TRN at ICT 5^th call InfoDay
TRN will be present in the InfoDay organised by the ICT Challenge 1.2 – Internet of Software, Services and Virtualisation to be held in Brussels on June 9^th.
TRN, using the InnoSME tools and services (www.innosme.eu) provide help to the ICT SMEs to take part in proposals for this call. Please, contact the InnoSME team at sme@innosme.eu

Workshop CIP-ICT-PSP programme call
TRN has organised a Workshop to discuss the open call of the CIP-ICT-PSP programme. The Workshop, with the presence of EC Officers responsible for the different themes in the call, has been done on March 31^st.
If you are interested, you cand ownlowad the presentations from Olavi Luotonen, Katarzyna Balucka and Marcel Watelet.

Successful Final review for InnoSME project
TRN, as the only partner of the InnoSME project, has received a successful final Review of the project, which was done in Brussels, in February 19^th. The Final Report from the reviewers states that the project has ended with all the objectives achieved on time. TRN will maintain the InnoSME services and tools for all the ICT SMEs in Europe. More information in the project Web: www.innosme.eu

TeleRegions Network General Assembly
TRN General Assembly will be held in Brussels, on February 18th, at 15:00 pm., in West Sweden Offices, Rue de Luxembourg 3.
The Agenda of the Assembly will include:
- the presentation of the presented proposals;
- the discussion on the proposals in preparation;
- the TRN plans for 2009; and
- the nomination of the TRN Board.
All the TRN members, as well as the representative of all the European Regions and SMEs Associations and Universities working in IS, ICT, Innovation and SMEs are welcomed. Please contact with our Secretary General (Francisco Loras, francisco.loras@teleregionsnetwork.org) or our Communication Officer (Maxime Bouillard, maxime.bouillard@teleregionsnetwork.org).

InnoMot & ClustManagement
TeleRegions will be in charge of the Dissemination Component in two proposals presented to the 2nd call of the INTERREG IVC programme.
The aim of InnoMot project is to build up expertise in the public administrations in order to improve the current practice regarding the design, the implementation and the monitoring of Innovation motivation policies as well as systems to do this in the partner regions. The challenge of the Project is to improve the development and adoption of new business models in SMEs by designing, implementing and managing strategies, policies and tools, whose aims are to improve non-technological innovation, and especially regarding the factors related with the motivation of the owners and managers of the SMEs. The partnership, besides TeleRegions Network, and with West Sweden as leader, includes other nine European Regions.
In ClustManagement, the challenge is to improve the competitiveness of the territories in which is located high concentrations of companies in the traditional industrial sectors, which have problems related with the effects of the globalisation of the markets and the whole economy. The strategic objective of the project is to improve the public policies, at Regional and Local level, to improve the conditions in which these sectors are working, the activities targeted to these territories, and the companies located in. The partners are: West Sweden, Municipality of Castelo Branco, Lodz Region, Institute for Small & Medium Sized Industrial Firms of the Valencian Government, Public Society for the Innovation Management Extremadura, Firenze Tecnologia-Special Agency of the Chamber of Commerce of Florence, and TeleRegions Network.

TeleRegions is the coordinator of a Proposal presented to the Research for the Benefit of SMEs programme
TeleRegions, through the InnoSME project, has promoted and coordinated the preparation and submission of one proposal to the last call of the Research for the Benefit of SMEs programme, which has close last January 27th
The purpose of this project is to identify, catalogue, analyse, benchmark and improve Research Support Programmes at regional and national level promoting the adoption of ICT research results by SMEs. The geographical scope of the project is composed by 15 countries: the 12 New Member States (NMS) and the 3 Candidate Countries (CC)
The Consortium is integrated by 17 partner, 9 of whom are InnoSME stakeholders: Varna Regional Innovation Agency (Bulgaria), Foundation for the Information Society (Bulgaria), Cyprus Information Technology Enterprises Association (Cyprus), Latvian Information and Communications Technology Association (Latvia), Association Infobalt (Lithuania), Észak-Alföld Regional Development and Innovation Agency (Hungary), Lower Silesian Agency of Economic Cooperation (Poland), Romanian Association for Electronic and Software Industry (Romania), and Centre for eGovernance Development (Slovenia). Other partners are: Moravian University College Olomouc and Olomouc Region (Czech Republic), The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Turkey), Instituto de la Mediana y Pequeña Industria de Valencia and IEP (Spain), and West Sweden (Sweden)

TeleRegions will be in charge of the Managament of two Proposals submitted by InnoSME project to the Research for SMEs Association programme

InnoSME has prepared and submitted two proposals to the 2nd call of the Research for SMEs Association programme, which is closing tomorrow for the first stage.

The first proposal is Software Design and Development tool (SDDt), and has the objective to obtain an Agile Software Development Process Management tool integrated with the necessary tools to support the entire Design and Production Processes with the following features: Support for agile process management; Defect Tracking System; Configuration Management, Analysis and Design document management system; Quality control system; Continuous integration and Commercial product website. The Consortium is integrated by 6 SMEs Associations (INFOBALT from Lithuania, CITEA from Cyprus, IVSZ from Hungary, Aries from Romania, BASSCOM from Bulgaria, and IAT from Turkey), and 15 SMEs from these countries.

The second one is Monitoring Control Software for Remote Maintenance (MCRSM), and has the challenge to detect software failure symptoms as soon as possible, before they become a problem for the customer; identify negative trends in software performance; allow for preventive and predictive software maintenance; allow remote secure software maintenance tasks; and simplify as much as possible impact on software development process. The main project objectives are: Identify and develop mechanisms to integrate monitoring agents into software applications without appreciable loss of performance; Design a correlation system capable of identify software failures based on early symptoms; Provide a methodology and guidelines to integrate agents in the development cycle; and Develop a system to remotely access monitoring data and perform maintenance tasks with the appropriate levels of security. The Consortium is integrated by 4 SMEs Associations (ESTIC from Spain, DEKUT from Hungary, ICT Cluster from Bulgaria, and TBV from Turkey); PIN-SME, the European Association; and 9 SMEs from these countries

InnoSME Final Seminar
The InnoSME Final Seminar has been done in Brussels, December 16th. The Seminar has presented the results of the InnoSME project, as well as been a place for networking looking for new ideas. 21 attendants have discussed new projects, as well as the way to extend the InnoSME services to the SMEs in their Regions

TRN Networking Seminar
TRN has organised a Networking Seminar on September 23^rd, in Brussels. We are looking forward to meeting you at the seminar, which we hope will provide an excellent opportunity to meet and share ideas for common projects in the programmes of the European Commission and to interchange information about the new opportunities in the upcoming calls (download the Agenda). If you are interested, please contact our Communication Officer, Mr Maxime Bouillard

First Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme call for proposals is published
(Deadline: 21/08/2008) Objective of the Call is to launch European collaborative projects providing innovative ICT based solutions for elderly persons with identified risk factors and/or chronic conditions. The Call promotes the creation of new solutions with a holistic approach to prevention, management, support services and the social and socio-economic environment related to chronic conditions. The AAL Joint Programme calls for proposals with a clear European dimension, with high relevance and with maximal impact on progress in the fields described in the topic definition.
If you are interested in promote a proposal for this call, with the collaboration of TeleRegions Network, please contact Francisco Loras

TRN 2009 Annual Conference
TRN is starting the preparation of the 2009 Conference, to be done in September, focused in e-Government and interregional cooperation. The call for papers will be open soon. If you are interested, please contact our Communication Officer, Mr Maxime Bouillard

Innovation and SMEs
TRN is managing since October 2006 the InnoSME project (www.innosme.eu), with the objective to promote the participation of Innovative SMEs in the ICT Sector in FP7 and CIP through National and Regional Networking. The project has deployed some tools to help SMEs to be more innovative. For more information contact our Secretary General and InnoSME project Manager Mr Francisco Loras

Best Practise
TRN ask you to send us your best practices of promoting and linking Innovation, ICT and SMEs in your Region. To develop and share these experiences is our main objective in the short term. TRN has started the preparation of a proposal to be submitted in the ICT PSP call in CIP. For more information contact Mr Francisco Loras

Report
EU Regions and Networking. TRN hands in Report to the European Commission – Directorate General Regional Policy and Directorate General for Information Society and Media: “EU REGIONS AND NETWORKING. Improving Interregional Cooperation and Best Practice Exchange in ICT”. You can download the Report here

Meeting with the European Commission
TRN will participate in a meeting promoted by the new Unit “New Infrastructure Paradigms and Experimental Facilities” in DG INFSO – with the aim to share information about the objectives of running projects, the achievements reached so far, and to derive synergies and potential issues for collaboration, including further development of research areas.

New Secretary General
Mr. Francisco Loras, InnoSME project Manager, has recently been appointed as TRN Secretary General. His main task will be extending the stakeholders support network created in InnoSME to all European Regions.