As described in an earlier blog post, Norway has an active system of industry clusters and networks. The Norwegian Innovation Clusters include the regional Arena program, the national centres of expertise (NCE) and the Global centres of expertise (GCE). A further form for organisation and financing is the “company networks” programme which is organised and financed by Innovation Norway. It is aimed at the establishment of strategic commercial collaboration projects that have focus on development of new business areas and market possibilities internationally or within Norway. Application deadlines are in March and September each year and there are currently 90 active networks.
In addition to these collaborations, there are regular conferences, seminars and meetings organised within different themes, and these are also widely used to build informal networks. Autumn is a busy time for these meetings, squeezed between summer holidays and Christmas. Here are some recent and coming events:
• INDUSTRI2018 an annual conference arranged by the Norwegian branch organisation 
for industry, Norsk Industri. This year it was held in Bodø, with the theme “We have the power to create change”.
• The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) arranged a national tour holding presentations about digitalisation in the oil & gas industry, technologies that are changing the industry today, and why access to data is the key to increasing value creation. The tour included an evening meeting in Harstad on the 2nd Oct. 
• Equinor Supplier Days –Equinor (formerly Statoil) arranges 10 meetings each year to give information about coming projects and activities and to give a meeting place between suppliers and industry. The next arrangements will be in Hammerfest 24 Oct 2018 and Kristiansund on 6 December 2018.
• Arctic Operation 2018, to be held 23-25 October in Hammerfest is the fifth annual petroleum supplier conference for the Northern region. It is being coordinated with the Equinor supplier day and the NFEA conference on digitalisation and robotization. 
• Nordområdekonferansen will be held in Harstad from 30 Oct – 01 Nov. This is the supplier conference for Oil & Gas and aquaculture. The conference gives an overview of the possibilities that can be found within petroleum and aquaculture, with an emphasis on imminent projects. Amongst others, there are three presentations concerned with expectations for how digitalisation will affect the industrial market, and the plans for a petroleum branch strategy for digitalisation of the petroleum sector.
• Arctic and Cold Climate Solutions is a series of open dialog/network meetings, with the next to be held in Kirkenes on 4th Dec 2018. It is related to a database over technology providers for cold climate solutions, administered by Norwegian Energy Partners, which is a merger of the earlier INTSOK (Norwegian Oil & Gas Partners) and INTPOW (Norwegian Renewable Energy Industry network).
• TEKMAR is a meeting for aquaculture companies to discuss challenges and future solutions related to technology and operation of sea-based production. The next meeting will be held 4-5 Dec 2018 in Trondheim.
• AquaNor is the main exhibition/conference for the aquaculture industry, with the next one to be held in Trondheim on 20-23 Aug 2019.
Regarding the petroleum industry a good place to get an overview of coming arrangements is the website for Petro Arctic. Regarding the aquaculture industry the an overview of coming events can be found on here.
Ross Wakelin
Northern Research Institute Narvik A.S.
ross@tek.norut.no
(47) 99 252 485
