Trains at Atocha station Madrid

I spent the week in Ciudad Real in Spain, under an hour by high speed train (~200km) south of Madrid.

I was there for a plenary meeting of CEN/CENELEC’s joint technical committee (JTC) 25 that works on European standards for data management, data spaces, and cloud & edge. The need for these standards originates in the European Data Act. The event was hosted by one of the committee members at the University of Castille-la Mancha. It was a very warm week (up to 35 degrees) with intensive long days, but also nice to visit somewhere I hadn’t been before (photos on Flickr).

Group picture with local and national dignitaries immediately displayed in the University’s hallways

Flags of countries represented in the room (the meetings were hybrid)

Turns out, Ciudad Real is situated in the crater of a volcano, a maar. From the center of the town the roads all go up the slopes of the crater. Ground water is said to be warm and somewhat fizzy. The surrounding region has many volcanic structures.

Although Ciudad Real is at the heart of Don Quixote country, I did not see windmills (except as souvenirs in the nearby Almagro).

A mural of Don Quixote, on the streets of Ciudad Real

Despite the heat cool heads prevailed at the meetings, as is needed for the always consensus based development of standards.
It was good to meet several people face to face, also discussing informally what standardisation needs are connected to the notions of digital autonomy and sovereignty. As a result I joined the ISO JTC1 SC38 on cloud computing and distributed platforms, that have a working group on these topics.

11th century Castillo de las Guadalerzas and olive trees, from the train back, halfway between Ciudad Real and Madrid

The next plenary meeting will be in Oslo in October.