Interview with Mariana Fernández, Head of Communications and Capacity Building. PMO at Sustainable Innovations
Q: How can communication and dissemination help contribute to achieving the project goals?
A: In communication, we usually say: “if we don’t communicate it, it doesn’t exist.” We can have the best service, but if we are not able to address the correct stakeholders and raise awareness…that will lead us to an unusable service.
Fortunately, this has not been the case for SPEEDIER, of course! From the very beginning, we implemented a holistic approach in our dissemination and communication strategies. We carried out a multiplatform strategy to guarantee we arrived at the correct targets through online (website, social media, webinars, newsletters..), and offline methodologies (events, workshops, panels, press releases, award candidacies…)
Although COVID-19 has widely affected our tasks as well as participation in face-to-face events was suddenly no longer possible, we managed to carry out anyway successful online workshops!
I must highlight here that all this has only been possible thanks to the amazing partners we have in the consortium, as without their participation that would have been impossible!
A: What is the purpose behind the sustainable business models planned in this work package?
SPEEDIER is a research project that has a limited life of 30 months. We are obtaining very interesting outcomes in the research and it will certainly be a pity if we lose all we have achieved so far. The idea behind the sustainable business models is that, once our research work is done and we have validated the SPEEDIER service, it does continue without us, ensuring it will be a self-sustained platformed which will keep growing on its own!
We are still exploring what could be the best way to proceed once the project is over: several options are on the table but, together with partners, we will decide the best approach for the future.