This paper presents a conception for a region-type specific approach for understanding and developing region-specific smart communities in predominantly rural areas. The concept is based on a discussion of the topic of smart communities from the points of view of (1) data economy, (2) regional communities, and (3) smart technologies as well as a discussion of “smartness” in context of smart communities. The paper points out the lack of differentiation between the different smartcommunity types in current models and typologies and argues that even a differentiated view is not sufficient in face of the high level of connection and interplay between the different communities. The paper proposes to develop a region-specific smartification model that considers the regionspecific context and interaction with more urbanized regions, especially for rural areas.
Training for small and medium enterprises, especially in the context of leadership and digitalisation, has been traditionally carried out in form of presence workshops. Like other learning and training offers, this type of training needed to be carried out virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing advantages as well as disadvantages. Furthermore, the purpose of such courses is typically to convey a curriculum of preselected content and skills previously deemed useful. This paper presents the experiences from a mini-course on digital leadership carried out virtually during the pandemic that aims to incorporate SME needs in an agile manner. The presented mini-course is being developed using action research approach and aims to provide input for designing training in this context beyond the current crisis. The findings show high acceptance by the participants for the 100% virtual format and the effectiveness of the pilot run was proven to increase the digital skills of the participants. Engaging participants in order to reflect their needs has proven challenging and will be considered in the next action iteration.
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