In today’s interconnected world, fostering digital talent and driving local innovation while maintaining a global perspective is essential. FIWARE Foundation is leading this effort by evolving its certification processes and expanding its ecosystem to empower communities worldwide. This strategic approach ensures that local initiatives have a broader global impact, contributing to a sustainable and interoperable future.

FIWARE is a curated framework of open-source components that implement open standards, simplifying and accelerating the development of smart applications and facilitating the digital transformation of organizations, helping them become active participants in the Data Economy. FIWARE Foundation, a non-profit organization, supports this vision by governing, promoting, and ensuring the sustainability of FIWARE as an open-source initiative. Its mission is to encourage the adoption of FIWARE and foster a thriving “FIWARE ecosystem.” This ecosystem includes not only Foundation members but also all stakeholders and organizations that utilize FIWARE technologies.

The Role of Training: Supporting the Growth of the Ecosystem

For nearly a decade, the FIWARE Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has played a pivotal role in guiding the technical direction of FIWARE. The TSC promotes open contribution and collaboration while ensuring the quality and relevance of its components. It also coordinates the FIWARE Open Source Community, which includes all contributors to FIWARE. The TSC oversees the development of reference architectures, monitors component roadmaps, facilitates new contributions, and ensures adherence to best practices in open source.

In response to the increasing demand for expert certification, FIWARE Foundation is making changes to expand its certification process geographically while maintaining quality and resources. The new approach seeks to provide easier access to exams by offering more available dates, creating a fair system that eliminates language barriers, and ensuring broader access to FIWARE knowledge and certifications.

In this comprehensive approach, training is crucial for achieving FIWARE’s mission. It serves as the vital link between global ambition and local impact. By offering training, especially through initiatives like the FIWARE iHubs, the Foundation actively fosters digital talent within local ecosystems. This capacity-building effort is crucial for fostering communities of developers and adopters, making open innovation more accessible, and driving real-world impact. Training ensures that both individuals and organizations can effectively adopt, adapt, and scale FIWARE technologies. It bridges the gap between the theoretical blueprints of reference architectures and their practical implementation, promoting interoperability and ensuring that project outcomes can be successfully utilized and commercialized within the broader ecosystem.

Insights from the FIWARE Expert Bootcamp at La Vega Innova in Madrid, Spain

Last week, the FIWARE iHub La Vega Innova, in collaboration with FIWARE Foundation, demonstrated its commitment to talent development by hosting an intensive FIWARE Expert Bootcamp. This event showcased the “Think Global, Act Local” approach, effectively linking global ambitions with local actions.

Following a five-day intensive training and networking program, six exceptional professionals successfully passed their FIWARE Expert certification exams. Among them, José Luis Madueño Casares and Rodrigo Nevado Antón received special distinctions. Francisco Suárez Rojas, Pablo Yuste Rodríguez-Escalona, Rubén Estebala Castillo, and María Inés Fernandes Romero also achieved certification. Their accomplishments enhance the expanding network of FIWARE Experts, whose contributions are essential for promoting open-source innovation and developing smarter, more sustainable solutions worldwide.

The week also marked the official handover of the Standard FIWARE iHub Certificate to La Vega Innova at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA). The certificate was received by Isabel Bombal, the Director General for Rural Development, Innovation, and Agri-food Training. This ceremony underscored the importance of local hubs in driving digital transformation.

The bootcamp served as a platform for valuable exchanges among various innovation hubs (iHubs) from across Spain. Participants included representatives from Córdoba (Córdoba FIWARE), La Rioja (AERTIC), Badajoz (FIWARE Space), Huelva (lalonja.tech), Valladolid (CARTIF), Mallorca (DIHBAITUR), and Fuerteventura (TOURiLab). Discussions focused on how these hubs are driving regional digital innovation, highlighting the increasing importance of data spaces in the agri-food sector—from farm to fork—including environmental data. A critical need for collaboration around open standards and interoperability also emerged as a key theme. Frequent references were made to FIWARE-based data spaces, Gaia-X, and the Smart Data Models initiative, showcasing how FIWARE’s open standards are being practically applied to address real-world challenges.

The success of the La Vega Innova Bootcamp clearly demonstrates how targeted training initiatives develop the expertise necessary to advance the FIWARE mission. The newly certified experts and the collaborative spirit nurtured among the iHubs are vital assets for enhancing capacity, localizing innovation, and collectively increasing the global impact of the FIWARE ecosystem.

What It Means to Be a FIWARE Expert

A FIWARE Expert is more than just a certified professional; they are recognized leaders within the community who possess deep, practical knowledge of the FIWARE ecosystem. These individuals have made significant contributions to the community and possess a comprehensive understanding of the FIWARE Catalogue across multiple domains. They can design scalable and standards-compliant FIWARE-based architectures. Additionally, they are well-versed in the core APIs, both NGSI-v2 and NGSI-LD, as well as the principles for creating powered by FIWARE and FIWARE-ready products.

The FIWARE Expert distinction is more than just a certification; it promotes a culture of best practices for developing interoperable smart systems within the open-source community. First impressions are crucial, and these Experts play a vital role in guiding new developers to successful implementations. They ensure that the FIWARE experience is robust, reliable, and impactful right from the start. Additionally, they actively promote FIWARE within the developer community, expanding its reach and reinforcing its global importance.