The 5th Panhellenic Conference on the Development of Greek Agriculture was the latest of the series of Conferences organized by GAIA Epicheirein in collaboration with various organizations. It took place at the Candia Maris Resort & Spa Crete, an impressive complex at Heraklion, Crete.
This year's theme was "Digitization: The Future of European Agriculture" - you can read a sort overview here (English).
This year's theme was "Digitization: The Future of European Agriculture" - you can read a sort overview here (English).
I found myself contributing to the coverage of the event, being a part of the social media team (and focusing on my favorite Twitter). Using the hashtag #GAIACongress18, we created a cloud of tweets while an additional cloud was created through the #GAIACongress2018 hashtag by third parties (I admit we hadn't circulated the hashtag of the event beforehand so this was a minor casualty).
My workflow was pretty much a typical one: I was taking photos of the event with my smartphones and kept tweeting using my Bluetooth keyboard which was paired with them. I also used my 11,6-inch tablet with its keyboard for managing the Facebook pages and responding to emails.
Τελευταίες ετοιμασίες λίγο πριν την έναρξη του 5ου Πανελληνίου Συνεδρίου - σας περιμένουμε! #GaiaCongress18 pic.twitter.com/LY5xYuKvw1— Gaia Επιχειρείν (@Gaia_Epixeirein) October 25, 2018
What I (also) did during the Congress
On top of that, I was around the gaiasense booth that was available at the exhibition room of the Congress; we had a TV screen for playing the gaiasense videos, a huge banner, numerous leaflets and of course our loyal telemetric station (which tends to be around in all recent gaiasense-related event, from the Thessaloniki International Fair 2018 and on!). I had the opportunity to explain the gaiasense concept to participants of the event and talk about the features of our custom telemetric stations.
Among these, I managed to find some time to be around our DataBio Horizon 2020 Big Data Lighthouse Project stand and help our charming Italian partner Anna Bozza from CiaoTech to keep up with questions and requests about the project from Greek stakeholders (many of which were not exactly fluent in English). The stand was really well-thought, with project dissemination material (T-shirts and hats stood out of the crowd!) and drew the attention of various participants of the event.
In between, I got engaged in discussions with friends and colleagues, talked about gaiasense and smart farming in Greece to media, arrange an interview with the national TV channel ERT the day after (a challenging task, considering it should take place about 100 km away from our hotel and I had no car or other mean of transportation available), give a hand to the dissemination of our projects during the Congress (such as our Greek ones SmartPeach and SymbIoT, and our LIFE GAIA Sense EU one) and last but not least, deliver a presentation about our DataBio project, focusing on the Greek pilots!
My DataBio presentation
Right after the end of the main event (the Congress), GAIA Epicheirein, CiaoTech and NEUROPUBLIC had arranged a brief session focusing on our DataBio Horizon 2020 Lighthouse project at the main room of the Congress. I had prepared a set of slides about the project itself, its aims and objectives and work so far and a second set on the smart farming pilots taking place in Greece - which NEUROPUBLIC coordinates and implements.
Despite the fact that the session took place by the end of a long day, the audience was more than we initially expected, consisting of various types of Greek stakeholders (farmers and agricultural cooperatives, agricultural advisors and agronomists, other agrifood chain partners). The presentation went pretty well, I received a number of questions during the session and got into related discussions afterwards.
Wrapping up
It was surely a long and busy day, with many tasks running at the same time, various requests to be fulfilled and many-many discussions with stakeholders. In the end we managed to keep things under control and deliver what we had to deliver (plus arrange some things for the next day, like the aforementioned TV interview).
By the end of the day, we had to disassemble everything, pack it up (including posters, roll-ups, banners, leaflets and even our pretty heavy telemetric station), load everything on our pick-up truck and catch up with the rest of colleagues for a nice, traditional Cretan dinner in a small village outside Heraklion.
We knew that we had accomplished our goals during these two days at Crete (the gaiasense event and the 5th GAIA Congress) and this made everything easier for us.
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