Getting things done during a project meeting...with a Windows tablet

I recently had the opportunity to attend a consortium meeting of the OpenMinTeD Horizon 2020 project; I am personally involved in the dissemination and training activities, representing Agroknow. I was expecting that during the meeting I would have to keep notes using a GDoc, revise my slides through PowerPoint, browse the Web, check and respond to emails, update the Agroknow social media accounts and maybe edit some additional documents.

Last time I participated in a project meeting, I used my Acer Aspire One 751h netbook; an under-powered machine, which was recently upgraded to 2GB of RAM but still featured a slow Atom Z520 CPU @1,3GHz and a GMA500 graphics chipset. It runs on Windows 10 Home Edition and it's not that most responsive OS I've used on it, so the night before the meeting I decided to install Lubuntu (a lightweight flavor of Ubuntu), with which I am familiar. I also setup Libre Office and Dropbox, so that I would have access to my files. However, mostly due to the fact that Google Chrome & Chromium were so heavy on resources, using the netbook even for light tasks (e.g. for blogging) was a terribly time-consuming process. This was the time I swore that it would be the last time that I am using the netbook for such purposes. Since then I replaced Chrome with Midori but haven't had the chance to test it.

This time I also went light but with a different workhorse; a 10,1-inch Turbo-X WinTab; a Windows 10 tablet with detachable keyboard that features 2GB of RAM, a Z3735F CPU at 1.3GHz and Intel HD graphics - as well as 32GB of storage. Based on testing I did over the previous months, the tablet is much more powerful than the netbook and can be actually used for work. My setup included the tablet with its keyboard, my external hard disk with Thunderbird Portable and my 22GB inbox, a mouse, a micro-USB charger, USB sticks and cables (micro-HDMI to HDMI, in case a spare monitor was around, micro-USB to USB in case I needed to use the micro-USB port of the tablet with a USB device etc.).

Portable workstation during a project meeting; using only my 10-inch WinTab and lots of coffee.

A photo posted by Vassilis (@vprot) on Feb 25, 2016 at 9:58am PST

Things went pretty well: I managed to revise a couple of slides before my presentation using PowerPoint Mobile, kept notes in a Google Doc and worked on two blog posts in our Wordpress-powered blog, updated Agroknow's Twitter and Google+ account etc. Multitasking with 3-4 tabs open in Microsoft Edge, a document open in MS Word and the slides in PowerPoint was managed efficiently by the tablet. In addition, thanks to the WiFi, I was able to download all files that I needed through the Dropbox web interface (I have not installed Dropbox app due to limited storage size and the fact that syncing would take up precious resources). However, I had some hard times during the meeting:

1. I was lucky to be really close to a power outlet; my micro-USB cables are pretty short and I had an extension power cord with me, just in case. It was a good thing that I did not need that. I am expecting a 2m micro-USB cable from Amazon during the next days.
2. It was the first time that there was no laptop set up for the presentations, so I had to ask the project partner that presented right before me to use her laptop. My micro-HDMI to VGA adapter is on its way from the UK, also from Amazon.
3. The keyboard was probably the weakest link; not only keys are smaller than usual making fast typing a challenge, they also make a lot of noise. Or to be more precise, as I am a heavy typist, I think that the whole keyboard made squeaky sounds while it was pressed against the hard wooden desk.

Apart from that, everything was fine; I even had the chance to take the tablet only (no keyboard attached) during a session that took place in a different room. If I had a laptop with me, I wouldn't have bothered. I noticed though that the tablet with keyboard attached was not much lighter compared to my 15,6-inch home laptop, which was pretty strange...or I was just tired!

After testing it under real conditions, I believe that WinTab could also by my work horse in the next project meetings; however, I will make sure that I will have a micro-HDMI to VGA adaptor this time!

Working on the OpenMinTeD dissemination & training activities

OpenMinTeD is having a user meeting between 24-25/2/2016, hosted at the premises of Athena Research Innovation Center. Partners involved in the dissemination and training Work Packages (WP2 & WP3 respectively) had the opportunity to work collaboratively on the joint activities to be undertaken within the next months in the context of these two WPs on the day before - 23/2/2016. Partners from Athena RC (hosts of the meeting and coordinators of the project), LIBER (the WP2 leader), Open University (WP3 leader) and Agroknow attended this pre-meeting.

The discussions focused mainly on the dissemination tools that are already used (such as the project website, Twitter account and blog, for the time being) as well as the envisaged one for the next months (such as a potential Facebook page and the under-preparation project newsletter); the events and workshops that can be considered for dissemination purposes. Potential revisions and ideas for improvement were discussed, mostly on the OpenMinTeD website and blog (powered by Wordpress). This is where our experience with Wordpress, based on the Agroknow blog, was considered useful and may provide some quick fixes for open issues.

Thanks @AgroKnow @OpenAIRE_eu @FrontiersIn @OpenUniversity @i_am_rec @LIBEReurope for a great meeting! #textmining pic.twitter.com/9dGnzUI9T9

— OpenMinTeD (@openminted_eu) February 23, 2016

Events were also discussed in details, mostly LREC 2016 Conference and the RDA 7th plenary meeting. The project will be represented in both events, while additional ones will also be considered

As regards the training activities (WP3), they will focus on the OpenMinTeD platform and the services provided by the project. In addition, training sessions on more generic topics (introductory sessions on the TDM methodologies, advantages for various types of stakeholders, legal and interoperability aspects etc.) will also be considered, especially when training communities that are not exactly familiar with text mining and what it can do for them. In this context, I am excited that Agroknow (and therefore me personally, as I am representing Agroknow in these two WPs) is going to work on a report that will aim to provide the basics of the work to take place within the next months, such as the mapping of the communities to be trained, the curriculum for the trainings (e.g. thematic areas to be covered; it's been quite a long time since I was last involved in something like that but it would be great to apply my past experience in a new context), means to be used for the delivery of the trainings and other parts.

This work will take into consideration the work that has already taken place by Agroknow in WP4, in terms of the analysis of the research communities within the project and will feed the next steps of the Training WP. The deadline for this task is the end of March so I'd better stop blogging and start working on the report!

Working on user requirements extraction for the OpenMinTeD project

My colleague Nikos is currently presenting the work that we have done regarding the TAPipedia conceptual design (a report of more than 130 pages so far) and aims to collect feedback that will allow us to work on the final revisions of the document. This is a task that both of us have dedicated a lot of time, effort and creative thinking on, so I am really anxious to receiving the feedback collected during the TAP Experts Group meeting that he is attending these days in Rome, Italy.

In the meantime, I got involved in the preparation of the guidelines for the organization and implementation of events that aim to collect user requirements for the text- and data-mining applications for the OpenMinTeD H2020 project. The project aims to "enable the creation of an infrastructure that fosters and facilitates the use of text and data mining technologies in the scientific publications world and beyond, by both application domain users and text-mining experts". Through a dedicated set of events and using a specific methodology, the project aims to collect requirements from specific types of stakeholders that will allow it to better meet their needs through the development of tools and infrastructure. It includes a generic methodology to be adapted for each individual case (event), a number of templates (e.g. agenda, PPTs, evaluation form etc.) and tips on the successful implementation of such an event. I have some previous experience on the development of such guidelines and methodology, I have support from the rest of the team (whenever and wherever needed) and I really like working on such things, so I am working on that full speed!

The project uses a Redmine installation for various purposes, including management of tasks and documentation of activities like the aforementioned one. According to Wikipedia, "Redmine is a free and open source, web-based project management and issue tracking tool. It allows users to manage multiple projects and associated subprojects. It features per project wikis".

So far, I have been working directly on the wiki-like interface of Redmine for publishing the guidelines. It has a set of wiki features that allow the organization of text in sections and sub-sections, making it easy to create a complex document. I have to admit that I miss some of the typical wiki functionalities (like the automatically created ToC at the beginning of the page) but still I found Redmine really easy to use. Unfortunately I am only using a specific set of functionalities of the tool, which seems to be diverse and efficient in what it aims to allow users to achieve.

The guidelines are expected to be ready by the end of this month and I hope that they will be publicly available so that I can share a link to them! :-)