Almost 80 on-site participants, 30 online attendees, 7 working groups, 2 keynote speakers and 2 funding opportunities workshops. All these numbers sum up to a SUCCESS.

Hack4reSTART Torino (24-25 February) happened to be a very valuable event both for traditional manufacturing SMEs and for tech-savvy organisations.

During these two days, participants had a great chance to get to know more about cybersecurity by listening to Marco Di Costanzo (CCI Italian coordinator & Security researcher at Kaspersky) speech on 2023 predictions: ICS cyberthreats and to Edoardo Calia (CTO at Fondazione LINKS) lecture on Cybersecurity for IoT.

Participants interested in European open funding opportunities for their businesses and projects had the possibility to attend online or on-site sessions dedicated to such financial support. This workshop was provided by Ola Sawicka Green (Marketing Coordinator, Funding Box) and Andreea Timaru (Senior Business Analyst, Fondazione Piemonte Innova).

While the first day of the event was committed mostly to networking and presentations, the second one was about trying to solve real-life challenges manufacturers face on a daily basis. Fondazione Piemonte Innova gathered specific challenges submitted by manufacturing SMEs and together identified 7 topics to be addressed within the event (six of them on-site in Oval Lingotto and one of them online), each of them presented by at least one company from the manufacturing sector. Based on their expertise and interests, participants were able to choose which working group to participate to:

1. Industrial IoT for its application in critical environments
2. Digital technologies for the efficient use of energy in factories
3. Digital sensor systems useful for measuring the company's environmental impact
4. Cybersecurity for prevention, detection of threats, contrast and recovery
5. The role of manufacturing companies in the energy communities
6. Human-centred big data
7. Online open discussion on Digitalisation in manufacturing

Each of these topics reviewed different challenges, some of them even focused on more than one problem. After a few hours of discussion, each working group presented its findings.

Participating manufacturing SMEs were given the chance to consult their digitalisation pursuit with ReStartSMEs technology experts from Eurecat and Imec, and thus develop a digitalization roadmap based on their results from the Digital Maturity Assessment.

Networking is a key to a successful event and thus, there were ample opportunities to broaden one’s network. That's why networking did not stop as the event finished. There is still a possibility to connect and organise individual meetings with experts, suppliers and other event participants. There are time slots available until 10th March so if you haven’t registered yet, join the event today at the b2match platform and book a meeting with a particular person.

All Hack4reSTART Torino information is available here: https://hack4restart-torino.b2match.io/  

We invite everyone to participate to the next Hack4reSTART events: there will be 4 or them. The next two are taking place in Stuttgart (20-23/03/2023) and in Kaunas (30/03/2023). They will be followed by one in Bucharest and one in Porto. Check their dates and topics HERE.

Last but not least, if you represent manufacturing SMEs interested in analise challenges, bring ideas into practice, the ReStartSMEs project offers support for SMEs to better understand needs, develop a digitalisation roadmap and assess quotes received from technology providers. For more information write to info [at] restartsmes.eu