Best Practices for involving communities in European IoT Projects

Charalampos Doukas

Researcher• Information &

Communication Systems Engineer

• PhD in Health Informatics• Senior Researcher in

CREATE-NET• COMPOSE Project

Maker• IoT Blogger

– Many DIY IoT Projects

• Workshops (Makerland, Makerfaire…)

• Author– Building Internet of Things

with the Arduino

• Consultancy

@BuildingIoT

hdoukas

Define community…

Community = individuals who share common interests and contribute / do things collaboratively

IoT community = individuals who share interests in connected objects, Internet services and their technologies, use connected products (geeks..) + use tools to build connected products for fun and for business

Community in IoT EU Project?

-End users?-Developers?-SMEs/Startups?-IoT community?

The Problem

We fail to create community engagement:

•User participatory in defining both the use cases & the requirements & the evaluation

•Sustainability

• A community of stakeholders (..) who will use, maintain and improve (adopt) the project outcomes

The Problem in IoT

IndustryIndustry ResearchResearchSMESME

EE

IoT Community / EntrepreneurshipIoT Community / Entrepreneurship

?

Why is IoT community important?

Who made IoT popular?

Who made IoT popular?

Why is IoT community important?

Let’s see some numbers

•http://postscapes.com/connected-city•Navigation, surveillance, flood protection, commuting, air pollution, bike-sharing, waste management, …•> 50 projects/products

•http://postscapes.com/connected-home•Home security, Nest-like, access control, …•> 200 projects/products

•http://postscapes.com/connected-body•Self-tracking, wearable, smart gesture, etc.•> 100 projects/products

Last 2 years

Why is IoT community important?

The SmartCitizen kit case:

•Collaboratively measure air quality in cities and expose OpenData•Initiative from FabLab Barcelona (community!)•Prototypes on Arduino with Internet connectivity•KickStarter campaign 2 years ago – 70K$ - 200 devices•Today:

• More than 50 cities worldwide• Sold more than 500 devices

The web platform have been developed thanks to: jQuery, OpenStreetMap, Leafletjs, Mapbox, D3js, SASS and, CakePHP, and many more... The actual project is open source and available on Github.

Why is this community important?• They drive the IoT landscape faster than anyone

• Flexible• Bottom up driven (from the problem towards the solution)• Higher successful rate in adoption / market

• What SME here has made 1M$ in 3 months with just a prototype?

Why is this community important?

Do we need the IoT community?

• YES!

Does IoT Community need EU Projects?

• The look for funds• We get funds in advance

• They have problems to solve• We look for use cases + pilots + users + data

• They develop things much better• We do research and we should communicate research

• There are many open IoT challenges• We have (potentially) knowledge to contribute

Let’s try together!

Why we don’t work together?• They don’t ‘speak’ research

• The don’t attend research conferences and EU Summits• The don’t attend IoT Week

• We don’t know each other• Our fault: WP for dissemination/exploitation

• Have you heard any of these?• ThingsCon• Next.Berlin• LeWeb• GigaOM Structure Connect• ….

Why?

We speak different languages ….

Why?

What frameworks do you use for IoT solution development?

Why?

Why?

Why?

What it looks like?

Stop re-inventing things…

Let’s talk radio protocols and home automation…what’s your favorite radio technology?

•WiFi?•ZigBee?•Some RF?

Who has heard of Zwave????

Zwave facts

If you do home automation and haven’t heard of Zwave…

•ITU but closed•Full stack protocol (Radio, Network, Discovery, Application, Security)

•More than 50 product categories• Door locks, thermostats, cameras, window blinds,

alarms• Different vendors• Everything talks to each other• 1 Gateway• SmartThings….

Possible solutions

Identify IoT communities:

•Attend local Meetups / create new ones•Use twitter (#iot)•Start going to maker / developer events (Makerland, ThingsCon, Codemotion….)

Involve them into projects

Reuse and build together:•Start Github from time 0. Try invite people / fork other projects•Engage discussions•Get evaluation about your approach•Do you generate data? Make then OpenData•Do you need data? Look for OpenData•….