On Thursday, 25 November, from 9:30-13:15 CET, the DevOps competences for Smart Cities (Smart DevOps) project consortium will hold a final project’s online conference titled Smart Employees for Smart Cities. Those attending will have the opportunity to learn how to bridge the gap between today’s and future’s skills demands of the municipal workforce.
Smart cities are complex ecosystems that use information and communication technologies for helping their citizens and organizations deal with the challenges of urbanization, safety, resilience, and sustainability. Their creation is a long and laborious transformation that should not be considered mainly as a technical challenge but as a movement to create citizen-centred ecosystems that improve quality of life and stimulate economic activity.
A highly skilled workforce is key in rendering smart city ecosystems a reality. Even though billions of euros are invested in technological or urban development, not sufficient effort has been spent in training the necessary workforce with the skills needed in smart cities ecosystems.
The Smart DevOps project aims to close the gap between today’s and future’s skills demands of the municipal workforce by emphasizing the exploitation of emerging employment paradigms such as DevOps. The key advantage of DevOps is that it allows to innovate and rapidly deploy innovative solutions for the citizens. This was the premise and also a starting point of the DevOps competences for Smart Cities project.
At the final conference, we will present project deliverables, pilot activities results and facilitate discussions about the future of skills development in the Smart Cities sector. Specifically, you will hear about and be able to discuss:
- Key transversal and specific competencies for Smart Cities professionals
- 3 new emerging Smart City job profiles (Smart City Planner, Smart City IT Manager, Smart City IT Officer)
- Vocational Curricula for the three job profiles delivered through the Massive Online Open Course and Specialisation Courses
- Results of extensive pilot training attended by hundreds of trainees
- Smart City Body of Knowledge
- A growing community of Smart Cities stakeholders (IT and tech experts, public officials and employees)
- Smart Cities professionals
- IT experts
- VET providers
- Decision-makers
- Policy-makers
- Consultants
- Researchers
09:30 – 09:40 | Welcome and introduction Peter Palvoglyi, CEO of ALL DIGITAL |
09:40 – 10:00 | Keynote speech: Career challenges in smart cities – How does the digital transformation of cities affects careers and what has to be done towards a sustainable career ecosystem in smart cities? Prof Dr Judith Hilde Semeijn, Open University of the Netherlands and Maastricht University |
10:00 – 10:20 | Emerging smart city job roles and skills – The DevOps findings Prof Dr Hans Rüdiger Kaufmann, The University of Applied Management Studies Manheim |
10:20 – 10:40 | Design and delivery of the Smart DevOps Curricula Dr Theodor Panagiotakopoulos, Hellenic Open University |
10:40 – 10:55 | Fireside chat Upskilling and introducing new profiles in municipality and smart city administrations Stelina Chatzichristou, Department for Skills and Labour Market, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) |
10:55 – 11:10 | Break |
11:10 – 11:25 | Pilot delivery of the Smart DevOps Curricula – Smart DevOps Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Prof Angelika Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia – EDEX |
11:25 – 11:40 | Pilot delivery of the Smart DevOps Curricula – Specialization courses and Work-based learning Vasileios I. Kyriatzis, University of Thessaly |
11:40 – 11:55 | Fireside chat Smart DevOps MOOC and specialisation courses experience |
11:55 – 12:25 | Smart Cities Body of Knowledge Presentation of the book How to build on the project results and possible directions for the future Prof Dr Panos Fitsilis, University of Thessaly Prof Angelika Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia – EDEX |
12:25 – 12:45 | Q&A about project results |
| 12:45 – 13:00 | Closing of the conference Prof Dr Panos Fitsilis, University of Thessaly |
Stelina Chatzichristou (Department for Skills and Labour Market, European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training – CEDEFOP)
Stelina Chatzichristou is an expert in the department for VET and skills at Cedefop. She is leading Cedefop’s research on jobs, skills and VET for the green transition. Stelina contributes to the Centre’s research on skills intelligence and skills governance in sectors and EU countries. Before joining Cedefop, Stelina worked for almost a decade in the private sector as a researcher and policy analyst. In that capacity, she has worked on and managed projects on national and EU comparative analysis on VET, skills and entrepreneurship.
Prof Dr Panos Fitsilis (University of Thessaly)
Prof. Dr. Panos Fitsilis is a full Professor at University of Thessaly (UTH), Greece and a Lecturer at Hellenic Open University (HOU). Prof. P. Fitsilis has extensive project management experience in more than 50 research or commercial projects on the development and deployment of large IT systems and extensive management experience in various senior management positions such as: Director of School of Business and Economics at UAST, Vice President of UAST Research Committee, Head of Project Management department at UAST, Director of Research Laboratory “Business Information Systems and eCommerce”, Head of Business Unit at Intrasoft International, a large international IT company, etc. During his work as Business Unit manager at Intrasoft International he was responsible for the development, deployment and operation of a number of prestigious IT systems for European Commission, (CORDIS, and Electronic Proposal Submission System – EPSS), European Parliament, European Central Bank, etc. He has published extensively, over 100 papers published at scientific journals and international conferences and his research interests include Project Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Software Engineering, Business Information Systems, Social Media Applications, Smart Cities, etc.
Prof. dr. Judith H. Semeijn (Open University Netherlands)
Prof. Semeijn is a professor in Sustainable HRM and Head of Department Organisation in the faculty of Management Sciences at the Open Universiteit, the Netherlands. Her research interests include Sustainable HRM, Sustainable Careers and Life Long Development in the context of a resilient society and sustainable business. Her research has been published in national and international books and journals such as Human Relations, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Applied Psychology, an international review, Career Development International and HRM. She is also affiliated with the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, as a research fellow.
Prof Angelika Kokkinaki (University of Nicosia)
Prof. Kokkinaki has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Suma Cum
Laude from the Centre for Advanced Computer Studies, Lafayette, University of Southwestern Louisiana – USL, (now renamed to University of Louisiana at Lafayette – ULL), USA, 1995; a M.Sc. in Computer Science, Cum Laude, Department of Computer Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 1991; and a BEng in Computer Engineering and Informatics, Patras University, Patras Greece. She serves as the Dean of the School of Business and teaches courses on E-business, Digital Transformation and Business Information Systems.
Prof Dr Hans Rüdiger Kaufmann (University of Applied Management Studies Manheim)
Following management experience gained in the German banking industry he successfully obtained his doctorate at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he also worked as a research assistant and lecturer. He moved to an organisation in Budapest affiliated to the Chartered Institute of Marketing as the marketing course director. He was subsequently appointed as Assistant Professor of Marketing at the International Centre in Budapest and its contractual consultant. He held various posts at the University of Liechtenstein, including Academic Director of Private Banking, member of the management team of the Institute for Financial Services and Head of the International Management Competence Centre as part of the Institute for Entrepreneurship. From 2006 he was employed as Associate Professor of Marketing at Nicosia University, where he also became a full professor in February 2013. Since 1.2.2016 he has been Professor for International Sales Management at the Mannheim University of Applied Management Studies and is head of the management & corporate management degree programme.
Vasileios I. Kyriatzis (University of Thessaly)
Vasilis Kyriatzis, has more than 15 years of technical, managerial and teaching experience, dealing with issues and aspects of both design, implementation, management and public procurement of vocational, educational and research oriented projects, having taken part under various roles, in more than 40 privately, nationally and EU funded projects. He holds a B.Eng.(Hons) and an M.Sc.(Eng) from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering of The University of Leeds, UK and an MBA (with distinction) from the Hellenic Open University. He is member of The Technical Chamber of Greece and currently serves as Special Technical Laboratory Staff at the University of Thessaly, Greece.
Peter Palvolgyi (ALL DIGITAL)
Peter Palvolgyi has been serving ALL DIGITAL since 2012, first as financial officer and Chief Operating Officer, and since March 2021 – as Chief Executive Officer. Peter is responsible for strengthening the position of ALL DIGITAL as a leading European actor in the field of digital competences for citizenship, inclusion, education, and employability. He is in charge of developing, planning, leading, and implementing the strategy for the further development of ALL DIGITAL. Peter has long-standing experience in project management of EU funded projects and other donors’ programmes. Peter managed and coordinated more than 10 EU-funded projects where ALL DIGITAL acted either as lead organisation or partner. He has been connected to digital inclusion since 2000, taking an active part in the implementation of the Hungarian telecentre program. From 2001 to 2002, then between 2004 and 2006, he was the Executive Director of the Telecottage Public Service Non-profit Company. Before moving to Brussels in 2012, Peter worked as the executive director of DemNet Foundation (Hungary), a then member organization of ALL DIGITAL. Peter is also a former member of the Telecentre Europe (now ALL DIGITAL) Board, stepping down from this role when he joined ALL DIGITAL as a staff member.
Dr Theodoros Panagiotakopoulos (Hellenic Open University)
Dr Panagiotakopoulos received his BSc and PhD from the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, Greece in 2006 and 2011 respectively, with his dissertation on “Context-awareness and user modeling in pervasive systems”. His research interests include, among others, ambient assisted living systems, decision support systems, user models and service personalization. Until now, he has published over 15 articles in international conferences and journals, as well as in international book chapters. He has participated in four (4) European research and development projects focusing on ICTs mainly in the field of health/bioinformatics. Since 2006, he is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece and since 2011 he is working in the Educational Content and Educational Methodology lab of the Hellenic Open University (HOU) as a research in various national and European research and development projects. He is a member of the services and applications development and maintenance team and his responsibilities include software development and maintenance, as well as technical support to HOU’s academic staff and students.
Participation at the event is free of charge, but registration is compulsory. The registration deadline is 23 November 2021.
Register HERE.
The conference will take place on Zoom. All registered participants will receive Zoom link a few days before the event.
Conference will be organised in English.
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
