns towards greater personalisation, mobility, rich dynamic interactivity, (ultra) high definition

and immersive media content. Content Providers, Service Providers and Network Operators face the

challenge of delivering an enhanced Quality of Experience (QoE) for the users by fulfilling Quality of

Service (QoS) requirements whilst maintaining profits and sustainable investments.

FLAME’s goal is to establish an FMI ecosystem based on the Experimentation-as-a-Service (EaaS)

paradigm that supports urban-scale experimentation of novel FMI products and services using real-life

adaptive experimental infrastructures encompassing not only the compute and storage facilities but

also the underlying software-enabled communication infrastructure. At the heart of the ecosystem will

be a new adaptive content delivery platform which combines Network Function Virtualisation (NFV)

and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies to efficiently deliver on-demand media whilst

supporting the development and large-scale adoption of new forms of interactive media.

FLAME’s offering aims to support a whole community of media and ICT stakeholders from industry,

SMEs and research, whilst connecting to related initiatives and projects. This requires, from the

beginning of the project, a clear understanding of how to effectively reach and engage the target

stakeholders. They can contribute to validate, refine, enrich and transform the FLAME offering

according to the needs and opportunities that can vary with respect to the different types of

stakeholders and their technological or vertical focus.

Only through a clear and well-articulated strategy and action plan it will be possible to create an FMI

ecosystem that is vibrant, growing and sustainable. The approach needs to harmonise and synchronise

engagement of target stakeholders with FLAME activities and their outcomes. At the start of the

project there are strategic and operational aspects which are evolving and will mature as technical

activities progress. However, the FLAME work plan outlines clear starting points for the FMI ecosystem

that can contribute defining an initial FMI engagement strategy and plan. In addition, all partners are

aware of the importance of converging to a strong and well-orchestrated action plan, especially in view

of pushing FLAME outcomes towards relevant stakeholders.

The FMI engagement and marketing strategy and plan will evolve and will integrate changes in order

to minimize risks, maximise reach and impact, account for progress on the technical and exploitation

activities, and account for the lessons learned via engagement activities including validation

experiments and those conducted by 3rd parties as part of FLAME

open calls.

In order to define an effective engagement and marketing strategy, a

preliminary work is to answer some core questions that will help

characterizing the fundamental traits of the FMI ecosystem, refine the

FLAME offering and formulate its value proposition, identify and

prioritise the target stakeholders, understand when and which

specific engagement measure can/should be triggered and by whom.

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1.2 TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE FMI ECOSYSTEM

The Future Media Internet will be driven by evolving existing over-the-top (OTT) solutions towards a

stronger integration with emerging programmable communication and computing infrastructures to

address consumer demand for personalised, interactive, mobile and localised (PIML) media

experiences. In this context, the creation of trusted platforms that bring together technology, creative

sectors and consumers for the development of pioneering media applications and services is crucial to

drive European innovation and competitiveness.

FLAME aims to establish an FMI ecosystem based on the Experimentation-as-a-Service (EaaS)

paradigm that supports large-scale experimentation of novel FMI products and services using

real-life adaptive experimental infrastructures encompassing not only the compute and storage

facilities but also the underlying software-enabled communication infrastructure.

FLAME will offer a highly flexible platform for media service delivery, experimentation tools to observe

and control what runs on the platform, an FMI knowledgebase to incrementally capture system

behaviour, consultants providing know-how in FMI experiment design and city environments to

engage users in urban scale trials.

The FMI ecosystem is expected to comprise the creative industries (broadcast, gaming, etc.) and ICT

industries (telcos, services) responsible for online distribution, broadcast, communication, and

distribution of digital content. Through acceleration methodologies and an advanced experimentation

platform (surrogate service management, adaptive service routing, experimental media service chains

and experimentation toolbox), FLAME will allow industry, SMEs and start-ups to conduct experiments

in real-life experimental infrastructures and gain insight into the performance, acceptance and viability

of solutions.

Figure 1. FLAME's positioning in the FMI market.

FLAME’s innovation potential will be maximised by establishing FLAME Trailblazers (starting from

Bristol and Barcelona that are directly involved as partners into the FLAME project) to show the way

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for FLAME Replicators across Europe using a replication process based on best practice sustainability,

governance, and engagement models, and infrastructure standards and specifications.

Moreover, as discussed in Section 4, through a comprehensive 3rd party investment strategy FLAME

will create a vibrant FMI ecosystem that adds significant value to the Next Generation Internet

experimentation efforts and puts in place measures for long term sustainability.

Figure 2: FLAME operational phase

1.2.1 Supporting a sustainable ecosystem

FLAME considers theover-arching experimentationcustomer relationship strategyas FLAME

transitions throughdistinct operational phases on its route to sustainability (see diagram in Figure 2).

Eachphase has a distinct financialmodel that influences the governance and decision makingof the

experimentation infrastructure, and importantly therelationship with customers as shown below.

FLAME will manage the transition between the different phases as a key factor in the success of the

project. The pre-project conceptualisation defined concepts and the approach and got buy in from

stakeholders: infrastructure and other asset providers and initial investors. The validation

experiments phase validates the concept and approach resulting in an operational facility for 3rd party

experimentation projects. The open call experiments phase, through 3rd party experimentation

projects, executes experiments funded by the project which receives in return insights into how to

improve the FLAME offering.

The unfunded experiments phase allows FLAME customers to execute experiments which are not

funded by the project. Therefore, they must pay their own costs to access services according to an

agreement beyond the scope of the project. In this case, experiments are governed by EaaS terms and

conditions, and IPR must be governed by an appropriate license. Further legal agreements may be

necessary to attribute rights, responsibilities and legal liability. It allows the project to understand the

legal and operational requirements needed for post project sustainability. Moreover, unfunded

experiments provide test cases for simulating future business models including costs and revenues.

Examples of strategies include open access, unfunded open calls, and invitations to strategic industrial

sponsors.

Finally, Sustainability Experiments phase is concerned with the post-project viability and continuous

operation after initial public funding. At this stage, we expect a sustainability model being in place

which outlines the operation of experiments without dedicated FLAME public funding supporting

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those. Nonetheless, continued public funding is likely to play a role in these post-project experiments,

such as through extended 5G efforts (such as through 5GPPP call 3 funding or through national funding

in large countries such as the UK or Germany). Also, FLAME will explore the role of SDOs in the

utilization of facilities provided by the FLAME platform. For instance, sustainability models could

include the conduct of ETSI proof-of-concepts at scale or IETF plug-fests.

FLAME exploitation and sustainability aspects will be addressed by a dedicated work

package, namely work package 2. There are dedicated tasks and planned deliverables

in the pipeline. In this document, at this stage of the project, we anticipate some high-

level and preliminary aspects that relate to the foundation of the FMI ecosystem in a

durable and solid manner as described in this section.

1.2.2 Experimentation and cascade funding as essential to sustainability of the FMI

ecosystem

In order to meet this ambitious vision, to attract newcomers to FLAME and engage them in the

adoption of the project concepts, outcomes, tools and technologies, a comprehensive and well-

articulated set of communication and marketing activities have been planned (as presented in more

details in Section 3), relying on a step-based approach, see Figure 3.

Figure 3: A step-based approach to build the FMI ecosystem

An essential part of the engagement strategy is the experimentation investments through 3rd party

projects both the ones involving Open Calls (cascade funding) and the unfunded experiments (as

detailed in Section 4.4). FLAME will invest more than two million Euro in experimentation-related

financial support to third parties contributing to the creation and growth of a European FMI ecosystem

embracing all relevant stakeholders and players in various creative industry sectors (TV, radio, gaming,

publishing, advertising) and related sectors (smart city, education, healthcare, etc.).

The investment strategy will be targeted to ensure funding is distributed between different ecosystem

stakeholders at key periods in the project lifecycle in ways to increase the socio-economic impact of

the project. The investment strategy will be driven by priorities defined by the FLAME Experimentation

Impact Board (EIB).

The EIB is responsible for identifying FMI vision, strategy and reviewing experimentation progress,

ensuring FLAME’s priorities reflect areas with potential for significant socio-economic impact. The EIB

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will be formally activated at project month 7 (July 2017) and will play a key role for the overall FMI

ecosystem set up, growth and sustainability. The EIB includes the Project Coordinator, the Technical

Manager, the Project Manager, the 3rd Party Project Manager, Consortium Partners from Industry and

External Advisors (see Table 1). The EIB will meet bi-annually through virtual board meetings. The

External Advisors are representatives from key stakeholders from the FMI ecosystem responsible for

steering FLAME’s vision, strategy and priorities.

Table 1: Consortium Partners from Industry and External Advisors in the EIB.

Member

Affiliation

Role

FMI Priorities

Mike Matton

VRT (consortium)

Senior researcher at leading

European public broadcaster

Broadcast industry challenges and

opportunities

Bob Sumner

DRZ (consortium)

Associate Director, Disney

Research Zurich

Film and Gaming industry

challenges

Josep Matrat

ATOS (consortium)

Market Manager of Telecom,

Media and IT services

Media Services Industry

challenges and opportunities, link

to initiatives such as 5G PPP and

NEM

Ingrid Willems

Creative Ring

(external advisor)

Co-Founder of European non-

for-profit organisation, building

bridges between actors within

creative hubs (in Eindhoven,

Gent, Brussels, Aarhus,

Barcelona, Tampere)

(http://www.creativering.eu/)

Advise on FLAME Replication,

sustainability, governance and

engagement models

Pierre-Yves

Danet

Orange (external

advisor)

Head of European collaborative

Research at Orange Labs and

Chair of ETNO's Research and

Innovation Working Group

Telecommunications industry

operator challenges and

opportunities

Jean-

Dominique

Meunier

Technicolor

(external advisor)

NEM Chairman and Executive

Director

European Networked Media and

Creativity industry challenges and

opportunities

Robert

Sanders

European Business

and Innovation

Centre Network

(external advisor)

Head of International Projects,

www.europeanace.eu,

www.acecreative.eu

Advise on FLAME Replication,

sustainability, governance and

engagement models; Strategies

for engagement with SME

networks

Michael De

Wolf

DweSam (external

advisor)

Chief Executive Officer

Broadcast industry challenges and

opportunities

1.3 THE FLAME OFFERING AND VALUE PROPOSITION

FLAME is implementing a set of impact creation activities that will contribute to the success of the

project within the telecommunications sector, the media sector, and beyond. It will specifically

facilitate business value creation for an FMI ecosystem, including creative industries exploiting

advanced networking technologies and ICT players offering innovative applications. This has a huge

potential for socio-economic impact when considering that with almost 1 million enterprises, the

creative industry sector represents nearly 4.5% of the total European business economy and employs

over 3.2 million people [1]. In this perspective, the FLAME facilities offer new possibilities to stimulate

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the growth of European creative industries as a driver for productivity and a source of innovation in

products and services development.

As outlined in the project’s Description of Action (DoA) FLAME aims to develop a flexible service

delivery platform supporting personalised, interactive, mobile and localised media services. In order

to drive the adoption of the FLAME platform, the project will establish a new transformative ecosystem

that benefits consumers, media service providers, content providers, vendors and network operators

for a range of traditional and novel media scenarios. FLAME will utilize open call funding to attract

innovators as well as drive replication of the FLAME platform beyond the initial deployment in Bristol

and Barcelona.

As a starting point for our engagement strategy and plan, the initial work in WP2 has expanded on our

vision in the DoA by identifying concrete key offerings provided by FLAME and its partners.

 Technologies: the specific innovative capabilities of the FLAME platform have been initially

described in deliverable D3.1 entitled “FMI Vision, Use Cases and Scenarios”, realized by a set of

underlying technologies that is at the heart of the FLAME offering in this space. Given the

experimental capabilities that the FLAME platform will expose, we see a strong value proposition

for technology evaluation at scale, enabling testing for interoperability and scalability of these

technologies and those built specifically on top.

 Experimentation environment: the experimental capabilities of the platform, aiming for

repeatable experiments of a system-under-test, strengthens not only the specific offering at the

technology level (see above) but also provides strong system-level testing capabilities for any

experimenter in need for such system view. The target range of experimenters for this offering

ranges from individual technology providers to media service providers and operators of such

FLAME-enabled facilities. This strengthens the value of technology evaluation through a system-

level capability as well as provides system experimentation capabilities for showcasing, user

acceptance testing and others.

 Knowledgebase and analytics: the real-life data obtained from system level experiments and

the capability of the FLAME platform to extract data from many levels of the platform drives the

creation of a rich knowledge base over which to execute a rich set of analytics. This in itself

constitutes a strong offering that FLAME can provide over the lifetime of the operations. The

value here is derived through real-life insights into operational as well as user-level data with

such value being delivered to a wide range of experimenters that include technology and media

service providers, venue as well as platform operators but possibly also regulators.

 Consulting services and training: developing and operating a platform such as FLAME provides

deep operational insights that are value in themselves. Particularly in conjunction with the

replication aim of the FLAME project, i.e., the establishment of other FLAME sites beyond the

initial ones in Bristol and Barcelona, consulting and training services become a possibly strong

offering of FLAME. Value here lies in training material as well as specialist consulting services

that are provided to replicators as well as experimenters alike for the utilization of the offerings

outlined above.

 Funding: FLAME provides initial funding in its DoA for the seeding of experiments that not only

highlight the capabilities of the FLAME platform but also seed the FMI ecosystem in which

FLAME is embedded. According to the DoA, our initial customers are those innovative SMEs,

both established as well as early phase, that see benefit in the capabilities of the FLAME

platform. Other customers include operators and venue providers for possible replicators, which

FLAME plans to initially fund. Apart from the value through this project-provided funding, we

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however also see the possibility to attract 3rd party funding, both public as well as private, as a

crucial offering that FLAME provides through its key partners at the academic and

entrepreneurial level.

For each of these offerings that we have identified so far, the activities in WP6 will develop concrete

engagement tools that will maximize the value created and allow to engage with the identified target

customers as well as those stakeholders that are needed to drive our offerings into these target

customers. For this, WP6 will continue to collaborate with the activities in WP2, specifically those in

T2.1 (market analysis) and T2.3 (business plan development) in order to adjust any engagement

activities accordingly. The tools presented in Section 2 of this deliverable provide an overview of those

currently aligned with our preliminary findings in WP2.

In summary, the benefits of experimentally-driven development of FMI solutions using

advanced virtualised and reconfigurable infrastructures are the core value proposition

around which the FLAME marketing and promotional efforts are being organised. This

shall serve to attract newcomers to FLAME and to the FMI ecosystem who perceive

value in joining the FMI ecosystem by:

 Adopting FLAME concepts and technologies for improved media content delivery

and increase audience experience and engagement.

 Deploying the FLAME platform to run experiments.

 Getting funding through the Open Calls.

 Establishing contact with other players in the FMI ecosystem.

1.4 TARGET STAKEHOLDERS FOR ENGAGEMENT

The identification of the FLAME offering and value in Section 1.3 is the crucial first step to identify the

target stakeholders to engage with, as presented in this section. WP2 is currently undergoing a market

analysis that, among other things, includes the identification of these key stakeholders. We here

present a brief overview of our current findings as they shape the engagement strategy at this point.

A more detailed description can be found in the upcoming deliverable D2.1 at M6, including a wider

overview of the FMI market and the FMI ecosystem; we refer the reader to this upcoming deliverable

for gaining more understanding on where we see FLAME fits in terms of ecosystem as well as

positioning our offering in the overall FMI market.

As a first step to shape our engagement strategy, we define two cross-cutting stakeholder groups of

relevance to engagement within the context of the FLAME offering, as presented in Section 1.3, namely

target customers and facilitators. The former group consists of those stakeholders of the FMI

ecosystem that would directly benefit from the value provided by each of our offerings. This benefit

can be in economic (e.g., better positioning in the overall market and therefore increased revenue) or

social form (e.g., acceptance of new services for better living spaces).

Facilitators are stakeholders that foster, enable or in any way influence (positively or negatively) the

value capturing through target customers. For instance, certain areas of technology can be influenced

by policymakers, e.g. through radio spectrum policy, that could potentially have a strong impact on a

particular FLAME offering and therefore on the value capturing process.

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It is key to the FLAME engagement strategy that we aim at suitably engaging with target

customers and facilitators to support our objective of creating a sustainable FLAME

offering, particularly beyond public funding.

With this view on two key stakeholder groups in mind, Table 2 below presents mapping as currently

identified in WP2.

Table 2: Mapping of FLAME Offerings onto Stakeholder Groups.

FLAME Offering

Target Customers

Facilitators

Technologies

Media service providers,

Operators,

Technology providers

SDOs (ETSI MEC, IETF, ETSI NFV, DASHIF, 3GPP SA4

& SA2)

Regulators (national & European)

Industry initiatives (5GPPP, 5G Americas)

Experiment Environment

Media service providers,

Platform providers,

Venue providers,

Operators,

Technology providers,

Research innovators

SDOs

Regulators (national & European)

Industry initiatives (5GPPP, 5G Americas)

Knowledge base &

Analytics

Media service providers,

Operators,

Technology providers,

Regulators

(policymakers),

Research innovators

Regulators (national & European)

Industry initiatives (5GPPP, 5G Americas)

Consultancy & Training

Media service providers,

Operators,

Municipalities,

Venue providers

SDOs

Regulators (national & European)

Funding

Media service providers,

Technology providers,

Municipalities,

Venue providers,

Research innovators

Funding agencies (national & European)

Although we can recognize that various market players appear as target customers and/or facilitators

in relation to several FLAME offerings, their role as stakeholder relevant to the FLAME offering in which

they were identified is specific and needs therefore a tailored approach to engagement. For instance,

engaging with a technology provider in the context of the experiment environment is likely going to

differ from engaging in the context of consulting services.

The work in WP6 will continue to develop such specific engagement actions based on these

groupings as their future work. In the meantime, we provide a coarse clustering of stakeholders along

various characteristics that we have already identified as likely being important for the overall impact

creation as well as for the formulation for specific engagement strategies for those groups. The first

cluster represents the various innovation actors in Table 2 (such as media service providers, technology

providers, etc.), while the second cluster focusses on key facilitators that we have identified. Table 3

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shows these clusters in different shading and the primary engagement that we have identified thus far

for these groups.

In Section 2, we elaborate on the specific engagement strategy and the identified methods for

engaging with the communities and stakeholders identified so far.

Table 3: Stakeholder groups identified for engagement.

Target Group

Benefits to FLAME

Primary engagement

European SMEs

and Hubs

Demand for the platform; validation of

concept and approach; new products

and services; socio-economic impact of

results

3rd party projects; VRT Sand-box

incubation programme; Affiliations with

Creative Ring, Ace Creative/EBN, EIT Digital

community; Connection to Set Squared,

and Pervasive Media Studios

Industry Players

In addition to those for SMEs and hubs,

additionally align FLAME

experimentation strategy with

industries priorities; Platform seeding

strategy based on marquee players;

High impact pilots and success stories

Core consortium vertical experiments

(VRT, DRZ); 3rd party funding for

experimentation; Participation in the

Experimentation Impact Board. Bristol

Leads to BBC and Opposable Games via

BIO stakeholders

Research and

innovator

Actors

Elaboration of FLAME Replication

processes; Long term sustainability of

FLAME experimentation

Core consortium FLAME Trailblazing

infrastructures; 3rd part funding for FLAME

Replicators. Connection to the University

of Bristol, SetSquared tech incubator,

Pervasive Media studios

Industry

Initiatives, e.g.,

5GPPP

Contribute to the common purpose of

FMI ecosystem; Reuse of

methodologies, tools and technologies;

Promotion of results

Future Internet Researchers and

Innovators, FLAME partners’ 5GPPP

projects, 5G(PPP) events.

SDOs

De-risk technology investments for all

stakeholders; Increase sustainability of

solutions; Increase acceptance of

FLAME Replication process

Core consortium partner contributions to

relevant bodies

Society, Local

Authorities and

Citizens

Public/private investment in FLAME

Replicator locations; Increased social

impact; Citizen participation in

experiments

FLAME Replication process; Connection to

Bcnlab, IMI Smart Lab, EuroCities, Bristol

Tech District, Knowledge West Media

Centre, Bristol City Council

Regulators

De-risk technology investments for all

stakeholders; Increase sustainability of

solutions; Increase acceptance of

FLAME Replication process

Engagement workshops, national

initiatives engagements, such as through

UK National Infrastructure Committee

General Press

and Media

Broad coverage and promotion of

results

FLAME as well as partner press releases;

Media content (videos, etc.), proposed

routes via BIO leads (Bristol Media),

technical press articles

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2 THE FLAME ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

The overall FLAME engagement strategy aims to:

 Incrementally increase utilisation of the FLAME platform over the lifetime of the project.

 Progressively invest in utilisation of the platform by industry, SMEs and entrepreneurs in

accordance with the expected value creation.

 Shift emphasis from large scale industry towards innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs

throughout the lifetime of the project as the platform matures.

 Execute 23 experiments by target stakeholders (media service providers, ISPs, vendors etc.)

covering a range of sectors, content types and FMI scenarios.

 Expand the platform deployment towards three further FLAME Replicators.

 Gather top-notch players via the 3rd party open call mechanisms.

 Create mechanisms that can help the FMI ecosystem to sustain beyond the FLAME lifetime.

2.1 A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH

The engagement will be achieved through a comprehensive and well-articulated plan, which accounts

for the overall project objectives, for the individual strategies and plans of the FLAME partners and

which is empowered via a rich set of dissemination, communication and marketing tools and activities,

in addition to the dedicated 3rd party engagement strategy and plan, see Figure 4.

In concrete terms, this relies upon efforts across all project activities that embrace:

 Coordinated marketing and communication efforts across the whole consortium and extended

by individual partner efforts in line with their exploitation plans.

 Organisation of dedicated co-creative workshops to analyse user requirements in relation to the

Platform Engineering for an FMI Experimentation Platform work package.

 3rd Party engagement strategy and plan under the lead of the FMI Experimentation and

Infrastructure Replication work package.

In our increasingly connected society, the role of marketing and communication at the service of

innovation and more specifically innovation acceptance, adoption and impact is crucial. We have at

our disposal a growing palette of digital communication and marketing means that build on top of

more traditional ones. To be successful, the increased options offered by non-verbal and almost real-

time channels and tools, must be properly combined and orchestrated through a qualified,

competent and creative approach. The FLAME consortium believes in the power of experiences,

because regardless of their form, great experiences can connect people and instil in them a truly

unforgettable feeling that FLAME will strive to create and convey. Simply put, experiences build

relationships and relationships build understanding, stimulate creativity and extend reach and

impact.

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Figure 4: A comprehensive approach of the FLAME engagement strategy.

Especially when it comes to promotion of innovative technologies among diverse target groups, it is

necessary to elaborate on how marketing and communication can help in creating awareness,

facilitating understanding, stimulating acceptance and triggering engagement by adapting not only

the message, but also the deployed communication means to the specific audience.

With this in mind, FLAME’s marketing and communication activities will:

 Ensure broad visibility of the project work and disseminate its results to the Future Internet

community and beyond with a view to the uptake of FLAME’s offering by innovative players in

the Future Media landscape.

 Reach, stimulate and engage a critical mass of relevant stakeholders in the adoption and

experimentation of the FLAME platform in accordance with the 3rd party investment strategy

(such as the increasing engagement of innovative SMEs during the lifetime of the project).

 Support the establishment of a Future Media Community around FLAME and ensure liaisons

with related initiatives and projects both within the Next Generation Internet context and

beyond (for instance in the Creative Industries, Media and Content domains) that will contribute

to growing and sustaining such a community.

 Facilitate exploitation of FLAME’s outcomes and promote the development of innovative

solutions based on FLAME by Future Media SMEs and start-ups through a set of dedicated

activities aimed at accelerating business value creation through the FLAME platform.

 Align FLAME’s efforts to relevant standards and open source initiatives, fostering contribution

to them as appropriate and relevant to planned exploitation or project outcomes, especially in

relation to establishing FLAME Replicators.

2.2 SELECTED COMMUNICATION AND MARKETING TOOLS

The set of envisaged community building and dissemination activities reflects the nature of the FLAME

project itself by trying to diversify and differentiate communication means and messages so as to adapt

to and meet the multi-faceted composition of the target communities, while stimulating impact

creation in several ways.

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 The FLAME identity toolkit which provides a distinctive brand identity and which has been

created and delivered through a logo, guidelines, and templates for presentations and

deliverables.

 FLAME web-site: a modern, fresh and fully functional web-site, which represents the entry door

for all the interested stakeholders at www.ict-flame.eu.

 Social media presence: ensuring the FLAME presence in major related blogs and social

communication channels such as Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn to promote the project’s

activities and results (including the organisation of events and Open Calls) as a means to engage

a high number of stakeholders to the FMI ecosystem.

 Electronic e-newsletters: a twice-yearly newsletter to be broadly distributed via all FLAME

channels and FLAME partners’ networks.

 Technical blog corner: a blog has been created to publish news regarding FLAME project

activities and results, as well as related topics. The page will show our regular expert blogs on

FMI relevant aspects, technologies, trends and more in order to actively engage with the FMI

stakeholders beyond our own project results. Contributions from all of the partners will be

provided as the project progresses.

 Scientific publications: to raise awareness and build credibility about R&D outcomes through

publications in conferences and journals targeting the ICT (Future Internet) and FMI research

communities.

 Miscellaneous dissemination material including press releases, flyers, presentations, posters

and videos to be broadly disseminated and promoted especially in coordination with specific

events and Open Calls advertisement.

 Participation in relevant events both scientific and business-oriented, with demos, flyers,

publications and/or presentations. A shared events calendar is helping partners to coordinate

on this front so as to optimize resources and maximise the impact. Plans include:

 FLAME at selected future Startup Weekend

1

 FLAME at Startup Bootcamp

2

 Organisation of events to promote FLAME’s offering and outcomes and engaging into the FMI

ecosystem the various target stakeholders. Different types of events are planned:

 FLAME Media Hackathons coupled with FLAME training (2 events led by WP6)

 FLAME co-creative / user requirements workshops (2 events led by WP3)

 FLAME outreach / community building workshops (1 per year led by WP6)

1

https://startupweekend.org

2

www.startupbootcamp.org

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 Media and press presence: pursue appearances in local, national and international press and TV.

In doing so, the aim is to ensure promotion through existing EC media services, channels and

tools, such as the Digital Agenda/Digital Single Market mailing lists, web pages, Twitter and

Facebook profiles

 Liaisons with related projects are planned to be exploited in a twofold way. First as a way to

echo and amplify our communication efforts, second as a way to more effectively reach target

stakeholders.

 Specific engagement measures for the various identified initiatives and projects FLAME is

connected to are described in the following section.

This set of artefacts will be refined and enriched according to the projects’ progress. As

of today, as detailed in Section 3, WP6 has already delivered the FLAME Identity Toolkit,

the FLAME web site, which is regularly maintained with relevant news and information,

the FLAME Twitter channel, which is regularly animated, a first FLAME flyer, and a short

paper that has been accepted for the EuCNC 2017 posters session.

2.3 TARGETED LIAISONS AND OUTREACH MEASURES

To build the Future Media Internet ecosystem, FLAME is starting from a solid and vast network of

contacts the partners have within several related initiatives that can facilitate reaching the target

groups of stakeholders. These target groups and the primary engagement that has been identified

were already presented in Table 3.

At this stage, some of the liaisons (as listed below) are more mature than others. However, the overall

aim is to explore all connections listed below in order to assess their concrete relevance and prioritize

which of them will be core to our FMI engagement plans.

Related EC initiatives / EC projects

 The 5G PPP initiative aims at creating the next generation of communication networks and

services, rethinking the seamless integration of mobile and fixed network infrastructures. The

5G PPP is planned in three phases. The first wave of nineteen research and innovation projects

was launched working on fundamental research of future networks. One of the innovation

working strands addresses the software networks evolution (SDN/NFV). The second phase,

which will start in summer 2017, will continue with the network research by putting the

emphasis on two dimensions; i) the inclusion of vertical industries requirements in the research

(Media and Entertainment, Automotive, eHealth and Manufacturing) and ii) the establishment

of experimentation strategy to settle large scale trials with the vertical sector in a pre-

competitive scenario. FLAME is the timely and essential piece to inject into the 5G

experimentation on advance media services over virtualised networks, providing a 5G-ready

experimentation ground for activities surrounding the 5G PPP phase 2 and upcoming phase 3

efforts in large-scale experimentation by 2018, ready for the open call experimentation within

FLAME but also ready for attracting 5G-focussed experiments in the media and smart

infrastructure space. We will aim to explore how the fixed infrastructure can be optimised to

support high mobility scenarios by ensuring that content and services are optimally positioned

in the network to deliver the required QoE. The FLAME platform and testbeds will become the

entry point for experimenters to test advanced media services over software-defined networks

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and will become the home for media research as a crucial economic sector to support the

evolution of networks.

Primary stakeholders: network operators.

Primary target groups: industry.

Measures to engage the 5G PPP community

 Participate in 5G / 5G PPP-driven events to promote and demo our work either via

dedicated sessions, workshops, presentations and publications. Events on the radar include:

EuCNC

3

, the 5G Global

4

events, and the Wireless Broadband Congress

5

.

 Follow the 5G PPP social media presence and channels to echo and amplify our news.

Martel is managing the 5G PPP media channels via the ongoing EURO-5G CSA.

 Plan for common workshops / events with related projects and invite 5G PPP

representatives to our planned events.

 Foster liaisons with the Networld2020 SME Working Group (Martel is member) as a

specific channel and context to promote FLAME and specifically Open Calls dedicated to

SMEs.

 Participate in the monthly 5G PPP COMMS conference calls. The 5G PPP COMMS group

gathers dissemination and communication representatives from all ongoing 5G PPP

projects. Regular conference calls take place as a way to coordinate on efforts across the

whole community.

 Capitalize on FLAME partners’ participation in related 5G PPP projects.

 FIRE: The Future Internet Research and Experimentation (https://www.ict-fire.eu/) is an

initiative launched with the goal of offering cutting edge test facilities that could not be

accessible otherwise by many European researchers and innovators. At the heart of the overall

initiative there are projects establishing hubs for technology innovation in key areas, e.g.

advanced networking, 5G / SDN, IoT, data, cloud infrastructures, and their use within a wide

range of diverse business and application domains, e.g. smart city, healthcare, marine, land and

air applications. FLAME is indeed a project that was conceived within the context of FIRE to

specifically provide large-scale experimentation of personalised, interactive, mobile and

localised media experiments. Even though in the meantime the FIRE initiative has ended, the

community of players investigating and experimentally validating highly innovative and

disruptive approaches and ideas for next generation networking and service paradigms at a

lower cost, in a more rapid way, still exist and operates now across three different units within

DG Connect. Most of the former FIRE projects have moved to Unit E1, like FLAME, some other

moved to the IoT E4 Unit and some are with the Next Generation Internet, NGI, E3 Unit. Despite

this diaspora, the value of large-scale experimentation efforts remains central to enable

3

www.eucnc.eu

4

www.5g-ppp.eu

5

www.wirelessglobalcongress.com

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innovation in several ICT domains, if not all, and the good news is that the FIRE community

continues to actively coordinate on marketing and communication efforts via the monthly

conference call meetings run by the FIRE Dissemination Working Group (DWG).

Primary stakeholders: (experimentation) platform and infratructure providers.

Primary target groups: research.

Measures to engage the large-scale experimentation community

 Participate to monthly FIRE DWG conference call as a channel to communicate and

advertise FLAME outcomes, events, open calls, etc. and identify possible synergies.

 Follow the FIRE social media presence and channels to echo and amplify our news. Martel

is managing the FIRE media channels via the ongoing FIRE STUDY project.

 Coordinate with the Fed4FIRE+ project on common activities that might be of relevance to

promote and stimulate FLAME experimental facilities deployment. Several FLAME partners

are also involved in Fed4FIRE+.

 Plan for contributions and participation in upcoming Fed4FIRE+ Engineering Conferences

(FEC - https://www.fec1.fed4fire.eu/about). The next edition is planned early October 2017

in Volos, Greece.

 NGI: The Next Generation Internet initiative was launched last September with the ambition to

shape the Internet of the future as a powerful, open, data-driven, user-centric, interoperable

platform ecosystem. The Internet as we know it today is a critical infrastructure composed of

communication services and end-user applications transforming all aspects of our lives. Recent

advances in technology and the inexorable shift towards everything connected are creating a

data-driven society where productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on

increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex networked systems. The challenge for

the NGI is to design and build enabling technologies, implement and deploy systems, to create

opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviours where

humans and machines seamlessly cooperate. While born recently, the NGI community is

growing around a number of activities (consultations, workshops, funding) that several FLAME

partners are directly involved in and that will be exploited to promote FLAME and grow the FMI

ecosystem.

Primary stakeholders: service providers.

Primary target groups: SMEs, Entrepreneurs, Hubs.

Measures to engage the Next Generation Internet community

 Publish via NGI Futurium web site relevant news and follow the NGI social media presence

and channels to echo and amplify our news. Martel is managing the NGI Futurium web area

and NGI media channels via the ongoing HUB4NGI CSA and IT Innovation is also a key player

in guiding strategic road mapping for NGI.

 Plan for common workshops / events with related projects / initiatives and invite NGI

experts to our planned events as relevant to promote FLAME and grow the FMI ecosystem.

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 Capitalize on FLAME partner participation in related NGI projects, such as HUB4NGI and

Fed4FIRE+ in view of Open Calls promotion.

 NEM: The New European Media Initiative

6

(New European Media Initiative) was established as

one of the European Technology Platform under the Seventh Framework Programme, aiming at

fostering the convergence between consumer electronics, broadcasting and telecoms in order

to develop the emerging business sector of networked and electronic media. In order to respond

to new needs and requirements of the Horizon 2020 programme, the NEM initiative enlarged

its focus towards creative industries and changed its name from Networked an Electronic Media

Initiative to New European Media, dealing with Connected, Converging and Interactive Media &

Creative Industries, driving the future of digital experience, which is of direct relevant to the

overall FLAME vision and planned work. The capability to effectively liaise via NEM with

European innovators and researchers within the Media and Content Industries domains will be

key to grow and sustain the overall FMI ecosystem. Several FLAME players are actively involved

in the NEM with IT Innovation being a steering committee member and this will facilitate

effective synergies.

Primary stakeholders: media service providers.

Primary target groups: industry.

Measures to engage the NEM community

 Follow the NEM social media presence and channels to echo and amplify our news,

especially in view of gathering participants to our events and Open Calls.

 Plan for common workshops / events with related projects / initiatives and invite NEM

experts to our planned events as relevant to promote FLAME and grow the FMI ecosystem.

 Target the 2017 NEM Summit edition (details not yet available, but most likely to be held

in November) as major opportunity to advertise the first FLAME Open Call.

 FIWARE. In the past years, the EC and major Industry players established a public private

partnership to steer the development of Internet-based services in Europe: the Future Internet

Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP). The result of the FI-PPP initiative was FIWARE,

www.fiware.org, an innovative Internet-based platform that recently was embraced by the

FIWARE Foundation to ensure its business growth and future sustainability as Open Source

community. The FIWARE initiative gathers engaged entrepreneurs, Start-ups / SMEs and

students as primary actors to validate and steer the technology. As such it has been one of the

most innovative programmes ever endorsed by the EC. FIWARE, besides providing potentially

interesting technological grounds relevant to FLAME, showed the importance of Open and

Community approaches (still with the needed industrial commitments) in the development of

future technologies that can shape the future of Europe. It also showed how such technology, if

early adopted into Start-ups and SMEs, can act as accelerators of their businesses.

Primary stakeholders: service providers.

6

www.nem-initiative.org

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Primary target groups: industry and SMEs.

Measures to engage the FIWARE community

 Follow the FIWARE social media presence and channels to echo and amplify our news.

Notice several FLAME partners are key players within the overall FIWARE community and

FIWARE Foundation.

 Foster for participation to FIWARE-driven events, such as the FIWARE Summit, the FIWARE

Open Day, the Open FIWARE Camps, as opportunities to advertise our work and specifically

reach innovative SMEs and Start-ups.

 Advertise FLAME and reach a high number of innovative SMEs and Start-ups via the

dedicated FIWARE Communication platform (https://fiwarecommunity.mobilize.io/).

National and international R&D / business initiatives / Standardisation bodies

 Outreach and liaisons to relevant national and international R&D initiatives will also be pursued

via collaboration with External Advisors members of the FLAME EIB (see Section 1.2).

 Both Disney Research Zurich and the ETH Game Technology Center are members of Virtual

Switzerland (http://virtualswitzerland.org), a Swiss National Thematic Network for Virtual

Environments Interaction and Simulation, funded by the Swiss Federal Council's Commission for

Technology and Innovation. Virtual Switzerland aims to spark ideas and foster synergies to grasp

the full extent of virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. It means bringing together the

academic and economic spheres around immersive technologies and linking R&D experts in

Swiss universities with those in thriving companies, thereby promoting private as well as

academic research laboratories or incubators. Disney Research Zurich and ETH Zurich will

connect to the Virtual Switzerland network as a means to explore the potential for FLAME

developments at the Swiss national level, and use these connections as the foundation for

international collaboration.

 A number of technologies in the FLAME platform utilize standard developments from relevant

SDOs. A number of FLAME partners, such as IDE and ATOS, are highly active in a number of those

SDOs. Generally, the adoption of key FLAME technologies and components is seen as being

enabled through standardization in the appropriate SDO. As specific examples, we highlight:

 IETF: FLAME is currently utilizing concepts on Service Function Chaining (SFC) and aims to

provide FLAME use cases into the relevant SFC WG in the IETF. FLAME is also likely to extend

orchestration solutions with direct impact on ongoing IETF work in the NFVRG.

Furthermore, the routing solution utilized in FLAME is currently being positioned for

injection into the IETF. Beyond these already identified efforts, FLAME will actively monitor

activities in the IETF for possible contributions.

 ETSI MEC [4]: A number of use cases in the recently finished ETSI MEC Phase 1 are of direct

relevance to FLAME, while FLAME provides a number of solutions of possible relevance to

ETSI MEC Phase (starting April 2017). FLAME will actively work with key partners to inject

solutions into ETSI MEC for standardization as well as investigate key technology coming

from ETSI MEC for possible relevance in FLAME.

 ETSI NFV [3]: With orchestration being a key aspect in the FLAME platform, contributions

are expected regarding the infrastructure provisioning that FLAME experimentation will

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outline in its orchestration specifications. We expect to work with key partners to provide

these specifications as extensions to solutions currently provided by ETSI MEC (such as

TOSCA) as well as utilize emerging efforts from this forum.

 3GPP: The service architecture group 2 (SA2) is currently finalizing its Phase 1 on control

and data plane architecture for 5G. FLAME provides a number of technology components

relevant to this environment due to the SDN basis of the FLAME platform. We expect to

work with key partners to bring such components and solutions to the upcoming Phase 2

and 3 of 3GPP standardization to ensure adoption of these solutions.

 Other SDOs, ETSI NGP Industry Steering Groups [5], IRTF NFV Research Group [6], IETF

Service Function Chaining Working Group [7].

 As part of the engagement strategy of FLAME participating in international events where

content creators, media distributors and even representatives of cities gather looking for new

business opportunities provides a very valuable opportunity. The characteristic of these types

of events is their focus on the market, which gives the chance for innovative solutions to show

their commercial value. This could be leveraged by FLAME in two ways. On one hand, such

events can be used to meet different communities related to the media environment and find

possible adopters of FLAME, learning from them what their expectations and business

perspectives are and extracting relevant requirements to cover them. On the other hand, thanks

to these events bringing the attention of different potential stakeholders, FLAME can be

exposed not only as a pure research project but as a potential product in the creative and media

industry. A number of such events are the following:

 Online Marketing Expo (OMExpo): is the most important digital marketing trade show and

congress in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. With 9 years of experience, it is where the

Online Marketing companies gather with managers and highly qualified and professional

attendees to set the latest trends and show the best and most interesting offers.

 CeBIT: CeBIT is the world's largest and most international computer expo, usually

considered a barometer of the state of the art in information technology. It is organized by

Deutsche Messe AG. The past edition held more than seven million business talks.

 PICNIC: PICNIC is a leading European platform for innovation and creativity. Its main

functionality is to act as an incubator and accelerator for game changing ideas, concepts,

products and services that will cover business, social and environmental challenges by

applying technology in a creative way.

 International Broadcasting Convention (IBC): considered the largest event for Broadcasters

in Europe and the second most relevant in the world, IBC is the premier annual event for

professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment and

news content worldwide.

 Product Design Innovation (PD+I): PD+I is seen as one of the world's top industrial design

events bringing together well-known brands, design leaders from Europe, North America

and Asia and luminaries from the worlds of advertising, management consulting and

finance.

 SmartCityExpo World Congress: is an international Smart City event where cities,

companies, entrepreneurs, start-ups, research centres, initiatives and solutions participate

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to showcase their latest developments, real solutions and products to increase the strength

of cities, to identify business opportunities, to establish partnerships and contribute to

enacting common policies.

2.4 EMBRACING PARTNER EFFORTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

One of the challenges is that the platform by itself has little value for the initial users. Therefore, to

overcome the “ghost town” problem, FLAME must mutually bait both platform producers and

consumers together so that they attract each other.

Initially, Media Service Providers that produce value will bring along their customers. High quality

marquee players such as VRT, DRZ, and NXW, whose “off-platform” reputation attracts consumers,

will launch the FLAME platform. Due to the existing strong relationships between consumers and

producers of content, such marquee players are especially suitable for the FLAME platform which

needs adoption by producers to be successful. FLAME will only be successful if sufficient Media Service

Providers and Content Providers are attracted to use the platform.

Consumer contributions will then follow. FLAME’s experimentation strategy considers the changing

nature of participation on the Internet. FLAME supports a range of scenarios that consider the

changing nature of content production and consumption. An initial set of vertical sectors have been

selected to demonstrate and show platform innovations to ensure fast growth in platform users such

as participatory media in radio broadcast (VRT), gaming (ETH), transmedia storytelling (DRZ) and

localised broadcast (NXW).

These scenarios engage consumers in ways that allow them to play an active role in story creation and

storytelling changing the way consumers' access and interact with media, with brands, and with each

other. This leads to potential new services for ISPs or Telco Vendors offering access to FLAME media

services in a way similar to a high-performance iCloud service for people on the move.

Engagement and marketing strategies and plans used by our marquee players as well as other key

partners are presented in the following sections.

2.4.1 VRT engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. The engagement and marketing strategy of VRT consists of different elements, all of which

can be made to value for the development of the FLAME ecosystem. First of all, VRT, as the public

broadcaster of Flanders, has many connections with different Flemish cities and organisations. VRT has

five radio stations and four television stations, which are all connected to different segments of the

Flemish society. Through its regional radio stations (located in the cities of Kortrijk, Ghent, Antwerp,

Leuven and Hasselt), VRT is well connected and visible at this local level. It is our aim to connect with

these cities, institutions and organisations to achieve our goals in FLAME.

Moreover, VRT is well connected to other European broadcasters via the EBU, from which it is a

member. The Innovation department of VRT also participates in several European FP7/H2020 projects.

Through these projects, links with Flemish research institutions (such as IMEC) are also present. Due

to this, VRT is well connected to the research and innovation landscape across Europe.

Planned activities. The aim of VRT Innovation is well aligned with the FLAME objectives: to make media

innovation (including smart cities) visible to a wide community in Flanders and beyond. VRT is also

participating in quite a lot of events on the local level. The radio stations for example are present at

many (music) festivals. The sports channel (Sporza) captures and broadcasts live sports events (such

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as cycling) throughout the year. This creates very strong links between VRT and the different event

organisers. Next to this, VRT also organises quite a few own events (e.g. the yearly charity event Music

for Life), during which different stakeholders (including cities across Flanders) are involved. This

accounts for a lot of in-house knowledge on how to organise large scale events, as well as contacts

with event organisers.

Therefore, the overall aim for VRT is to create an ecosystem for smart cities, with the stakeholders

listed above, where media has his purpose and use cases. VRT will incorporate wherever possible each

of the above identified links within its engagement and marketing strategy.

2.4.2 DRZ engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. Through the FLAME partnership, DRZ will advance its overall mission to drive value for The

Walt Disney Company by delivering scientific and technological innovation Company-wide. Our world-

class research talent invents and transfers the most compelling technologies enabling the Company to

differentiate its content, services, and products. Disney Research combines the best of academia and

industry, by doing both basic and application-driven research. We utilize publication as a principal

mechanism for quality control and encourage engagement with the global research community. Our

research applications and technology are experienced by millions of people. We honour Walt Disney’s

legacy by deploying our innovations on a global scale.

The marketing strategy of DRZ is aligned with the needs of FLAME, which is to demonstrate the value

of city-wide storytelling enabled by FLAME infrastructure. We aim to develop prototypes, which are

evaluated through user tests to explore the potential value of our technology. Our results will be

disseminated through publications and technology demonstrations, which will help to attract OTT

media service providers and content providers to the FLAME platform.

Planned activities. The engagement plan of DRZ is guided by our mission as described above. Our

activities include the development of technologies that leverage unique capabilities offered by FLAME

to deliver a city-wide storytelling experience. We will conduct experiment trials to validate the

technology as well as to validate the user experience in real, urban environments. The results not only

guide further refinement of our technology, but will also be presented in scientific venues through

publications and technology demonstrations. We leverage the review process of leading conferences

to ensure that we produce high quality results of relevance to the greater community. The visibility of

these results will demonstrate the value of FLAME methodologies and capabilities and generate

success stories for global promotion.

2.4.3 NXW engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. Through participation in FLAME, NXW R&D team will give impulse to the company strategy

and plans for evolving their core successful product lines in the residential market (Symphony) towards

Smart Cities. FLAME experiments on Personal Media Mobility will unleash the concept of “My screen

follows me” service to the city-wide areas, with a demonstrator planned in Barcelona, one of the more

vibrant and innovative cities in Europe. The idea is to implement and extend to the personal media

entertainment a concept somehow pioneered by Nintendo in 2016-Q4 with Nintendo Switch in the

gaming area. With the work in FLAME NXW expects, at first, to be in the position to show their

Symphony product to a real and large Smart City community, being also capable to expand the

Symphony market from luxury villas and motor-yachts to Smart City platform operators and

broadcasters. The expected market impact for the engineering of the FLAME use case is the next 2–3

years from the completion of project activities, once the proper market opportunities in large Smart

Resorts and Smart Cities are expected to be consolidated at scale and an advanced product like the

one envisaged well received.

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Planned activities. The engagement plan of NXW mainly consist of leveraging FLAME-sponsored

events to showcase the My screen follows me” service (i.e. project workshops at international events

and meetings with stakeholders involved in the use case demonstration, possibly sponsored by the

Smart City municipalities). Also, with Barcelona being the main use case location, NXW plans to use

the great attraction of a worldwide event in the city like the Mobile World Congress to run a use case

demonstration and product exhibition. Outside the project-driven activities, NXW will also use results

from the use case demonstration in FLAME to contact the current Symphony customers and propose

them a service upgrade.

2.4.4 ETH engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. While participating in FLAME, ETH Zurich pursues its overall mission in education, research,

and industry outreach. As one of the world’s top Universities, ETH Zurich measures itself against the

highest recognised international standards and promotes science and scientific activity for their own

sakes, as well as for their importance to the near and distant context: the city and canton of Zurich,

Switzerland, Europe, the world. The ETH Zurich consciously directs its activities to the needs of human

beings, nature, and society. It is aware that knowledge and skills must be grounded in a fundamentally

open and dynamic attitude if they are to be truly useful in practical life and capable of growth.

Planned activities. While developing FLAME’s city-wide gaming technology, ETH Zurich will engage

with users to playtest and evaluate components and game prototypes in an iterative fashion. Such

playtesting sessions allow it to comprehensively understand the value of the technology. Scientific

publications constitute the core of our research and connect it to the public domain. Moreover, ETH

Zurich exhibits and demonstrates technology prototypes at international conferences, workshops, and

public events.

ETH Zurich plans to engage with the public through scientific publications and demonstrating research

technology prototypes to research and public communities. The thorough review processes of

prominent conferences ensure that our results are of high quality with high relevance to the research

community. ETH Zurich’s activities include the development of FLAME’s city-wide gaming technology,

incorporating student projects, conducting user trials as playtesting sessions, as well as exhibiting

prototypes at international conferences, workshops, and public events. Such demonstrations create

visibility for FLAME methodologies and capabilities and generate success stories for global promotion.

2.4.5 IDE engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. Through the FLAME project, IDE will inject innovative routing and service-level solutions into

the overall FLAME platform, providing a large-scale showcase for the capabilities that these solutions

provide. With this, FLAME will provide the necessary reduction to practise that will drive the possible

adoption of these technologies. Apart from the replication of FLAME in other sites, IDE sees the

adoption in SDOs as crucial at the level of the platform they are operating. For this, IDE will utilize

effective means of marketing and technical reduction to practise in working prototypes.

Planned activities. For the realization of our aforementioned strategy, IDE will utilize its presence in

key SDOs such as IETF, ETSI and 3GPP to drive standardization efforts in the various areas. We will

support these activities through active publication, both at research but also at technical marketing

level. Specifically, IDE will likely release news as press releases. We will also utilize our usual presence

at major trade shows, most notably the Mobile World Congress, to disseminate and engage with

potential partners at a global level.

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2.4.6 ITINNOV engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. As coordinator, ITINNOV is responsible for maintaining FLAME’s overall vision and ensuring

that the project delivers its expected impact. ITINNOV strategy therefore aims to engage all FMI

ecosystem stakeholders in FLAME’s concepts, activities and outcomes in ways that clearly community

the benefits of engagement. To achieve this goal, ITINNOV engage stakeholders in relevant initiatives

such as NEM, FIRE and DIN. ITINNOV’s research and innovation activities in experimental

methodologies, tools and services supporting exploration and analysis of QoS and QoE in multi-

stakeholder systems will be used to engage research communities in advances in the state-of-the-art

and innovative companies aiming to understand performance and socio-economic impact of

technologies. Specifically, ITINNOV will target conferences such as International Conference on

Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks & Communities. The

experience in QoS and QoE evaluation is documented in publications in leading journals in the

Computer Science community such as Computer Networks, IEEE Software, and IEEE Transactions on

Software Engineering, as well as relevant peer-reviewed conferences, such as IEEE ICSE and CSCW.

Finally, when the story is big enough ITINNOV will promote outcomes through press-release and major

TV such as BBC Click and BBC news (for example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31145807)

reaching audiences of 100’s millions globally.

Planned activities.

 FIRE: ITINNOV is at the heart of the FIRE initiative having participated significantly (including

member of the FIRE Board) in the programme since 2010 with ongoing projects (e.g. FIESTA,

FIREStudy, FED4FIRE+) in addition to FLAME. ITINNOV plans to maintain the relationship with

the FIRE through participation in community events and workshops especially in relation to the

EaaS approach.

 NGI: ITINNOV is a leading player driving the Next Generation Initiative through white paper

publications, expert consultations and community workshops. FLAME’s human-centric media

approach, the advancement of software-defined infrastructures and the innovative ecosystem

engagement activities with SMEs and Entrepreneurs is directly aligned with the NGI strategy.

ITINNOV will use concepts and results to help steer future NGI work programmes and the uptake

of FLAME results within the emerging programme.

 NEM: ITINNOV is a long-standing member of the NEM Steering Board. ITINNOV will ensure that

NEM strategy considers FLAME’s strategy and vision for the Future Media Internet by

contributions to white papers, direct communication at steering board meetings and paper

presentations and NEM events.

 Publications: ITINNOV plans to champion research results through publications in relevant

channels as described above. ITINNOV led a paper accepted for EUCNC2017 “Experimentation-

as-a-Service Methodology for Building Urban-Scale Media Ecosystems” following an earlier

paper presented at the NEM Submit 2016 “Tackling user-centric media demands through

adaptable software defined infrastructures”.

 Press Release: ITINNOV plans to promote stories of public and industrial interest through press

releases. ITINNOV published a 1st press release on 14th Feb 2017 announcing the project kick

off (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/4995) and will continue to seek stories that can raise

awareness of and engagement with FLAME.

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2.4.7 Barcelona Infrastructure (IMI and i2CAT) engagement and marketing strategy and

plan

Strategy. i2CAT and IMI aim to support heterogeneous Future Media Internet (FMI) experiments

through the Barcelona test-bed. Initially leveraging on the experimentation within the FLAME

consortium, the Barcelona test-bed will add to its capabilities and characteristics. Feedback provided

by the FLAME experimenters during the usage of the infrastructure will be used to continuously adapt

the test-bed to their needs. In this way, the expected extension of the infrastructure is driven by the

real-life usage and feedback for further extensions and fine‐tuning of equipment and features

provided. Besides that, the information obtained on the experiments carried out in this phase can be

used later to attract future experimenters out of the FLAME consortium.

Planned activities. Via the open calls in the project, i2CAT and IMI will facilitate open access to their

test‐bed to a number of interested external experimenters, e.g. SMEs working on the FMI. Reputation

is expected to increase through improving the services offered to the external experimenters. Based

on it, and with the help of FLAME dissemination activities, the outreach with external experimenters,

SMEs and other businesses shall grow. This, in turn, will allow for further future collaborations and/or

technology transfer across organizations. i2CAT and IMI plan to organize activities and events in the

framework of the Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress and the Mobile World Congress, which

will help to give visibility to the open call participants and to the FLAME experimental testbed.

Barcelona partners will identify national stakeholders, such as the Spanish Ministry of Economy,

Industry and Competitiveness, and will meet with them in order to explore possibilities to exploit the

project results. Furthermore, IMI will disseminate the results of the project among their contacts at

CTN

7

, ITU

8

, ISO

9

, NIST

10

, Wireless Broadband Alliance

11

and relevant city associations. Finally, i2CAT and

IMI will explore possible synergies and collaborations with existent 5G PPP projects and initiatives.

2.4.8 ATOS engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. Through the participation in FLAME, ATOS will strength its expertise in new networking

paradigms, such as virtualisation of network functionalities, experimentation as a service and

software-defined networks, which are strategic research areas for the concrete market of ATOS

Research & Innovation that is participating in FLAME. The development of media services is another

key element of the ATOS strategy since ATOS is a world leader in the provision of IT and media services,

including major events, such as the Olympic Games. In this sense, the experience gained by ATOS in

the project will allow to enrich the overall knowledge of the company and the value proposition that

the company offers to its clients.

Planned activities. To carry out this engagement and marketing strategy, ATOS has planned two kinds

of activities. On the one hand, ATOS will participate in conferences, workshops and exhibitions to

present the advancements achieved in FLAME by means of the new network paradigms and FLAME

specific technological advantages. For this purpose, ATOS has identified a set of key events where

stakeholders could participate, after analysing the companies and institutions that could be interested

7

www.en.aenor.es

8

www.itu.int

9

www.iso.org

10

www.nist.gov

11

www.wballiance.com

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in FLAME use. On the other hand, ATOS will utilise the internal channels and events of the company to

create awareness about the exploitability of the project results.

2.4.9 BIO engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy. BIO will provide the test-bed environment in Bristol to host FLAME’s FMI platform. The city-

wide test-bed will provide expansive opportunities for experimentation. The 144 core fibre ring which

makes up part of the test-bed has four host node partners, Watershed, Engine Shed, @Bristol (science

museum) and the High Performance Network Labs at University of Bristol. These are BIO’s primary

stakeholders along with Bristol City Council. This ecosystem of stakeholders each bring with them

access to a broad range of organizational links within the broadcasting, media and digital media space,

along with communities and citizens. BIO will focus its engagement and marketing with this wider

network to respond to the open calls. Keeping the experimentation focused around Bristol needs,

working with consortia expertise and the successful experimenters to develop solutions on the FMI

platform. BIO will in partnership with FLAME consortia members, mentor and support the

experimenters.

Planned activities. To engage the stakeholders outlined above we aim to run a number workshops to

ascertain the needs of experimenters. This would involve social media, PR, blogs and emails to engage

a wider group and inform about the open calls to gain interest about applications. Attendance and

engagement at international conferences and smart city events is important throughout the project.

The BIO team and stakeholders attend internationally as panellists, speakers and exhibitors and will

engage and disseminate information about the open calls on FLAME platform.

2.4.10 University of Bristol engagement and marketing strategy and plan

Strategy: UNIVBRIS will support local Future Media Internet (FMI) experiments in collaboration with

Bristol Is Open to maximise the engagement, dissemination and impact opportunities. UNIVBRIS will

provide a platform for research collaboration, training, education and cross-disciplinary interactions

for FLAME. This will be supported by University Research Institutes [9] and University's Public

Engagement [10]. UNIVBRIS will also leverage communication channels and events through regional

University Alliance and existing project networks. In addition to UNIVBRIS channels, we will work in

close collaboration with BIO who will support this by extending our communication network via the

BIO Partnership Strategy Board, local ecosystem and BIO commercial partnerships. Collectively,

through these channels, we will build an array of information and outreach activities targeting

academics, and researchers that could benefit from the platform.

UNIVBRIS will provide in depth training opportunities on the local FLAME platform via the EPSRC Centre

for Doctoral Training in Communications [11] and existing outreach events providing FLAME platform

demonstrations and "hands-on" opportunities. We will also host a FLAME Media Hackathons in

collaboration with Bristol Is Open, aimed at providing training and skill development. UNIVBRIS will

also develop and contribute to academic publications and conference presentations.

Planned activities

 Organisation of two summer schools (2018 and 2019) to provide in depth training opportunities

on the local FLAME platform via the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Communications

[11].

 Hosting FLAME Media Hackathons in collaboration with Bristol Is Open, supported by the

University’s Jean Golding Institute, which is a multi-disciplinary in research institute supporting

cutting-edge research in the field of applied data science.

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 Development of news articles and press release to disseminate information regarding all

activities hosted at Bristol.

 Publication and conference presentations.

 Development and dissemination of training materials will encourage engagement with the

FLAME platform.

2.4.11 Martel Innovate engagement strategy and plan

Strategy. The Martel Media department is leading the dissemination and communication activities

within FLAME taking responsibility for driving them in an effective way from the very beginning of the

project. This is strategic for Martel Media as it provides the opportunity to consolidate and enhance

its experience and expertise in the area of creative, participatory and social media technologies, tools

and solutions. By driving the FLAME‘s community building and stakeholders’ engagement activities

through organization of promotional events, management of the project’s web site and social media

channels, creation of promotional material in various forms and ensuring participation to selected

conferences, Martel Media will strongly contribute to the success and impact of the overall project’s

work. Moreover, Martel is playing a central role in the engagement of 3rd party organisations into the

FMI ecosystem via the planned open calls.

Planned activities. Martel, as leader of the overall marketing and communication activities within

FLAME, has planned a rich set of activities (several of which have been activated as of the very

beginning of the project) that should help promoting the FLAME work and outcomes, while ensuring

the creation of the FMI ecosystem. The major planned activities include:

 FLAME web site design and management.

 FLAME social media animation and 6-monthly newsletter creation and distribution.

 Promotion material creation and distribution (slides, posters, flyers, videos).

 Organisation of 3 outreach/community building workshops.

 Liaisons and communication towards related communities Martel is actively engaged in. This

includes:

 5G PPP /Networld2020

 Future Internet Experimentation Research

 Next Generation Internet

 New European Media

 FIWARE

 Collective Awareness and Sustainability for Social Innovation

Martel’s planned engagement and marketing activities in FLAME will be leveraged through a number

of related innovation projects and promotional frameworks Martel is involved in, giving the

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opportunity to reach a broad audience and ensure effective establishment and sustainable growth of

the FMI Community.

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3 THE FLAME ENGAGEMENT MACHINE IN ACTION

FLAME aims to offer an EaaS model to players from the creative industries, internet industries and

beyond. Through the development of a platform seeding strategy, FLAME intends to create demand

for services for the FMI ecosystem. The strategy is designed to grow the FLAME FMI ecosystem

throughout the project in accordance with market positioning, infrastructure sustainability models

and platform exploitation. The investment strategy will form a fundamental part of the platform

seeding strategy.

FLAME will initially validate the platform within key vertical areas (TV, Radio, Gaming, etc.) with key

industrial partners (DRZ, VRT) to demonstrate the value of FLAME methodologies and capabilities and

to generate global success stories for promotion. Different engagement models for business of varying

levels of maturity such as industry (DRZ, VRT), SMEs (NXW) and applied research organisations (ETH,

and i2CAT) will be validated. Such initial activities will provide further technical and engagement

knowledge which help set up 3rd party engagement for successive pioneering experimentation projects

also supported through open calls. As for the engagement activities for SMEs, entrepreneurs and start-

ups, they are foreseen for the final year (PM25-PM36) when the FLAME platform is mature and in line

with the 3rd open call for projects.

FLAME’s approach is to put marketing, communication and dissemination at the service of the

engagement activities. To this purpose, dedicated measures have been implemented from the very

beginning of the project and are being refined according to the partner needs, to the feedback from

the broad community and the overall promotional opportunities as they arise. In doing so, FLAME

follows a phased approach to better focus and organise the planned activities in relation to progress

and maturity of the outcomes of the other work packages. The three main phases are described in

more details in the remaining of this section: for each phase focused and targeted actions will be

pursued.

The complete list of the deliverables planned in the work-packages for “FMI Experimentation and

Infrastructure Replication“ and “Future Media Community Engagement and Impact” is presented in

Table 4 and Table 6, while the major milestones are reported in Table 5 and Table 7, respectively.

Table 4: List of FMI Experimentation and Infrastructure Replication deliverables.

Deliverable

number

Deliverable Title

Type

Diss

level

Due

date

D5.1

FLAME Replication Process v1

R

PU

M12

D5.2

Large-Scale FMI Experiment Design in Broadcast, Gaming

and Transmedia

R

PU

M14

D5.3

Open Call Evaluation Report v1

R

CO

M17

D5.4

Open Call Evaluation Report v2

R

CO

M21

D5.5

Insights from Broadcast, Gaming and Transmedia

Experiments

R

PU

M24

D5.6

FLAME Ecosystem Operation Reports v1

R

CO

M24

D5.7

Open Call Evaluation Report v3

R

CO

M29

D5.8

FLAME Replication Process v2

R

PU

M30

D5.9

FLAME Ecosystem Operation Reports v2

R

CO

M36

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Table 5: List of FMI Experimentation and Infrastructure Replication milestones.

Milestone

number

Milestone Title

Due

date

MS6

Validation experiments designed, OC1 launched

M14

MS8

OC1 3rd party experimentation and replication projects start, 1st FLAME

Replicator available for experimentation

M18

M13

OC2 3rd party projects start, 3rd party replicator providers available

M24

M17

OC3 3rd party projects start

M30

Table 6: List of Future Media Community Engagement and Impact deliverables.

Deliverable number

Deliverable Title

Type

Diss level

Due date

D6.1

FLAME Brand Identity Toolkit

R

PU

M02

D6.2

FLAME Project web site

R

PU

M03

D6.3

FMI Ecosystem Engagement Strategy and Plan

R

PU

M04

D6.4

FMI Engagement Report and Updated Plan v1

R

PU

M12

D6.5

Getting started for SMEs and Entrepreneurs

R

PU

M14

D6.6

FMI Engagement Report and Updated Plan v2

R

PU

M24

D6.7

FMI Engagement Report and Updated Plan v3

R

PU

M36

Table 7: List of Future Media Community Engagement and Impact milestones.

Milestone

number

Milestone Title

Due

date

MS2

FLAME branded and launched and promoted through primary stakeholders

channels

M03

MS7

Open Call promotional strategy, actions and material launched on all

stakeholder channels

M14

MS14

Start-up weekends, boot camps and hackathons planned

M24

3.1 PHASE 1: STAKEHOLDER AWARENESS [M01, M06]

The FMI market is a complex and demanding playground in terms of quality and type of communication

and marketing actions required to attract and engage target stakeholders. To ensure success, the

FLAME project has been equipped with modern and innovative communication tools, which are

presented in this section, to develop engagement strategies in line with the expectations of FMI

players.

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Main goal:

During Phase 1, which covers the first 6 months of the project, FLAME aims to create awareness among

the target stakeholders and the general audience, while laying down the foundation for the overall

FMI engagement Strategy and Plan as described in this deliverable.

Notice that awareness creation as such will continue to be pursued also beyond month 6 throughout

the whole project duration as an essential aspect that is part of the overall promotional and marketing

activities.

Measures:

In order to create awareness in a convincing and effective manner and inform the R&D community,

the market, and all target stakeholders, specific measures have been put in place or are being set.

Already in place

 A fresh, appealing and distinctive brand identity has been defined and delivered in the form of

the FLAME Identity Toolkit (see deliverable D6.1 FLAME Brand Identity Toolkit) during the

first month. The FLAME Identity Toolkit includes the FLAME logo, branding guidelines and

templates for presentations and deliverables.

 A modern, fresh and fully functional web site (see deliverable 6.2 FLAME Project Web Site),

which represents the main entry door for all the interested stakeholders at www.ict-flame.eu.

The web site, which has been already operational from the first month of the project, is a live

meeting point for the whole Internet community and general audience. It is continuously

enriched via information, material and outcomes of the project and it links to the FLAME social

channels.

 FLAME Twitter profile - @ICT_FLAME - increasingly Twitter is being adopted as a major

communication vehicle to reach a broad audience. A distinctive and fresh profile has been

created and is regularly animated. Activity will intensify later during the project in line with

participation and organisation of planned events, Open Calls, available outcomes,

publications, etc. As of today, the FLAME profile has about 70 followers, 127 Tweets and 4,242

impressions have been generated.

 FLAME presentation flyer: distribution of the first FLAME flyer, which presents the core

information about FLAME and its principles (see Appendix 7), both electronically and

physically, has already started in month 2. The flyer, which is available on the FLAME web site,

anticipates the Open Calls initiative for 3rd party organizations to join the FMI ecosystem. The

flyer has been physically distributed in Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress 2017 at

the exhibition booths of Inter Digital and i2CAT and in Ghent at the Fed4FIRE+ Engineering

Conference, FEC 1, which was held 14-16 March 2017.

 FLAME presence at major events: event participation is essential to ensure broad visibility of

the project and disseminate its results. In February, two FLAME scenarios have been presented

and demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress (27th of February - 2nd of March 2017) by

InterDigital giving broad visibility to a large audience of players in the wireless and

communication networks arena. Note that this year more than 108,000 participants attended

the MWC, with professionals from 208 countries, including approximately 3,500 members of

the international press and media.

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 Creating and maintaining a calendar of relevant events: in order to coordinate across the

consortium on planned event participation and presentation of the FLAME work a calendar

with relevant events as identified by the partners has been created and is constantly updated.

This shall also help in identifying in the future the events that FLAME might want to co-locate

planned workshops, hackathons, etc.

 VRT video: VRT has been working on a promotional video about participation of VRT in FLAME

that will be broadly promoted via all VRT channels and echoed.

 A comprehensive and well-structured FMI engagement strategy and plan as described in this

deliverable. The strategy and plan as conceived and developed so far will obviously be adapted

as appropriate in view of ensuring to dynamically respond to concrete changes that might

occur within the overall FMI ecosystem and specific opportunities that might emerge.

Ongoing work

 FLAME presentation poster: a short paper “Experimentation-as-a-Service Methodology for

Building Urban-Scale Media Ecosystems” has been submitted to the EuCNC 2017 conference,

which will be held in June in Oulu (Finland). The paper, co-authored by IT Innovation, Inter Digital

and Nextworks has been accepted for the poster session. The FLAME poster is currently under

preparation. When ready it will be also distributed in an electronic version via the web site.

 FLAME slides-based presentation: a slide-based presentation that has been put together by IT

Innovation in the first months of the project’s activity is being refined with contribution from

FLAME partners, including formatting and graphical improvements. The presentation should be

made available by the end of month 5 via the project’s web site and should serve all partners in

presenting the core principles behind FLAME in a standard way.

 FLAME brochure: a more extended version of the first FLAME flyer is being prepared in order to

provide more details about the FLAME offering and its benefits for prioritised target

stakeholders. The brochure should be ready for electronic and physical distribution during

month 6 - the plan is to distribute it at the IoT Week (6th-9th June, Geneva, Switzerland), at EuCNC

2017 (12th-15th June, Oulu, Finland) and at Net Futures 2017 (28th-29th June, Brussels, Belgium).

 e-Newsletter: A six-monthly newsletter to be broadly distributed via all FLAME channels and

FLAME’s partner networks will be put together by the end of month 6. It will collect relevant

news about technical progress, reporting on event participation, announcing highlights coming

from the various work packages and advertising the FMI ecosystem engagement opportunities.

 Establishing liaisons: An ongoing activity pursued in several ways by all FLAME partners is the

establishment of liaisons to related projects and initiatives, as indicated in Section 2.3. In these

first months of the project, WP6 has ensured participation to the monthly 5G PPP COMMS

conference calls and to the FIRE DWG conference calls.

 The 5G PPP COMMS group gathers dissemination and communication representatives from

all ongoing 5G PPP projects.

 The FIRE Dissemination Working Group gathers dissemination and communication

representatives from all ongoing “former” FIRE projects.

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Regular conference calls take place as a way to coordinate efforts across the whole community

and maximize impact creation effect. These channels are being exploited in order to promote

and grow the overall FMI ecosystem creation and growth.

 Technical blog: FLAME will also animate a dedicated blog (that is hosted in the FLAME web site)

by gathering input all across the various work packages under the lead of the Technical Manager.

The main idea is to create a lively forum to increase visibility over the project’s progress and

gather feedback.

 Organisation of the FLAME co-creative / user requirements workshops led by WP3, before the

end of June in Bristol.

 Planning event participation – up to month 6:

 Wireless Broadband Congress 2017 (8th-11th May, London, UK): FLAME flyers will be

distributed and the municipality of Barcelona will have a dedicated session (9th May, 14:30-

15:15h) dedicated to present various smart cities services that are being developed in

Barcelona, some of which based on FLAME.

 IoT Week 2017 (6th-9th June, Geneva, Switzerland): FLAME flyers will be distributed and

some partners will attend various sessions that are directly relevant to the project’s work –

augmented reality, smart mobility, smart cities and services.

 EuCNC 2017 (12th-15th June, Oulu, Finland): the accepted FLAME poster paper will be

presented, FLAME flyers will be distributed and several partners will attend. This is a major

event to reach the 5G PPP players and network Telco operators.

Table 8 shows a Gantt chart of the main measures with respect to project months in phase 1.

Table 8: Gantt chart of phase 1.

Project months

1

2

3

4

5

6

Measures

FLAME Identity Toolkit

Web site

Twitter channel

Flyer

Presentations to events

Calendar of events

Video

Engagement strategy and plan

Poster presentation

Slide-based presentation

Brochure

e-Newsletter

Liaisons

Technical blog

Organization of workshops

Participation to events

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3.2 PHASE 2: STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT [M07, M12]

The second phase will start in July 2017 and will mark a transition towards more specific stakeholder

engagement activities, supported specifically by tasks on “Accelerating SME engagement in the FMI

Ecosystem” and “3rd Party Ecosystem Investment Strategy, Management and Ethics”.

Main goal:

During Phase 2, which goes from M07 to M12, FLAME aims to establish the FMI ecosystem by engaging

stakeholders into the adoption of initial FLAME outcomes and concepts.

Specific focus will be given to target key players in the market, to generate demand for the FLAME

technologies and services, create potential synergies and collaboration opportunities both within the

FMI ecosystem and related initiatives and advertise the first FLAME Open Call to be launched in spring

2018.

Measures

In order to reach and engage in a convincing and durable manner the prioritised stakeholders, a

number of dedicated activities will be pursued via a combination of WP6 and WP5 activities.

 Activation of the Experimentation Impact Board planning for a first meeting (that can be held

remotely), in order to present to the external advisors the overall FLAME objectives, work and

offering and gather feedback on how to refine the value proposition and better reach the target

stakeholders. Interaction with external advisors will also help at refining the 3rd party ecosystem

investment strategy and in identifying innovative SMEs to be engaged.

 A second Experimentation Impact Board meeting will then be scheduled towards the end of

2017, in order to discuss in more details the first open call and organise support via the

communication and marketing channels of the various companies the EIB members belong to

for broad advert campaigns.

 Participation to events, as of today, the main events that are targeted for the second part of

2017 and that are relevant to engage stakeholders and promoting the first FLAME open call are

listed (notice that this list might be enriched later on according to upcoming opportunities).

Flyers will be distributed, when possible demos and/or presentations will be given and

informative sessions might be proposed.

 FEC 2, Fed4FIRE+ Engineering Conference 2, (Beginning of October, Volos, Greece).

 NEM Summit 2017 (typically in November, but exact location and dates unknown).

 Smart Cities Expo World (14-16 November, Barcelona, Spain).

 ICT Proposers’ Day 2017 (9-10 November, Budapest, Hungary).

 Organisation of the 1st FLAME outreach/community building workshop. The plan is to co-

locate this workshop either with the NEM Summit or with the ICT Proposer’s Day. Depending on

the dates for these major events and availability of the FLAME partners, more details will be

discussed by the beginning of September 2017.

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 Activate dedicated SME engagement activities. All contacts and liaisons established to related

project and initiatives, as well as involvement of the External Advisors will be activated so that

we reach a high number of possible participants to the FMI ecosystem and FLAME dedicated

SMEs’ Open Calls. A dedicated database and mailing list will be created also thanks to the

contacts generated by participating/organising events.

 Preparation of promo material in various forms for promoting the first FLAME Open Call. This

will include a dedicated brochure and a slides-set.

 A video will also be produced, most probably only after the 1st FLAME outreach/community

building workshop where we will shoot parts of the video. This video will be created mainly with

the purpose to present the stakeholders’ engagement activities that have been conducted until

that point and to facilitate the adoption of initial FLAME outcomes and concepts.

 Updates of the project web site, animation of the blog and social channels on a regular basis

and 2nd edition of the FLAME newsletter will occur by the end of December 2017.

 Input into standardization activities can be found in Section 2.3. As concrete efforts, IDE has

already presented a draft to the IETF ICNRG on ‘deployment options for ICN’ during the recent

Chicago IETF meeting. Said draft outlines the need for standardization effort in the space of the

routing solution that the FLAME platform realizes. IDE is currently investigating the contribution

of the FLAME platform service function chains as use cases into the SFC WG of the IETF.

Furthermore, IDE has already presented FLAME related efforts at the start of the ETSI MEC Phase

2, calling for standard interfaces in a number of FLAME relevant areas, including service routing,

orchestration and surrogate management.

 Preparation and release of D5.4.1 “FMI Engagement Report and Updated Plan” at month 12.

Table 9 presents the Gantt chart of the main measures with respect to project months in phase 2.

Table 9: Gantt chart of phase 2.

Project months

7

8

9

10

11

12

Measures

Activation of the EIB

Second EIB meeting

Participation to events

1st FLAME community building workshop

SMEs engagement activities

Open call promotion material preparation

1st video

Updates: web site, blog, social channel

2nd e-Newsletter

Input into standardization activities

Preparation and release of D5.4.1

3.3 PHASE 3: SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEM AND PUBLIC OUTREACH [M13-M36]

Phase 3 will start in January 2018 and will mark a transition towards the creation of the FMI ecosystem

as a sustainable and larger community that will be able to use, validate and exploit the FLAME

outcomes and create impact at various levels both in a scientific and socio-economic perspective.

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Goals

The main goal is to actively grow the FLAME ecosystem engaging all target stakeholders in the creative

and collaborative development of novel FMI solutions and FLAME Replicator locations.

FLAME will embark on a comprehensive 3rd party experimentation project programme through a series

of open calls expanding the range of vertical areas to include OTT media service providers, ISPs, telco

vendors and other parts of the creative industries. Besides, three FLAME replication projects will be

funded to increase capacity and supply in some European cities. In addition, FLAME is open to strategic

partners willing to use FLAME for their projects funded with their own resources.

Measures

Throughout Phase 3, a rich set of communication and dissemination measures will be pursued,

including regular animation of the FLAME media channels, updates and extensions of the FLAME web

site as appropriate, bi-yearly e-newsletter publication, creation and updates of promo material to

support all targeted marketing activities.

More detailed plans about year 2 and year 3 will be presented in deliverables updating this plan, which

will be submitted at M24 and M36, respectively.

 Tutorials and webinars organisation in view of the planned open calls to advertise them and

inform potential applicants about the OC focus and objectives, participation conditions and

rules. UNIVBRIS will provide in depth training opportunities on the local FLAME platform via the

EPSRC CDT in Communications [11]. The centre offers an environment for students to undertake

world-leading research, providing an advanced training network for the communication

community, developing skilled and entrepreneurial engineers needed to underpin the future of

the industry. In addition to training postgraduates via the CDT, UNIVBRIS will also aim to provide

educational opportunities to undergraduate students, providing access to the local FLAME

platform for their final year projects.

 UNIVBRIS will also provide educational and training opportunities via the organisation of two

summer schools (2018 & 2019) around specific identified topics, attracting participants from

both UK and Europe. The summer school will aim to target forty participants per event. Training

material will be disseminated along with a press release. UNIVBRIS also participates in a number

of outreach activities for local schools during the summer months, the FLAME platform will

provide demonstrations and "hands-on" opportunities to inspire future engineers.

 Scientific publications to high-level conferences and journals such as G-PPP at the mobile world

congress 2017, IEEE ICC 2018, IEEE Network, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE

Communication magazine, EuCNC 2018, IEEE Globecom 2018, Global 5G Event 2017, ACM

Siggraph, ACM Siggraph Asia, ACM Transactions On Graphics (TOG), Game Developers

Conference (GDC), Eurographics (EG), ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing

Systems (ACM CHI),ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

(CHI PLAY),International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), AAAI Conference

on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE),Intelligent Narrative

Technologies (INT),ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D).

 Input into standardization activities can be found in Section 2.3. During this later stage of the

project, we expect concrete activities in the service routing, the orchestration as well as media

service management area with target SDOs being the IETF, ETSI MEC as well as ETSI NFV.

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 Promotion of the 3rd Party Activities in close collaboration with WP4. As detailed in Section 4,

the 3rd party investment, involving open calls and unfunded experiments, is an essential part of

the FLAME strategy to grow an exciting, creative and vibrant FMI ecosystem. Advertising

campaigns will be organised and promotional material will be prepared so as to ensure broad

reach of target stakeholders. The marketing activities will exploit a variety of media and

traditional press channels, in addition to dedicated webinars and presentations either made

available electronically or given at events the partners will attend. All liaisons and related

projects and initiatives the FLAME partners have reach to, see Section 2.3, will be fully exploited.

 Organisation of events – notice that co-location with other major conferences and workshop

will always be considered as a way to maximize the reach and gather a high number of

participants.

 FLAME Media Hackathons will be held in collaboration with UNIVBRIS, I2CAT and other

FLAME Replicators to promote the usage and experimentation of FLAME technology in

developer communities. FLAME plans to host 3 of these events with the goal to raise

interests in different local developer communities. Hackathons will last 48 hours and will be

preceded by FLAME training where developers will be able to get insights on FLAME

platform offering. FLAME will provide prizes in hardware or participation to key events to

the best prototypes.

 FLAME outreach/community building workshops: one in year 2 and one in year 3 will be

organised to engage stakeholders into adoption and deployment of the FLAME concepts,

technologies and platform. Timing of these events will be synchronised with the planned

launch of the Open Calls, typically about one month before each call is opened and with

major conferences/events to co-locate with. This will allow creation of an informed

audience of potential third parties participants, but also contribute to broad dissemination

of project results to foster uptake. Typically FLAME partners will serve as main presenters

(demonstrations will also be organised especially in order to provide details on the latest

technical progress of the project), but will also aim at inviting one or two selected experts

from the EIB and dedicate part of the event to an interactive session giving the opportunity

to the participants to play an active role in round table discussions guided by the FLAME

leaders.

 Participation in relevant events will provide an opportunity to give demonstrations and

presentations about FLAME progress, offering and funding opportunities. A refined list of which

events will be attended by FLAME will be provided at the end of each year in the planned

deliverables D5.4.2 and D5.4.3. As of today, we can anticipate that during year 3, the plan is to

ensure presence of FLAME at selected future:

 Startup Weekend (https://startupweekend.org/)

 Startup Bootcamp (https://www.startupbootcamp.org/)

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Table 10: Gantt chart of phase 3.

Project months

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

Measures

Tutorials and webinars

Scientific publications

Standardization activities

Promotion 3rd Party Activities

Organisation of events

Participation to events

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4 ENGAGING THIRD PARTY ORGANISATIONS INTO THE FMI ECOSYSTEM

The 3rd party investment, involving open calls and unfunded experiments, is an essential part of the

FLAME strategy to grow an exciting, creative and vibrant FMI ecosystem. Through engagement

activities towards 3rd parties, FLAME plans to attract different stakeholder groups like SMEs and

entrepreneurs with the aim of running a variety of experiments that directly relate to the FMI vision.

The different use cases and scenarios describing the FMI vision as of today can be found in the

deliverable D3.1 FMI Vision, Use Cases and Scenarios release at project month 3.

The ultimate goal of the 3rd party engagement strategy is to create demand from the FMI ecosystem

for Experimentation as a Service (EaaS). The creation of this demand would enable the transition from

experiments funded by the project to customers willing to pay for experimentation services. In order

to achieve this goal, after validation experiments have been performed by the responsible partners,

FLAME will launch a series of Open Calls to expand the range of vertical areas so to include ISPs, telco

vendors and other parts of the creative industries. The 3rd party engagement activities will also aim

to attract strategic partners willing to use FLAME for experiments funded from their own resources.

Considering that the experiments will involve people, prior to the beginning of 3rd party engagement,

different actions will be taken to identify ethics issues related to the protection of data and the

protection of the privacy of the users during these activities. Identification of the issues prior to the

experiments will provide the essential knowledge to assure that the security of such data, exposed or

collected during the experiments, follows both the European and the national legislation. The Ethics

Management Board (EMB) responsible for ensuring ethical issues are appropriately handled. Within

the FLAME Management Structure, the EMB which includes the Ethics Manager, Project Coordinator,

Project Manager, 3rd Party Project Manager and other partners as needed, will ensure that

experiments are conducted in consideration of ethical requirements and adhere to legal and ethical

obligations, while overseeing the application of the ethical management strategy of the consortium.

4.1 THIRD PARTY INVESTMENT APPROACH

Two types of projects are planned in the 3rd party engagement strategy and will be pursued during the

lifetime of the project: Experimentation and Replication projects.

Experimentation projects will enable different experiments to run on the platform to validate and

increase the FLAME offering, while replication projects will reproduce the FLAME infrastructure in

other cities across Europe using a replication process based on best practice sustainability,

engagement models, and infrastructure standards and specifications.

Both types of projects aim at validating the FLAME concept and approach to improve and extend the

FLAME offering and at the same time, to allow a smooth transition towards commercialization of the

platform itself. The transition will follow a business model that will ensure the sustainability of

FLAME infrastructures beyond the initial public funding (this will be covered by WP2).

At this stage, the FLAME partners are developing a workable platform for large-scale experimentation

of FMI services. The platform will be fully integrated with broadcasting supporting high mobility

scenarios and use of software-defined and cloud-like network infrastructure. The plan is to open the

platform, via open calls and unfunded experiments, to tens of experiment runs per annum and gain

insight into the performance, acceptance and viability of solutions.

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Following the list of stakeholders presented in Table 3 where the groups for engagement have been

identified, the 3rd party investment approach will primarily target the following:

 Industries such as the multimedia and creative industries, investment industry as well as

technology providers. The aim is to formulate business models that are deemed suitable for a

long-term sustainability with a drive to commercialization.

 SMEs/Start-ups. R&D Small Medium Enterprises technologically involved in the field of

multimedia. Via 3rd party engagement FLAME will ensure that the expectations of SMEs are

aligned with the FLAME’s offer.

 FLAME replicators. Research and innovator actors which will be supported in the planning

process creating the plans and visions for a city and in the replication of the FLAME platform

itself.

The experimentation strategy followed by FLAME is based on the relationship between facility maturity

and the business maturity of the target groups. This is due to the fact that the Rate of Return (RoR)

for large industry, SMEs and start-ups are different. For example, the RoR for SMEs/entrepreneurs is

shorter than Industry and Universities. Based on this knowledge, FLAME will engage the target groups

at different times in the lifecycle of the project and as the maturity of the platform increases, the

number of SMEs/Individuals experiments will also increase.

Engaging 3rd parties at different times will allow FLAME to:

 Incrementally increase utilisation of the platform over the lifetime of the project and

progressively invest in utilisation of the platform by industry, SMEs and entrepreneurs in

accordance with the expected value creation;

 Shift emphasis from large scale industry towards innovative SMEs and entrepreneurs

throughout the life-time of the project as the platform matures;

 Execute at least 23 experiments from OTT media service providers, ISPs and Vendors covering a

range of sectors, content types and FMI scenarios;

 Expand the platform deployment towards at least three further FLAME Replicators.

4.2 THIRD PARTY ACTIVITIES PROMOTION

To allow stakeholders within the target groups to discover the innovation potential for players within

the FMI ecosystem offered by the FLAME infrastructure, the dissemination and communication work

organized and conducted before and during the engagement activities will play a fundamental role in

the success of the Open Calls themselves.

A critical mass of relevant stakeholders can be reached via web, media and press channels,

publications, liaisons, demos, presentations, participation to standardisation groups, distribution of

promo material in various forms (including newsletters, posters, videos, etc.) and specific promotional

events/sessions/webinars organized by the project. All these activities will be properly timed and

activated. Specific promotional channels include:

 FLAME web site and social media

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 5G PPP COMMS monthly conference calls, mailing list and news item into 5G PPP portal

 FIRE DWG monthly conference calls, mailing list and news item into the FIRE portal

 Echo via NGI, FIWARE, AIOTI, IoT Forum, NEM, CAPS communication and media channels

 Communication and media channels of whole FLAME partners

 Communication and media channels that the external Expert Advisor will activate

 Advertising via F6S channels. F6S is the largest social network for start-ups in the world. With

over 1.8 million profiles for the start-up/ SME community and more than 695,000 start-ups. F6S

can be used for creating effective recruitment campaigns, for targeting SMEs/start-ups and for

disseminating funding opportunities, including Open Calls, to a very broad audience.

The attractiveness of the FLAME offering will have to be properly advertised by translating the value

proposition in specific terms and messages that can be understood by the target stakeholders. The

main challenge will be to reach the stakeholders where they are and speak their language. Besides

professional communication and marketing support this implies an in-depth understanding of the

market players and researchers we are aiming to engage into the FMI ecosystem, which WP2 will lead.

In order to create awareness about the 3rd party opportunities to join FLAME and the FMI ecosystem,

dissemination and communication activities have already started anticipating the investment that is

planned: a page on the FLAME website advertising the open calls opportunity has already been

published (https://www.ict-flame.eu/open-calls/) and promoted via Twitter, flyers referring to the

open calls have been and will be distributed at various events.

Moreover, participation to Startup Weekends in Europe, as well as the FLAME Media Startup

Bootcamp and the FLAME Media Hackathons will represent opportunities to bring the attention of the

Multimedia world and not only to the open calls.

All the events organized by FLAME will be timely arranged so to support a wider advertisement of the

3rd party engagement activities.

4.3 OPEN CALLS

At the time of writing this document, the 3rd party investment strategy via open calls is still in an early

stage of implementation. The overall approach will be re-defined in the second half of year 1 of the

project when the work of the EIB will start. The EIB will strategically provide input and define priorities

to ensure that funding is distributed between different ecosystem stakeholders at key periods in the

project lifecycle (see section 1.2.2).

As already explained in Section 4.1, FLAME will engage the target groups at different times based on

the technical maturity of the platform. Three rounds of open calls will be organized in accordance with

the overall project strategy on a 6-month basis. Each round will target groups in relation to stakeholder

roles and the project priorities.

The financial investment that FLAME has committed in order to support third parties aims at

contributing to the creation and growth of a European FMI ecosystem embracing all relevant

stakeholders in various creative industry sectors like TV, radio, gaming, publishing, and related sectors

like smart city and education.

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The rounds of open calls are planned as so:

 Call 1 announced in April 2018. It targets core infrastructures with beta platform:

 FLAME Replicators (duration 18 Months): replication of FLAME at another location

providing capacity for experimentation from at least October 2018.

 Industry Trials (duration 12 Months): technologies with large scale and significant sectorial

impact on beta platform.

 SME Trials (duration 6 Months): innovative OTT media technologies, ISPs and Vendors.

 Call 2 announced in October 2018. It targets core infrastructures with beta platform.

 SME Trials (duration 6 Months): innovative OTT media technologies, ISPs and Vendors.

 Call 3 announced in April 2019. It targets core infrastructures and FLAME Replicators using RC

Platform.

 Industry Trials (duration 6 Months): technologies with large scale and significant sectorial

impact.

 SME Trials (duration 6 Months): innovative OTT media technologies, ISPs and Vendors.

 Start-up Trials (duration 6 Months): innovative OTT media technologies.

The timeline of the FLAME open calls is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Timeline of FLAME open calls

At least 23 experiments are expected to be run via Open calls. 3 of these will be European cities

committing to replicate the FLAME experimental infrastructure on their locations. These stakeholders

will be provided with detailed replication guidelines and processes that will help them setting up the

FLAME infrastructure. The guidelines and processes will be written based on the gained experience in

Bristol and Barcelona, the two initial FLAME trailblazers. In particular, a first replication of the FLAME

experimental infrastructure will be performed in Barcelona by i2CAT and IMI, providing

communication and processing elements to run trials in a real city environment. The infrastructure will

be a hybrid wired/wireless converged SDN/NFV experimentation testbed able to host targeted

scenarios and use cases defined in the framework of the FLAME project. The outcome of the primer

deployment of the Barcelona testbed will demonstrate and validate the benefits, feasibility and

sustainability of the FLAME approach and will be used to engage stakeholders (municipalities and

infrastructure providers) as future replicators.

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4.3.1 Open call experiment monitoring, mentoring and support

The FLAME project will leverage on its partners’ previous experiences in providing experimentation as

a service to maximise experimenters’ experience and guarantee successful trials. Key aspects to this

approach are monitoring, mentoring and support models. While monitoring will focus on keeping track

of technical magnitudes, mentoring will focus on assisting the experimenter and maximising its

experience out of using the FLAME platform.

In more detail, the support model for experimenters will be based on a 2-tier structure. Depending on

best practices and previous experiences, the FLAME project partners may decide to extend the model

to maximise experience. The tier-1 support layer, or ‘Basic Support’, will provide the experimenter with

the basic environment within the platform, the tools and the documentation to set up and run

experiments. It will also provide reference material to allow the experimenter to troubleshoot

common known problems in using the platform. The tier-2 support layer, or ‘Enhanced Support’, will

provide the experimenter with enhanced support activities to tackle those situations not covered by

the self-assistance document base in the Basic Support. Moreover, the enhanced support will include

activities to co-design, co-set up and co-monitor the experiments, along with the open call awardee.

The tier-1 support level will pursue the following objectives:

 Availability of the facility. Make the facility and its resources available through the FLAME

platform.

 Remote access. Provide the means and tools to remotely access the platform, so that the time

required to be physically hosted in the pilot city is reduced.

 Platform guidelines and documentation. Prepare and supply usage guidelines and relevant

material and documents to help the experimenter run its experiment.

 Self-assistance (FAQ and troubleshooting guidelines). Provide a knowledge base of known

issues, problems or situations to help the experimenter self-diagnose and troubleshoot common

and known situations.

 Basic communications. Provide relevant communication channels between the experimenters

and the experimentation facilities providers.

The tier-2 support level will focus on the following:

 All objectives provided by the Basic Support.

 Collaborative design of the experiment (technical consultancy). A partner or a set of them

within the FLAME consortium will assist the experimenter in co-designing the experiment with

those aspects difficult to sort out by the experimenter (deployment constraints, interaction with

3rd parties affecting the experiment, etc.)

 Collaborative run of the experiment (technical consultancy). As in point 2 above, but applies to

running the experiment itself. For example, enabling a protected resource for the experiment,

access to municipality premises, etc.

 Active problem solving (during run time if possible) using monitoring. Live troubleshooting of

any issues, even during running time of the experiment, will be offered. This support item will

be specified per project and experiment instance.

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 Enhanced communications.

In terms of mentoring, each 3rd party experiment will be assigned a mentor within the FLAME partners.

The mentor will be responsible for those activities that will provide the experimenter with a successful

experience, regardless of the results of the experiment. To that extent, the mentors will work to:

 understand the needs of the experimenter;

 assist with technical requirements definition for the platform when required;

 make recommendations to WP3 for upgrades on the technical architecture;

 amend the facility to run the experiments;

 coach or chaperon the experimenter during execution of the experiment;

 facilitate communications between the project partners and the experimenter;

 identify and manage potential conflicts;

 follow-up on the experiment results compared to the original objectives.

4.4 UNFUNDED EXPERIMENTS

Together with open calls which will be regularly funded by the project, the 3rd party engagement

activities will implement steps to attract strategic partners willing to pay from their own resources to

run experiments on the FLAME platform.

Unfunded experiments are the last step in the timeline towards commercialization (see Figure 2). As

explained at the beginning of this chapter, the end goal of the 3rd party engagement strategy is to

create demand for services that would allow the transition from experiments funded through 3rd party

projects and open calls to customers willing to pay for experimentation services.

In order to make the phase of unfunded experiments successful, FLAME must:

 Initially validate the platform within key vertical areas (TV, Radio, Gaming, etc.) with key

industrial partners (DRZ, VRT) first and via open calls after to generate global success stories for

promotion.

 Validate different business models that will ensure the sustainability of FLAME infrastructures

beyond the initial public funding.

At least five experiments will be selected. These experiments will provide test cases for simulating

future business models.

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5 CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS

FLAME will establish and grow a sustainable Future Media Internet, FMI, ecosystem to ensure broad

socio-economic impact creation through a comprehensive and well-articulated engagement strategy

and plan based on a rich set of dedicated activities.

This document describes the core strategy and plan, as defined in the first months of the project

activity, the FLAME partners are following to ensure a comprehensive and effective approach for the

creation and growth of the FMI ecosystem by supporting project partners in their promotional and

outreach activities.

Plans and activities will adapt according to the progress and opportunities as they will arise. An up-to-

date view on strategy and plan will be provided at the end of the first reporting period so as to

effectively reflect any new direction FLAME might undertake to ensure effective engagement of a large

ecosystem.

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6 REFERENCES

[1] The digital future of creative Europe, “The impact of digitization and the Internet on the creative

industries in Europe”, PWC, 2015, available at http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/The-

digital-future-of-creative-Europe-2015.pdf, accessed March 2017

[2] https://www.ict-flame.eu/promotional-material/

[3] European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Network Functions Virtualization,

http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/nfv

[4] European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Mobile Edge Computing,

http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/mobile-edge-computing

[5] European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Next Generation Protocols,

http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/next-generation-protocols

[6] IETF, IRTF, Network Function Virtualization Research Group,

https://trac.ietf.org/trac/irtf/wiki/nfvrg

[7] IETF, Service Function Chaining (Active WG), https://tools.ietf.org/wg/sfc

[8] Virtual Switzerland, Swiss National Thematic Network for Virtual Environments Interaction and

Simulation, http://virtualswitzerland.org

[9] University Research Institutes, www.bristol.ac.uk/research/institutes/

[10] University's Public Engagement, www.bristol.ac.uk/public-engagement/

[11] EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Communications, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cdt-

communications/

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7 APPENDIX A – THE FIRST FLAME FLYER

Figure 6: The FLAME flyer (front)

Figure 7: The FLAME flyer (back)

FLAME D6.3: FMI Ecosystem Engagement Strategy and Plan

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