Open Demo Days Kick-off: Building the foundations for a Networked Data Ecosystem
On February 26th, 2026, EXCENTRIC officially launched its Open Demo Days series with an online Kick-off event hosted by Ars Electronica with sessions moderated by Museum Booster and Waag. Bringing together over 30 participants from pilot organisations, consortium partners, researchers, and network collaborators, the session marked the beginning of a structured exchange format designed to accompany the project’s pilot implementation phase and open its processes to a wider community of practice.
As the first of five events to be held both online and in person, the Kick-off focused on one of EXCENTRIC’s core challenges: how to establish a sustainable, collaborative data-sharing ecosystem across a diverse network of cultural organisations.
Session 1: Setting the scene | Data sharing & networked approaches
The first session opened with an introduction to the Open Demo Days’ format, calendar and strategy to become a shared space for learning, experimentation, and collective problem‑solving. The framework was presented as a relevant aspect of EXCENTRIC’s collaborative approach, designed not only to accompany pilots in developing and testing their solutions, but also to foster a common understanding of the project’s data‑driven ambitions.
To contextualise the work ahead, Waag presented the project’s guiding principles for data governance and infrastructure development. These included:
- Putting users in control of their data through decentralised and portable data pods;
- Supporting interoperability across institutions and systems;
- Reducing fragmentation by fostering shared vocabularies, standards, and common frameworks;
- Building trust-by-design, combining transparency, clear governance arrangements, and responsible data practices.
This framing set the stage for the pilots’ first presentations, which explored how SOLID principles and decentralised data approaches could unlock new forms of collaboration, service innovation, and value creation within their organisations and across the wider cultural ecosystem. Pilots outlined early use cases ranging from personal data reuse and enriched visitor experiences to organisational data exchange and networked collection insights. Crucially, they also highlighted how these approaches could directly address persistent operational challenges, from reducing the burden of manual data processing and streamlining workflows across departments, to improving the accuracy, timeliness, and usability of information needed for decision-making.
Across these contributions, several cross‑cutting challenges and questions became visible:
1. Operational and technical tensions
Piloting organisations emphasised the difficulty of connecting heterogeneous systems, aligning data models, and integrating new decentralised components within existing institutional infrastructures. Many noted that even before SOLID is introduced, basic data hygiene, documentation, and mapping require dedicated effort.
2. Governance, roles & responsibilities
Discussions converged on the need for clear governance arrangements defining who stewards which data, how permissions are managed, and how accountability is shared across a distributed network. Questions emerged about data custodianship, service providers’ roles, and how to manage evolving trust relationships between institutions.
3. Organisational readiness & capacity
Piloting organisations highlighted gaps in internal skills, workflows, and organisational culture that influence their ability to engage in data sharing. Many institutions operate with limited staff capacity or siloed digital competences, making it challenging to adopt new models such as decentralised data pods or shared ontologies.
4. Value creation & incentives for participation
Partners pointed to a recurring theme: for a data‑sharing network to be sustainable, participating institutions need a clear understanding of the benefits of joining—internally (efficiency, insights, user services) and externally (collaboration, visibility, sector-wide alignment). Piloting organisations echoed this, asking how EXCENTRIC can help articulate and demonstrate that value to accomplish early buy-in.
These conversations underlined a core message: data sharing is never only a technical exercise. It is intrinsically linked to governance, institutional culture, risk perceptions, resource availability, and long‑term strategic direction. Building a networked data ecosystem requires not just infrastructure, but shared purpose, transparent rules, and strong collaboration mechanisms.
The session concluded by identifying where piloting organisations most urgently need support: from data modelling and use case translation to legal guidance, onboarding strategies, and capacity-building. These needs do not only inform the themes of upcoming Open Demo Days; they are fundamental inputs for shaping the Accelerator itself. As they surface concrete operational and governance challenges, these insights will directly steer the design of the Accelerator’s tailored learning paths, peer‑exchange clusters, and expert interventions. In this sense, the organisations are not passive recipients of support: their emerging needs, constraints, and ambitions will actively co‑create and continuously recalibrate the Accelerator, ensuring that it remains a responsive, evidence‑driven framework grounded in real institutional realities.
Session 2: From Cohort Needs to Structured Support
The second session explored how EXCENTRIC’s Accelerator model transforms diagnostic insight into a targeted support ecosystem that strengthens the piloting organisations’ capacity to design, test, and sustain their data-driven innovations. Building on the maturity signals and organisational frictions identified earlier in the project, the discussion framed the Accelerator not as a traditional training programme, but as a scaffolded, evidence‑based intervention designed to support cultural institutions in developing responsible, ethical, and sustainable data practices.
Museum Booster introduced the logic underpinning this model: a shift from generic, one‑size‑fits‑all capacity building to a “compressed evolution” approach, where organisations move through intense, time‑boxed learning cycles supported by tailored mentoring, peer exchanges, and vertical expertise. The session laid out how the Accelerator uses real organisational data, from governance gaps to operational confidence, to construct tailored learning paths that respond directly to each pilot’s structural challenges and strengths.
Drawing from the pilots’ assessments, three recurring friction patterns were highlighted:
- Split Brains between strategic intent and operational reality;
- Phantom Zones where governance is unclear or invisible across roles;
- Pop‑Up Paradoxes, in which ambitious initiatives outpace institutional foundations.
The Accelerator is engineered to address these conditions through a series of interconnected support layers and formats. Rather than offering predefined content, it operates like a responsive infrastructure that adapts to pilots’ verified needs. Peer “Trading Routes” map who in the cohort can teach, learn with, or learn from whom – turning individual strengths into shared assets. Meanwhile, Collective Tracks target cross‑cutting gaps, from navigating AI ethics and reducing “data obesity” to stabilising grassroots innovations and designing mobile-first tools for producers working in real‑world festival or venue conditions.
The session emphasised that this accelerator is co-created with the pilots. Its formats (Design Days, Workshops, mentorship sessions, and Open Demo Days) are timed to coincide with real pressure points in the pilots’ development trajectories. As a result, the programme behaves as a living support system, aligning external expertise, cohort learning, and organisational reflection exactly when pilots need it.
Overall, the conversation positioned the Accelerator as a strategic engine for EXCENTRIC: a mechanism that not only strengthens individual pilots, but also builds collective intelligence, shared standards, and sector‑relevant governance scaffolds capable of sustaining decentralised, human‑centred data practices beyond the project itself. A key moment in this process was the collaborative Miro exercise, where piloting organisations jointly mapped the emerging Trading Routes and defined priority topics for peer exchange. This co‑creation activity allowed pilots to surface complementary strengths, shared bottlenecks, and concrete areas for mutual support.
Session 3: Sensemaking – Scenarios for Network Building
The interactive sensemaking session, facilitated by Waag, formed the collaborative core of the day. Participants worked through data-sharing scenarios, identifying friction points, dependencies, and enabling conditions for network growth.
Discussions highlighted recurring themes:
- The importance of shared values and governance clarity
- Balancing openness with responsibility and compliance
- Building trust incrementally through practical collaboration
- Ensuring technical interoperability alongside cultural alignment
This collective reflection reinforced the understanding that a functioning data-sharing network depends as much on social infrastructure as on technological design.
Consolidating Alignment and Next Steps
Far from being a standalone event, the Open Demo Days Kick-off set the stage for a community of practice that will evolve over the coming months.
As EXCENTRIC progresses through its pilot phase, the Open Demo Days will serve as a recurring public-facing platform to test assumptions, share outcomes, and strengthen the networked approach that lies at the heart of the project. Future editions will be organised in conjunction with key events hosted by our umbrella organisations, enabling EXCENTRIC to reach diverse professional communities across Europe and to engage cultural practitioners well beyond the immediate pilot cohort.
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