The attendance of the workshop was highly encouraging with more than 120 individuals registered, and about 95 attending the event physically. The audience consisted of representatives from all the NoPsprojects, R&D actors from Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Academia, and also Security Research Policymakers. Having all those actors on board that day, the ultimate goal was to showcase common results, ways to bridge a supply- and demand-driven capability-building, forward-looking approaches for identifying threats and gaps in the middle- to long-term, discuss the networks’ exploitation of results and their sustainability, and also options for further engaging practitioners into security research actions in the future European Research & Innovation Programme.  

The workshop kicked off with the opening speech of Mr. Giannis Skiadaresis, (Area Coordinator for SSRI-DG HOME), welcoming the audience and highlighting the significance of this endeavor on the European Commission’s (EC) side. The stage was then given to the coordinator of the MEDEA project , Mr. George Kokkinis (KEMEA), who introduced to all participants the need and the objectives for launching this workshop, by bringing in a forum for dialogue all enabled actors of the Networks of Practitioners that have been funded by the EC.