As of today, 6 years ago: My last day at Agroknow

It was Friday, May 6th 2016 - as of today, only six years ago. 

My last day at Agroknow, as I had decided to make a big step and move to a new corporate environment. I went to the office as usually, with some farewell treats for my colleagues; it has been more than 5 years since I started working for Agroknow and usually spent more time with colleagues than with my family. Numerous working days, trips abroad, good and bad times, beers and drinks, celebrations and valuable experience.

A sweet farewell to my colleagues

Agroknow has been a huge school for me. I was introduced to the concept of project management, starting with some relatively small Leonardo da Vinci ones, resource management, team & time management, and provided me with the opportunity to dive into information and knowledge management (which I really loved): digital repositories, metadata, technical interoperability, Knowledge Organization Systems like ontologies and controlled vocabularies. 

I learned a lot (and in the end even became an advocate) of Open Access and Open Data, working on facilitating access to research publications and data, 

During my time at Agroknow, I also had the opportunity to compose project deliverables with hundreds of pages, travel thousands of miles reaching even the golden status of Star Alliance, visiting dozens of countries in the EU and even further, met interesting people, took hundreds of photos and created a valuable network. I was invited to dive into Business Development, read relevant books, identified opportunities for collaborations and actually worked for various high-profile organizations outside Greece (as a scientific associate / contractor), like the UN FAO (multiple times!), the University of Alcala (Spain), the Open Data Institute (UK), ICARDA (Jordan) and IFOAM (EU), to name a few.

Temporary working station at Agroknow during my last day

Last but not least - and probably the most important, was that I was invited (and actually encouraged) to apply my love for social media and blogging from a personal level to the company level. I soon became fully responsible for Agroknow blog (covering a wide variety of topics like collaborations, participation in events, interviews with key partners etc.), manager of its social media channels on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and I even started an unofficial Instagram profile, which became pretty popular among colleagues (all my posts were deleted since then, as Agroknow obviously decided to use a different approach, more "corporate" compared to my informal one). I was responsible for being the "voice" of Agroknow without any kind of censorship, the messenger of the company's key messages to the world.

Why was this specifically important? Because it was a key feature that my future employer - NEUROPUBLIC - was looking for. They needed someone to help them with social media, but also with agricultural experience so that the company's smart farming work would be properly communicated. And it was just one of the qualities I got from my Agroknow times.

So I spent my last working day at Agroknow finalizing a deliverable, handing over some ongoing tasks and greeting colleagues. By the end of the day, the charger of my laptop failed so I exhausted the laptop's battery, left the office keys (after more than 5 years) and left the office for the last time, carrying all the good memories and experiences with me.

Handing over the office keys was an emotional moment

Leaving Agroknow was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.

Monday May 9th was my first day at NEUROPUBLIC

A pleasant surprise!

Today my Agro-Know colleagues held a really pleasant surprise for me: Even though it has almost been a month since my b-day, they were kind enough to dig in my wish list and order for me one of my favorite items in there: A dAPRO Digital Artist Backpack straight from dA! I could not believe my eyes when I opened the box and saw the backpack real!

dAPRO Digital Artist Backpack

I am not an artist, but still believe that this bag will be my loyal companion from now on. What I love in this bag is the fact that is looks much more stylish and professional than the bag I currently own. I would love to have it by me during e.g. a project meeting or on board during a business trip. It also feels high-quality and durable. It features a number of useful pockets, both inner and outer and it is more than enough to carry around my netbook/laptop with the power adapter, my notepad, external HD and other gadgets, along with my wallet, ID and other small things I like to have with me. A really useful addition is a water-proof cover that is hidden at the bottom of the backpack.

dA Nomad backpack

Even though is is not as spacious as my current backpack, it is stylish, comfortable and will probably make me reconsider the amount of stuff I carry with me daily. Having the advantage of not carrying my laptop with me, this leaves me with additional space for carrying other stuff in the big pocket, like books and notepads. After all, if and when my current backpack wears off, I plan to get a dA Nomad backpack: It doesn't look that professional but it's also stylish and looks ideal for daily commuting and carrying all this stuff around daily. I am just not sure whether it may be too big for daily use...but I will have to give it a try!

I just realized that I am a sucker for specific items, like backpacks, battery chargers (I have more than I will ever need), torches/flashlights, smartphones, tablets (not having one yet but probably in the near future!) etc.

I would like to say a big "Thank you!" to all my colleagues for organizing this surprise and for giving me the opportunity to get my hands in this wonderful backpack. I feel so lucky to be working among these wonderful people!

Taking a break - Web 2.0 tools

The last days have been really busy, full of real-life meetings, flash meetings, project revisions, tasks and deadlines... things are getting harder day by day. A nice way to take a break while working is to dedicate some time updating the Web 2.0 tools of the projects that I am involved in. So, today I "worked" on the following side-tasks:

1. Creation of the VOA3R Twitter account
2. Creation of the Organic.Edunet Twitter account
3. Updated the ISLE and Organic.Balkanet Twitter accounts
4. Created a Facebook group for the Green Ideas event
5. Updated the Organic.Balkanet website with news

I also updated the Facebook groups of the projects that I am involved in with last-minute updates and links.

In addition, I slightly revised a flyer for I.S.L.E. and updated the one for Organic.Balkanet, in order to have them printed for the Green Ideas 2011 event. All these while struggling to finish the review of two deliverables, trying to finalize another one and sending an outstanding number of emails in an effort to solve issues and sort things out...

I just realized that I am at home but still working! No rest for the wicked, they say...

Training Course and Green Ideas 2011

During the last weeks my time is almost completely dedicated to two important tasks:

1. The testing phase of the VOA3R content population. Trying to coordinate a task which involves a significant number of project partners is not always easy, especially during August! I will not go into more details about this task.

2. The "Joint School on IT-Enhanced Organic & Sustainable Education for Teachers, Trainers and Agriculture Professionals", which will be a really big training course involving a number of respected tutors and a diverse audience, case study visits, lectures and hands-on exercises etc. Even though the organization of this course has been taken over by two colleagues of mine, still there are a lot of things to take care of, such as arranging flights and accommodation for the participants, estimating costs and involving budgets from different projects. Speaking of projects, the course will be primarily supported by Organic.Balkanet and CerOrganic, while VOA3R and I.S.L.E. will also be represented and contribute. This course will be collocated with another interesting event, Green Ideas 2011 which "will bring together people and institutions that are interested into agricultural, biodiversity and rural education, so that collaboration opportunities may be explored and exploited". This event will feature a really diverse list of participants, is sponsored by a number of relevant E.U. projects and supported by major organizations, such as FAO.

Agro-Know WiKi page

Some of my colleagues @ Agro-Know have spent a significant amount of time working on Agro-Know's wiki page (creating pages, uploading information etc.). There you may find additional information about Agro-Know, the projects AK is involved in, related activities/events, handbooks developed by the team, short CVs of the team's members etc.

You should check that out when you have the time!

09/08/2011 - Tasks

[Organic.Balkanet] Working on a handbook for creating metadata descriptions for training units in Organic.Balkanet MOLE platform
[Organic.Balkanet] Working on revisions for D2.2
[Organic.Lingua] Supporting processes that support the multilinguality purposes of the project.
[CerOrganic] Working on minor issues that came up in the CerOrganic MOLE platform
[VOA3R] Supporting the VOA3R Confolio tool during the Testing Phase of Content Population

Agro-Know Team

I've been working for Agro-Know since January 2011, when the new offices in Vrilissia were prepared. I've been working with Nikos for quite a long time, during my days at the Agricultural University of Athens and Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET), working mostly in the Organic.Edunet EU project. It seems that our good cooperation during these days led to my recruitment in the Agro-Know team.

Since January there have been some changes in Agro-Know, as it is constantly developing. New faces have come on board, new projects are coming, my role in the team changes from time to time, evolving to something more interesting and challenging.

The current line-up of the Agro-Know team. A couple of partners are missing but we're still happy!

Today was one of the good days. Even though we faced terrible internet connection problems, we managed to go on with our work, celebrate the b-days of two people and organized something nice for a third one. The weather was fine and we took our first team photo in the balcony of our offices!

I am currently working on various topics for various projects, such as Organic.Edunet, Organic.Balkanet, Organic.Lingua, CerOrganic, I.S.L.E among others, and this makes my work interesting. Training scenarios, implementation of ICT tools in the training context of Organic Agriculture trainers and farmers, curriculum development, annotation of digital resources with metadata, interconnecting digital repositories and providing access to these resources through the Organic.Edunet Web portal. This portal is one of my most important tasks and a significant part of my time is devoted to its improvement and dissemination.

My job gives me the opportunity to travel quite often, and I really love travelling: I like to meet new people, see new places and try to get as much as possible from each place (culture, customs, sights etc.). I usually carry my digicam with me (my Olympus E-300 looks really bulky to fit my business trips...). I even started rating hotels and restaurants, apart from keeping a diary from these trips. In a single word: Experiences!

It's nice working for Agro-Know, and this is obvious!