IPM Decisions Annual Meeting: A missed opportunity

Today I was supposed to fly from Athens to Paris, then get the train to Dijon, settle in my hotel room, grab something to eat and finalize my preparations for the IPM Decisions Annual Meeting. Instead, I am sitting at my living room, working from home almost since early March due to COVID-19.

Flights to Paris and back were early booked, transportation to and from Dijon was carefully planned...damn, I even planned my meals based on TripAdvisor and walks around Dijon (it would be my first time). But apart from the trip itself, it would be my first participation in a project meeting after a really long time.

The IPM Decisions project will create an online platform that is easy to use for the monitoring and management of pests. The platform will be available across the EU with DSS, data, tools and resources tailored to individual regions.

I miss traveling and I miss project meetings. Visiting new places and meeting new people. Walking around unknown roads and working on innovative ways to collaborate in order to fulfill a project's requirements.

I only wish that there will be another opportunity in the near future.

You can learn more about IPM Decisions on the CORDIS Portal.

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

Back in the office - Introduction to Timeful

So I am back in the office. For good; or for at least one month (the next trip is planned for early June). That sounds like a relief after spending almost three weeks in a row out of office, participating in various events namely:

1. The CIARD/GODAN 1st Consulatation Meeting (22-24/4/2014, Rome, Italy);
2. The Organic.Lingua 3rd (and final) review meeting (28-30/5/2014, Luxembourg);
3. The ARIADNE Foundation General Assembly (5/5/2014, Athens, Greece);
4. The EdReNe 11th Conference (6/5/2014, Athens, Greece);
5. The LRE Subcommittee meeting (7/5/2014, Athens, Greece).

My contribution in each one of these events significantly varied; in one of them I was invited to participate as an external observer, in another one I had a small presentation and contribution to discussions, in another I was responsible (among others) to formulate the agenda of the Conference and also make presentations and for the first two ones in the list I had to allocate a significant amount of time and effort for preparing my slides, the sessions I was responsible for and for making the presentations (among other types of contributions).

While I was out of office, new tasks were added to the list, old ones needed to be finalized and shared with colleagues and on top of that, urgent tasks came out of nowhere and required special attention in a short notice. Despite the fact that I tried to plan my activities carefully and take care of the ones that could be handled during (or even before) these fully packed days, it was not possible to keep my schedule under control. In addition, I found it rather hard to focus on the office routine during the first hours, so I decided to spend some time on preparing myself and doing less demanding stuff.

Some days are more demanding than the others...

This is when I found out about Timeful; it is an app which promises to help you keep things under control, even under hard days, acting as an "intelligent time manager". This sounds like a thing that I could surely make good use of, so I decided to take the online quiz and see where I stand. After I replied to the simple 10 questions of the quiz, I got the following result, which is really close to the impression I also had.

I was also provided with some useful recommendations on improving my situation:

Improving balance:

1. As you plan your day, make sure to give yourself a bit of buffer time. Unexpected things are the norm, not the exception, and stress is often caused by not allowing time for the unexpected. In fact this is a thing that I already apply to my schedule, but sometimes even buffering is not enough...
2. Start each day by naming one MGD ("Must Get Done") for that day, and put it on your calendar. Then get to it first thing in the morning. I am also doing this more or less; prioritization of tasks is a key to accomplishing them on time. However, I admit that I prefer to send my emails early in the morning, so I will (or at least I hope so) get my responses before the end of the day; in the meantime, I can allocate time in urgent tasks.
3. In the battle for your time, things that get scheduled will win over things that aren’t scheduled. Book plans with your friends and family right into your calendar, then protect them as you would a business meeting. This is something that I will need to work on; it seems that putting focus only on business tasks and neglecting the personal/family ones acts as a boomerang and in the end it effects the business planning.
4. Make sure to schedule "me time." Eating well, sleeping, and working out make us human and happy. By the way, even if you don't care about being happy or human, it actually makes us more productive at work! This is also a point to take into consideration; it's easy to neglect everything and focus on work...

Improve your productivity 

1. The hardest part of a task is usually starting it. You can avoid procrastinating by making the start more enjoyable. Pour yourself a cup of coffee or cocoa and sip it during the first five minutes of the task. By the time the coffee is done, you’ll be well on your way. 
2. Checking off little to-dos and responding to emails can give us the short-term illusion of being productive, but it’s the important, tough, and time-consuming stuff that makes us feel accomplished in the long run. 
3. Break your important projects into subtasks and give yourself a pat on the back each time you finish one. Then check it off your list. 
4. Knowledge is often best disseminated through informal interactions. When you need to learn something, don’t call a meeting, but ask someone to get a quick cup of coffee. 
5. When you have important tasks, mark off blocks of your calendar as “busy,” so your time can’t be hijacked by co-workers. If “busy” doesn’t stop them, use important-sounding fake meetings.

It all has to do with time management but not only, and the Timeful app got it right; time is limited and we need to see how we can get the best out of it. Some things will stay in the agenda, while others will have to be delegated or even declined. In any case, I am really anxious to start using the Timeful app as soon as it becomes available, hoping that it will (at least partially) help.

Agro-Know on the move (Part II)

Well, today was one of these days, when a large part of the AK team is travelling on the same date. Nikos Manolis, Andreas and me found ourselves on the same flight without even knowing; my colleagues travelling to Budapest for the agINFRA project meeting while I was travelling to Birmingham for the Organic.Lingua 7th project meeting - both flights through Munich (the common part of our trips). Nikos Marianos had taken an earlier flight to the UK for the Organic.Lingua meeting, Giannis would join us on the following day while Babis had to cancel the trip he was sharing with Andreas and Nikos Manolis due to health issues. Needless to say that during the 14th-17th of January, the AK office was half-empty (or half-full, from an optimists point of view!).

I arrived earlier and managed to get in the lovely Aegean lounge at El. Venizelos airport, which provided a quiet environment, fast wireless internet and coffee/snacks; an ideal place to work before getting on board and much more convenient than the gate seats...

Working in the Aegean lounge

While waiting for boarding, we also met Dr. Vangelis Karkaletsis from NCSR Demokritos, a good friend and partner in the Semagrow FP7 project, who was travelling to Luxemburg for the "Info Day for Big Data and Language Technologies", a part of the Information and networking days - H2020 Work Programme 2014-2015, Connecting Europe Facility. These topics are in at the heart of what all three projects (agINFRA, Organic.Lingua and Semagrow) are working on.

We all flew together to Munich and then separated; I had to rush in order to catch my flight to Birmingham while Andreas and Nikos had some time to spend at the airport before boarding to their flight to Budapest. We all arrived to our destinations safe and well in the end, having some time for last minute preparations for our meetings.

Agro-Know on the move - Keep on travelling!

Ok, it is in the nature of our work to travel quite often (project meetings, dissemination events, participation in Conferences etc.), but sometimes this is getting too much (or too funny!); for example, due to our frequent trips, many of us in AK tend to be away from office at the same time and this week is one of these cases:

• Andreas is currently in Australia, participating in the 3rd EU-Australia Research Infrastructures Workshop, which takes place between 4-8 November 2013, at Canberra, Melbourne, Australia.
• Laura and Nikos are currently in Vilnius, Lithuania, in order to attend the ICT 2013 - Create, Connect, Grow, in Vilnius on 6-8 November 2013, focusing on Horizon 2020 - the EU's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation for 2014-2020.
• Another Nikos and me are travelling to Brussels, Belgium in order to attend the 10th EdReNe Conference, which takes place between 7-8/11/2013 at the EUN premises.

I guess days like these are much quieter for those staying back at the office; I surely appreciate such days when I am at the office while others are travelling.

Lovely logo for the ICT 2013 Conference

This also reminded me of the summer of 2011, where I spent three weeks in a row out of office, travelling for the Organic.Balkanet project meeting in Maribor, Slovenia (28-30/6/2011), the ISLE summer school in Malta (4-8/7/2011) and the EFITA 2011 Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (11-14/7/2013). I only had the weekends in between in order to get back home, get some clean clothes and get back on the road again! 

I really love travelling so I do not mind; sometimes I find it amazing how automated this process has turned into so I can pack and get everything ready for a long trip in a couple of hours. My packing skills have also advanced over the years, allowing me to take only the necessary stuff with me (even though I am usually tempted to fill any space available in the suitcase with additional stuff, just in case). I know which airplane seat to choose and why, how to take advantage of the time during short and long flights (reading/taking notes/preparing my presentations and using my netbook respectively), what to do in between flights, how to select a nice hotel within the available budget, how to adapt to new environments, small hotel rooms, find the best way to travel from an airport to my hotel and vice-versa. Of course this takes some time in planning before the trip, explore available options, take notes and print maps but it worth every minute of it as it makes travelling much easier.

Working in the woods! Leuven, Belgium

Sometimes (unfortunately not frequently) I get to find some free time during the trips to go for long walks, sightseeing and taking photos; I usually find myself in such a tight schedule that I hardly find enough time to sleep. In any case, each trip is different and it's always an interesting experience to visit new places - challenging might also be an appropriate word for that! I have found myself working in benches in the woods (during the VOA3R preparations for the 2nd review meeting in Leuven), trying to connect to wifi in hotel lobbies after midnight, squeezing myself next to a snack dispenser in the Sofia airport in order to plug my netbook to the only power source available, working while relaxing in Star Alliance lounges, missing my only mean of transportation and looking for alternatives on the fly, trying to understand why I do not have a hotel room while I have the voucher in my hand and so on. These memories are not to be forgotten in any case ;-)

Trip to Washington D.C - Behind the scenes

Some quick notes taken during and after my trip to Washington D.C. for the RDA 2nd Plenary Meeting. In general I had a great time in the states, but sometimes things tend to go wrong:

• I exchanged 200 euros for USD260 at an exchange bureau in the center of Athens; I would have gotten much less at the Athens airport.
• I flew from Athens to Washington D.C. through Philadelphia
• Various snacks and beverages were offered during the flight but I still felt hungry; I tend to get more hungry when I am tired. All experienced passengers had snacks in their carry-on luggage!
• It was really cold during the flight; it reminded me of Greek ships to the Greek islands, where the temperature in the salon is usually really low. I suppose they want to keep us fresh and young during the long trips in both cases. At least US Airways was kind enough to provide warm blankets to everyone during the flight.
• Due to extremely long queues at the passport check points in Philadelphia, I missed my connection flight to Washington… had to wait for three hours at the airport, which to my surprise provided free access to the internet. It was the first time I missed a flight in more than 30 trips!
• My luggage travelled to Washington without me, as I was told this happens with national flights. I was really worried that the last time I saw it would have been at the Athens airport; however, it was on the correct lane, waiting for me to arrive in Washington.
• I wish I have chosen a direct flight to Dulles or Baltimore airports; I would have saved a lot of time from the security screening and might have shortened my trip – both of them were more far away from the city center though (so I would have to take a bus and a metro later), and this is why I chose to fly to Ronald Reagan Airport. I promise that I will never do that again – Only direct flights to my U.S. destination if possible.
• While waiting at the Philadelphia airport, I grabbed a snack and sat to eat it; I didn’t notice a small (but oily) piece of food left on the chair. This left me with one pair of trousers less during my stay in Washington.
• I left home at 07.30 and reach hotel at 05.30 (Greek time), so my trip took almost one day!
• Metro at the Ronald Reagan Airport was not operational on Sunday evening due to works; I had to get a bus for a couple of metro stations, carrying around my heavy luggage.
• I reached hotel only to realize that there was a problem with both my debit cards (both Visa and Mastercard); the Mastercard was rejected, while the limit for the Visa was 500 euros. I only had USD250 in cash with me.
• The hotel policy for Debit card owners was to charge a fee of $60 per night for the use of the card – I was not aware of that rule and would have paid in cash if I only knew about that. They said that it would be automatically refunded after 10 days – I never trust this kind of transactions, as businesses tend to “forget” that they have to give you back your money.
• Each evening I returned to the hotel room after the meeting, only to realize that the magnetic key was not working; I was told during my last night at the hotel that this was due to the fact that the room was not paid yet. However, this also applied to my first night at the hotel.
• Fees for withdrawing money from ATMs in the States were rather high - I should have converted more Euros in Athens.
• I was never sure the amount charged to my card by the hotel (twice), as the transactions took place behind the counter and in a nicely-hidden spot. And we are not talking about crooks here; it was a $250/night hotel at the center of Washington D.C.
• Finding out the exact price for an item in U.S.A. is hard, as the prices shown never include taxes – and taxes are different in different cases. You can only find out about that after you pay.
• On top of that, you need to tip in almost any occasion. You need to tip the doorman, the bellman, the waiter, the lady cleaning the hotel room, the taxi driver etc. Sometimes you are kindly requested to do so, sometimes you really need to. This is not common in Europe and of course it adds up to the (already high) prices.
• I could not find a fast food in Washington, at least the ones shown in movies, with large burgers, large fries, large milk shakes. I only got to each some “big” (but still normal in size) sandwiches and less-than-normal sized milk shakes.
• Walking around Washington was a pleasure; big pedestrian walks, enormous parks, lots of sights. I walked so much that my feet hurt.
• You feel safe in Washington. There is police around the city, especially near the public buildings (which are really numerous).
• I spent about an hour walking to the Capitol, thinking that the river would be exactly behind it; I was totally disoriented as usually, as the river was on the exactly opposite side.
• There were a lot of buildings that looked like ancient Greek ones; it was really appreciated. On top of that, Americans seem to be really proud of their history and respect monuments and figures; this is not the case in Greece.
• Jogging is very popular in Washington – you need to take better care of the joggers than the cyclists.
• Jet lag is a fact – I felt exhausted every day after the lunch for the first days. Then I travelled back home, where things were even worse (see below).
• There are no croissants in grocery stores (I think they call them Pharmacies here) – The only options for breakfast at the hotel room were biscuits and cereals, along with milk. I lived with that during my last morning in Washington.
• I did not find any stores to buy gadgets/clothes etc. I wouldn’t have minded to get my hands on a refurbished Microsoft Surface tablet, a Nokia Lumia Windows Phonw or maybe a Mac Pro, but it seems that there was nothing around my hotel (and my long walks).
• I was nervous about the use of power adapters in US with a Schuko plug (for my laptop) so I grabbed a cheap one from Athens, which costed my 14,5 euros. A similar but more well-built-looking adapter in the Athens airport was sold for 35 euros and the same one (as mine) at Philadelphia airport for about $30. I have seen a similar one selling for $50 in a magazine available in the airplane! I have to admit that I loved my adapter, which allowed me to charge all my gadgets using both the plug and the included USB port at the same time. It is highly recommended as a cheap alternative to the more expensive and elegant ones (such as SKROSS).
  
  
• I had problems checking out of my hotel, as my cards could not be used for paying the remaining amount ($600 while my account balance was much higher in both cases). I had to visit an ATM and use both cards (Visa & Mastercard) for withdrawing money as there was a $400 limit per card by the ATM and I needed $600 (transaction which incurred fees both by the ATM and by my banks). In the end, there was a pre-charging made in both cards and one of them will have to be released (it may take up to 10 working days as I was told by the hotel). I just hope that I will not be overcharged. Cards are a mess-cash is good…
• On my was back to Ronald Reagan airport I managed to get the wrong metro line and I started moving outside the city – thanks to a friendly passenger, I was told how to get the right line again.
• Before flying from Washington to Philadelphia but as soon as we were seated in the airplane, we were told that there was an weight imbalance and one (volunteer) passenger from rows 1-4 should be moved to the last row; I am currently 115 Kg and was sitting at row 4, next to a guy who seemed to be twice as big as me. To everyones relief, I offered to move to the last row.
• This time there were no big queues so I had to wait quite a lot at the airports. However, there was a 50 min delay from Philadelphia to Athens. This trip seemed endless. And there were no duty-free shops with gadgets around.
• As I flew from evening (U.S.) to morning (Greece) I had trouble getting some sleep during the flight. I spent two days trying to recover from the trip.
• I was expecting my wife to pick me up with the car from the airport but (of course) something happened and I had to take the suburban railway. This meant a delay of about 20 mins and me, sleepless, carrying my 20Kg suitcase and 15 kg backpack over a quite a big number of stairs at the destination station, as both the elevator and the escalators were out of order.
• Tourist photos from my trip to Washington are available here.

Organic.Lingua 4th project meeting @ Paris

The Organic.Lingua 4th project meeting took place between 18-20/9/2012 at Paris, France, at the premises of INRA. I knew that I had a lot of work to do for the meeting, since I had to present a wide variety of things, some of which were not exactly in the heart of what I am actually working on (e.g. the presentation of the Organic.Lingua online survey and the Evaluation & Validation plan of the project - there were colleagues of mine working on these topics).

The discussions during the meeting were mainly technical, focusing on the language components and the additions/improvements that are expected within the next months regarding the automated translations, enriched with some "lighter" sessions, like the project's vision session, content population plan and status, dissemination etc. I had the opportunity to present the AgLR (Agricultural Learning Repository) Tool, on which we have been working with the technical team of AK for quite some time now. We managed to identify some issues; however, we didn't have time for the planned hands-on session, which would also provide really useful feedback...

The meeting took longer than expected, so any plans for sightseeing were not applicable. Despite that fact, we managed to visit some really interesting places for dinner (Chez Paula was one of them). However, the hotel room was for once more rather disappointing...located in a not-so-safe-looking area, it has not been refurbished for quite a long time. Mold was all over the bathroom, while the furniture were badly treated in various cases. At least the mattress was unexpectedly comfortable! Breakfast was rather limited but a huge improvement compared to the really poor served in my previous stay in Paris.

All in all, the meeting was successfully completed, leaving some space for improvements in the next months. It left me with quite a lot of things to do within the next weeks, but I am quite sure that other obligations/deadlines etc. will make this quite impossible...

Back on the track

My trilogy of consecutive business trips

1. Organic.Balkanet 4th project meeting (Maribor, Slovenia) 28/6-1/7/2011
2. ISLE Summer School (Malta) 4-8/7/2011 and
3. EFITA 2011 Conference / 2011 VOA3R Workshop (Prague, Czech Republic) 11-15/7/2011

may have been fun and it was nice meeting all these people but along with 10 days of summer vacations have really disorganized me, as I usually had limited access to internet along with limited free time. As a result, a lot of emails were left unreplied and tasks were left behind for more than one month... I am still struggling to cope up with all this amount of work and new emails/tasks arrive constantly.

I still have a significant task to accomplish, which may help me not to lose time during my next trips: Email migration from Windows Live Mail to Mozilla Thunderbird. Since I use one computer at the office and another one during my trips, it is really hard to sync my emails (more specifically to keep the folder structure) between these computers, using the POP3 email accounts of my university and my work (I would have no problem if the accounts were IMAP). I have found no way to keep my inbox (with the current folder structure) in an external hard disk using Windows Live Mail. On the other hand, Mozilla Thunderbird looks much more flexible and easy to use in this way. In addition, there is already a Portable Edition of Thunderbird, which may be easily installed in the external hard drive and then I will be able to access my email from any computer, keeping the folder structure intact.

For this I will need to get my hands on an external hard disk. I am looking forward to buying a Western Digital My Passport Essential USB 3.0 500GB; any color will do the job! Maybe a 320GB version will be fine for my emails, too, so I keep my eyes open. In this direction, all my emails will be primarily stored in my external HD and the HD of my different computers will only be used for backup purposes.

This migration will be a hard decision to make, as it will require time and effort, but it has to be done. If I could only find a way to store my Windows Live Mail inbox in an external HD...