ISLE: Compendium of Good Practices

One of the first EU projects that I got involved in (including their management on the Agro-Know side) was ISLE. ISLE (Innovation in the teaching of Sustainable development in Life sciences in Europe) was a project funded under the Erasmus programme of the European Commission and gave me the opportunity to join a large network of university teachers in Life Science Universities around Europe (mostly agricultural ones) and work towards developing the expected outcomes of the project. AK was the Dissemination Work Package leader, and I had a really great time disseminating the project in various occasions and using a wide variety of dissemination materials and tools. The project ended on September 30th, 2013 (a couple of weeks ago) and it currently continues in the form of an Association.

It was a really nice surprise today to receive a small package from +Corinne Stewart, the coordinator of the project (and head of the AgroSup Dijon team) and find a printed copy of the Good Practices Compendium, developed by the project.

 

The compendium is already available in a digital form from the ISLE web site - you can download it here. You can also find additional interesting material, in the form of project deliverable in the Outcomes section.

More things are expected in the future from ISLE, including a proposal for the continuation of the network and expansion of its outcomes which is planned and the liaison with related associations and networks. As I am currently one of the Board Members of the ISLE Association, I have the opportunity to be actively involved in the decision making of the next steps of the association and really anxious to see where this will lead during the next months.

That's me, signing for the creation of the ISLE Association!

Data management policies - which ones are most important to you?

The Research Data Alliance (RDA, https://rd-alliance.org/) Practical Policy Working Group solicits your input on the policies used to manage data collections by your project / institution. Please vote for the policies that you believe are most important or add more policies to the list.

The form is very short and will take only less than 5 min. You input will be used to identify best practices and promote automated policy-based management systems. Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1V2sB74f6HfyMR95_sblUG8s2aosat38sVXGgrrUYs9o/viewform

Organic.Lingua 6th project meeting

The 6th project meeting of Organic.Lingua took place between 8-10/10/2013 at the AMEDIA hotel in Graz, Austria, hosted by the Know-Center partner of the project. The conference room was an excellent choice, providing advanced facilities for the meeting, which made things easier for the consortium partners. I participated to the meeting as a member of the UAH team, along with Salvador and David Martin.

The presentation panel of the meeting room

It was the first project meeting after the 2nd review meeting which took place in April 2013, so we needed to ensure that all comments received by the reviewers were already addressed or at least that there were ongoing activities towards this direction. All aspects of the project, both content and technical-related, were discussed and the next steps of the project were defined. Special attention was given to the status of the multilingual (and not only) components that are expected to make the difference for the project. Since the project officially ends by the end of February 2014, there are only some months left, during which we need to make sure that everything will be ready as promised.

The project's user partners working during the parallel session

What I found really interesting was the collaboration between the technical partners (I really enjoyed the joint presentation) as well as the hands-on sessions for the user partners, which included the use of the MoKi tool and work towards the use of new components recently integrated (which helped us identify some issues) as well as work related to the ontology evolution. Nikos Marianos from AK also held an interesting session during which we had the opportunity to use the different automatic translation options available through the Organic.Edunet Web portal and compare the translations provided in each case.

K-C proved to be excellent hosts (thank you for the great social event!) and Graz was a lovely, well-preserved city, full of interesting buildings; modern and traditional at the same time. The hotel suggested by the local hosts was also high-quality, providing (among others) constant and fast internet connection (which is always appreciated). In fact, I think that this was one of the most comfortable rooms that I have ever stayed in during my recent trips all over Europe.

The next and last project meeting of Organic.Lingua is expected to take place in Birmingham, UK, hosted by BCU before the end of January 2014. This will allow partners to meet again, ensure that everything is going according to the schedule and leave enough time before the end of the project and of course before the 3rd and final review meeting, during which the progress and final outcomes of the project will be evaluated.

UAH team: David Martin and me celebrating the progress of the project during the social event

The trip back to Athens proved to be challenging, including delayed flights, almost missing connection ones, damaged luggages, missing buses and grumbling taxi-drivers; sometimes I think that such trips are the spice of life!

You can find more photos from the meeting here. Salvador has also posted an interesting (as usual) blog post at the IEUAH blog ;-)