It's one of these days...

...where people just disappear from the office, traveling at the same time and participating in (interesting!) events all over Europe:

• Nikos Mar. is traveling to Brussels for the ACT project meeting and the joint ECVET-STEP - ACT Final Conference;
• George is participating in the FREME Hackathon in Leipzig, Germany;
• Theo is attending the 2nd International Workshop "Creating Impact with Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition" in The Hague;
• Effie is also traveling to the Hague for the for the 1st OpenMinTeD Interoperability Workshop

...and I am packing my stuff for Bari, Italy, where I will participate in the Community Workshop on the Open Science Cloud: Shaping the Open Science Cloud of the Future on Friday 13/11.

It's been quite a long time since I last saw this happening and a long time since my last business trip (it must be more than one year, if I exclude a domestic one).

I am sure that the Agro-Know office will be fully packed again on Monday. :-)

#LifeAtAK: Really, where is everybody? 😆

A photo posted by Agro-Know (@agroknow) on Jul 24, 2015 at 6:55am PDT

Agro-Know team lineup: August 2015

After some changes in the Agro-Know team which took place during the previous months, this is our current team lineup:

As a result to these changes, there have been some changes in the internal organization and structure so I found myself supporting Nikos Marianos in the Project Management Dept. of Agro-Know; my work consists mostly on working on various deliverables for various projects that Agro-Know participates in. At the same time, I still devote some time on a daily basis for updating the social media of Agro-Know and other marketing and networking activities.

I miss my ex-colleagues, as I have been working with some of them for several years and they have been part of the family; at the same time, most of them had the chance to explore new business opportunities. It's not always easy to work with a smaller team, but it seems that is is more flexible in this way. Still I wish all the guys (and girls) the best for finding a brand new working environment, hopefully even better than the one of Agro-Know!

Andreas leaves Agro-Know

A couple of weeks ago, our colleague Andreas announced that he would leave Agro-Know after exactly 2 years in the company; that was really sad, as +Andreas was one of the nicest persons in Agro-Know. Despite the fact that he joined Agro-Know a couple of years after we established our main offices, he quickly became one of those colleagues who contributed in this special connection between the Agro-Know team members and he was usually the one trying to find opportunities to celebrate and bring the team members even closer.

I still remember his first days in Agro-Know: Sitting at a desk between Babis and me, he was trying to get some hints on what he actually had to do, while Babis and me remained silent during (almost) the whole day (something that surely made him feel rather awkward)! It was back in a time where new team members were really few and seeing a new person in the team was quite something; we didn't have the opportunity to see new faces that often and we were somewhat reserved regarding our reactions towards new people.

Andreas started by supporting some small LdV projects that Agro-Know was participating in (like AGRICOM and ISLE), then he moved on by coordinating our participation in projects like Herbal.Mednet and he ended up directly supporting the coordination of large projects like agINFRA. He managed to evolve really quickly and meet the challenges of the position of a project manager in Agro-Know (which, trust me, is very demanding... been there, done that!). He was always a great guy to work with; calm, confident and always aware of what had to be done, by when etc. - he knew when to put effort in something and when to deliver it with the minimum effort needed so he was no source of overhead. He was a "jack of all trades", as he was always eager to work on anything related to his job, including project management, project deliverables, papers/submissions, contribution in events - literally anything that you may think of. He traveled a lot, met a lot of new people, represented Agro-Know and UAH in several occasions and he was creating opportunities for collaboration with new organizations.

Andreas & me during EDF 2014 (source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lod2/13433089254/in/set-72157642967653084) 

Andreas decided to leave Agro-Know for his own reasons. He explains some of them in a really nice farewell blog post on the Agro-Know blog (because he was also one of our top bloggers). I wouldn't want to go into details but the point is that it was a tough decision to leave Agro-Know and I totally understand that. We already miss him and I am sure that he also misses his Agro-Know colleagues; it is this special chemistry that exists mostly between the older members (and I am nor referring to age here!) and we try to pass it on to our numerous newer members as well. However, this change was for a good cause so we are all happy for Andreas.

His last day at the office was a celebration: He went on with his work, handing over anything needed to his Project Management team mates, sorted out some last-minute tasks, he made a really great presentation which was (among others) an overview of his 2 years in Agro-Know and ended with a lovely slideshow of images during this time. He was kind enough to share a home-made chocolate cake with us, combined with a marvelous bottle of Martini Asti (it was the first time I tasted it but surely not the last!).

During the last day of Andreas in Agro-Know

I just want to wish Andreas good luck with whatever he is doing and the best for his new ventures in a much larger company!

P.S. I feel that I have to mention that Andreas was also a Qwertee addict; we had made a number of joint orders during their Insanitee Sales and I am sure that this tradition will go on during the next months ;-)

Changes in the Agro-Know team

Over the last six months there have been several changes regarding the Agro-Know team; Giota, Angeliki and Thodoris left the team during the summer of 2014 for different reasons; it was a friendly break-up and we still have a great time when we meet (usually with a round of beers!) even though time is limited and opportunities for meeting outside the working hours are scarce due to personal obligations. None of them was a team member since the beginning but still their departure left gaps that we had to work on; on the other hand Mada stopped working for Agro-Know by the beginning of October while Nikos (+Nikos Palavitsinis) has already published his farewell to Agro-Know. Both of them were in the team since it all started, and this was something different. These departures were also planned but still...

At the same time, the Agro-Know team was enhanced with several new members during the same period:

• The Project Management team was enhanced with two new project managers (Apostolos and Katerina);
• The Data team welcomed a new intern, Patrycja (data management assistant);
• The Business Development team grew by two members, with the addition of Thodoris and Thanos;
• The Technical team was enhanced with the recruitment of Giorgos (data ingestion associate) and Panagis (UX/UI expert);
• The Admin team welcomed Athina (Administrative Assistant) and Popi (Culture & Talent Development Assistant)
• Two new interns joined the AK team for helping us with the Food and Water Quality themes (Lito and Maria respectively)

You can find information about the Agro-Know team in the Agro-Know wiki.

The Agro-Know team, October 2014. We are missing Giannis and Laura (both of them traveling at the time of the photo shooting)

This means that a lot of new blood runs in the veins of Agro-Know now; of course we miss some of our experienced ex-colleagues but we hope that the new team members will make up for it with their fresh ideas and enthusiasm. The new situation is challenging, as a lot of new people need to be trained not only in terms of their work tasks but also in terms of the mentality and culture of Agro-Know; a factor that is actually more important than it looks/sounds as there is also the possibility that some people might not fit.

There used to be a special "chemistry" among the Agro-Know team members; especially those of us who started together when we got in the Agro-Know offices for the first time in January 2011 went through some hard times, a fact that brought us closer. We managed to evolve a rather unorganized team into a well-defined organization throughout , with well-defined processes, where a lot of time-consuming processes are now automatically taking place and are taken for granted. As the team grows bigger with new members joining, we tend to lose our chemistry due to growing responsibilities, lack of time and the fact that processes now are more formal and "professional". New members are not aware of all that and all they see is this new, well-defined and organized situation; this does not allow them to see the background behind everything but only the strictly professional side.

However, this is a bet that we need to win, as the proper functionality of the team is heavily based on this special relation between us all. We need to embrace our new colleagues and help them understand things, integrate quickly and help them understand and integrate in the Agro-Know culture in order to ensure that the team will remain strong and work as it used to do for the last years. This is mostly a responsibility of the initial members (to help our new colleagues on and of course of the new members to understand and respect in order to keep things going as they should...