National Workshop on Living Labs and Agile Piloting (Berlin, Germany)

On September 11, 2024, our German tandem partners held their national workshop in Berlin. As part of our INTERREG project, we spent an afternoon collaborating with colleagues from EurA AG, ZDE, and many other brilliant minds at CityLAB Berlin. We delved into inspiring topics in the field of smart cities, including #Reallabore, #Living Labs, #CitizenScience, Agile Piloting, and how to streamline the implementation of complex digital projects in cities.

Nearly 30 participants, official representatives from federal ministries from all over Germany and the Czech Republic, capitalized on the workshop not only through networking and exchanging perspectives with other smart city stakeholders but also through shaping and empowering the building of an intelligent and innovative ecosystem for Smart Cities based on the Agile Piloting Framework and City Labs' firsthand experiences from the field.

The workshop emphasized the importance of city/living labs as a guarantee for the implementation of smart city projects and applications through the early direct involvement of citizens and other stakeholders. After the introduction to the topic and the contributions from City Lab Berlin, the city Lab of the city of Herne, and the Fichtellab in the district of Wunsiedel, it became clear that networking the Living Labs in Germany more closely with each other is crucial for empowering them and extending their reach. How this could be achieved was discussed in the subsequent workshops. The results will be incorporated into a white paper developed with the workshop participants, which can be used as a basis for further developments.

We thank all speakers and participants for the exciting exchange and the many impulses! Special thanks go to the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Germany for the good cooperation, the lead partner Ministry of Industry and Trade (CZ) for the overview on the Czech smart city status, Dimitri Ravin from urban-digital.de for the great moderation, and CityLAB Berlin for providing the cool location directly at the historic Tempelhof Airport. CityLAB Berlin is operated by the Technologiestiftung Berlin and funded by the Berlin Senate Chancellery. The project described in the text “PilotInnCities” is an Interreg B: Danube Region program Co-funded by the European Union.