During the 19th and 21st of September, the “Challenge Social Innovation” Conference took place in Vienna, co-organized by NET4SOCIETY (the Network of Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities National Contact Points) through the support of the European Commission, the Centre for Social Innovation, Vienna and the Dortmund University of Technology. The three-day event was organized as a series of 20 plenary and break-out sessions with more than 100 speakers, based on themes ranging from policy discussion and debate to FP7 networking and engagement. Speakers and discussants from all over the world included renowned researchers and practitioners in the field of social innovation.
During the last day, focused networking sessions took place that provided information on the open call for proposals FP7-SSH-2012 that was launched in summer 2011. The networking sessions were used to call attention to the objectives of the European Foresight Platform (EFP). Dissemination material on the EFP was distributed among interested participants and attention was drawn to the possibility to join the EFP as a new correspondent for the production of briefs on new foresight initiatives. Since the conference covered a broad range of topics and provided and excellent opportunity meet potential coordinators and project partners in a structured networking environment the building of a consortium based on the EFP for the current SSH call in FP7 was discussed with several participants of the conference.