2nd Steering Committee Meeting, Castel Sant’Angelo, Italy 17-2-2010

The second Steering Committee Meeting of the BESSE Project was held with the Italian Project Partner in Castel Sant’Angelo, in January 2010. The meeting was attended by all the project partners and generously hosted by the Mayor of Castel Sant’Angelo, Paolo Anibaldi.

The drafting of a map (grid) of technologies was refined to ensure that a a useful tool is created for deciding on the efficacy of different technologies. While the three BESSE implementation partners would benefit from this map, it is intended for use beyond the immediate partners. The grid will include qualitative descriptions of the different technologies and will include aspects such as the financial cost and institutional environment within which the technologies can be used. This grid cannot possibly provide a detailed footprint of all technologies and users will still have to do their own detailed analysis. It will, however, be comprehensive enough to provide good insight into the technology and its application.

The qualitative native of the grid determines that the BESSE researchers have to gain substantial knowledge from the existing implementation partners of their local conditions and determinants. The knowledge gleaned through interviews will be refined and applied in the construction of the tool (grid).

The BESSE implementation partners are located in Pernik (Bulgaria), Castel Sant’Angelo (Italy) and Limburg (Netherlands) and the differing nature of the three projects, including the levels of technological sophistication between the three, determined that the BESSE partners rethink general terms such as ‘innovation’ and ‘knowledge brokering’. Technological innovation can thus also mean applying an ‘old’ technology in a new way.