The Open Discovery Space project (ODS) deployed a number of Webinars in order to allow stakeholders external to the project to get familiarized with the project itself and its outcomes. One of these webinars was titled "Green Learning Network (GLN)" and was of special interest to the Agro-Know team, as we are the ones actually working on this network, taking care of its various aspects like quality and expansion.
+Madalina Ungur was the facilitator of the specific Webinar, to which more than 70 people were registered and it was actually attended by a high percentage of them (exact number to be confirmed soon). Questions were made using Twitter and the "#ODSwebinar" hashtag, while the presentation itself can be found in Slideshare:
The recording (video) of the presentation can be found in YouTube:
Despite the fact that I am involved in GLN, I did not have the opportunity to attend the Webinar, as I was attending (and presenting at) the Big Data in Agriculture training course which also took place on Friday. However, I will try to keep myself up to date with everything that happened during the Webinar.
Είσαι ερευνητής θετικών επιστημών στον τομέα της φυσικής, της χημείας,
της γεωπονίας, της βιολογίας, των μαθηματικών, ή της στατιστικής; Ασχολείσαι με
την ανάλυση πειραματικών δεδομένων και το σχηματισμό υποθέσεων ή εμπλέκεσαι σε εφαρμογές
τεχνητής νοημοσύνης;
Κάνε το πρώτο βήμα για να διεκδικήσεις ένα από τα χρηματικά έπαθλα του AthensGreenHackathon2013
λαμβάνοντας μέρος την Παρασκευή 29 Νοεμβρίου 2013
στο Course: “IntroductiontoDataScienceforAgriculture”, εμπλούτισε τις γνώσεις σου στην επιστήμη των
δεδομένων (DataScience)σχετικά
με την ανάλυση και την αξιοποίηση των ανοιχτών δεδομένων (OpenData) και σκέψου μια ιδέα που θα αναπτύξεις σε τεχνολογική
εφαρμογή κατά τη διάρκεια του AthensGreenHackathon(14 & 15
Δεκεμβρίου @CoLabWorkspace)!
Η εκδήλωση χρηματοδοτείται από τα ερευνητικά έργα agINFRA(“A data infrastructure for agriculture”) και SemaGrow(“Data Intensive Techniques to Boost the Real-Time Performance of Global
Agriculture Data Infrastructures”)υπό το 7ο Πρόγραμμα Πλαίσιο της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης.
Η συμμετοχή στο courseείναι
δωρεάν! Υπάρχει όμως περιορισμός στις διαθέσιμες θέσεις, συνεπώς είναι
απαραίτητη η δήλωση συμμετοχής έως και την Τετάρτη
27 Νοεμβρίου 2013 στο link:
http://goo.gl/o8a5jw
Session 1: “Intro to Big Data”
Session 2: “A beginners'/ Non-experts' & Intro to Big Data”
Session 3: “Designing Data Products”
Session 4: “Data Problems & Products in Agriculture”
Session 5: “Hands-on Design of a Data Product”
Time management is really crucial when working with EU projects; there are deliverables to be delivered on time, communication to take place at certain points, coordination of tasks and people/teams, and any other task to be completed on a specific time. This means that every minute counts and so you need to be sure where to allocate your every minute, every day.
One example is the time spent during the business trips. We tend to travel quite often and sometimes the trips take a lot of time; let alone the time in between flights. You cannot be online during the flights and sometimes there's no internet available at the airport (at least not free wifi). This means that only offline tasks can take place during this time.
- Preparing slides for the presentation you are going to make or going through the presentation for any last-minute revisions
- Reading deliverables, papers and notes taken during the previous days
- Replying to emails and have them ready to be delivered as soon as internet is available
- jot down notes about the ongoing tasks, organizing work and planning future activities/tasks
I find the use of a paper notebook very convenient during flights,where space is limited (sometimes even for my small netbook). It helps me put down my ideas, create To-Do lists, organize my tasks etc. I can even go through the notes taken during internal meetings and propose ideas. I have spent time during flights to revise deliverables by noting comments in the printed version or read interesting publications printed before I left office. In other cases I used my netbook to go through the slides of a presentation and make revisions. I have to admit that I still prefer reading from hardcopies over the digital form of a document using a tablet or the netbook.
Working during a Conference: Keeping notes, taking photos and keeping hydrated.
When online, you can download emails and send the outgoing ones, check for information online, download documents and material you need when offline. This is really useful when you have ongoing communication and you need to respond ASAP. In this case, an online break at an airport between connecting flights allows for being updated on the latest responses to a communication through email.
Another thing to take into consideration is the reliability of digital devices. Sometimes it's useful to have a hardcopy of digital documents (like deliverables or maps), as battery-based devices tend to fail when you most need them. I have found myself in situations where the table ran out of battery while I was trying to check the map for going to the meeting place while in another case the netbook shut down while I was revising my presentation. On top of that, it's always easier to take notes on a printed document compared to its digital format.
I find it really important to take advantage of travel time in order to go forward with my tasks; otherwise, they will require additional time at the office (which sometimes is not an option) and I will probably find myself lagging behind the tasks and deadlines. The better a trip is organized in advance, the less time you need for getting to your final destination (e.g. hotel room, meeting place etc.) so there's more time for working on other stuff. This will also save you from frustration.
Working during the flight; a case of combining digital devices and hard copies in a limited workspace
Of course, when travelling to new places sightseeing is also an option that I cannot resist, especially when I have a nice guide to help me see what I would like to see and save me from wasted time wandering around. I like to blend with local people (e.g. always use public transportation and avoid taxis), visit the traditional (and not always the touristic) part of the places I visit and be a part of it instead of being an external observer. This is a luxury that I still allow myself to try!
The 10th EdReNe Conference took place at the premises of the European SchoolNet (EUN), Brussels, Belgium between 6 and 7 November 2013. I attended the Conference as a member of the UAH team which coordinates the Organic.Lingua project. I was travelling with Nikos Manolis from Athens on the morning of the 6th so unfortunately we almost completely missed an extremely interesting session on the "Opening Up Education" initative of the EC. We still managed to attend a part of it including an interesting panel discussion between EdReNe members and Mr. Ricardo Ferreira from the European Commission, who provided a lot of interesting information on the new initiative as well as responses to the questions of the participants. This initiative aims to provide EU citizens with a centralized portal for accessing national repository which might be hard to identify by searching on the web and is going to feature open access educational resources only.
After a short lunch break we had the opportunity to attend an interactive session titled "Future Classroom Lab", which was a participatory session including interactive boards, the use of smartphones or tablets (provided by the hosts for the session) as well as smart remotes for providing the responses to predefined questions. The activity was based on the Socrative web-based service, which is free to use for up to 50 participants.
The next session was dedicated to linked data and their application in the educational context, followed by a session dedicated to Europeana. In this session, Breandan Knowlton, Chief Product Officer of Europeana made a really interesting presentation on the status of the Europeana and related projects, while Jiri Frank demonstrated an adventure game based on Europeana content. The case of Historiana was also presented by Steven Stegers (EUROCLIO, The Netherlands). The first day ended with the session dedicated on the news from the EdReNe members; it consisted of presentations from Karin Whooley (PDST, Ireland), Fernando Rui Campos (DGE, Portugal) and Pascal Craeye (KlasCement, Belgium). This was the session where Mada from AK presented the Educational Discovery Spaces and the Pathway Authoring tools and I presented the multilinguality-related outcomes of the Organic.Lingua project, focusing on AgLR and the MoKi tool and how they offer automatic multilingual services. My presentation was also the last of the first day of the Conference, which ended with a nice dinner at L' Horloge du Sud, a cozy African restaurant.
The 2nd day of the Conference started with a presentation about ICT4IAL by Marcella Turner-Cmuchal (EU Agency for Development in Special Needs Education), followed by a wonderful joint presentation on the Special Educational Needs Network by Leo Hosjsholt-Poulsen (UNI-C, the president of EdReNe), Roger Blamire (EUN) and Elena Shulman (EUN). The next session was the most technical one, including presentations from Manon Haartsen-Geven (Kennisnet, Netherlands) about JSON, Frans Van Assche, the President of the ARIADNE foundation (Belgium) about aggregation of social and usage data and one from my colleague Nikos Manolis on the enhancement of learning content through the aggregation of social data. An additional presentation on the Swedish standardization on theme learning platforms and digital learning resources was given by Peter Karlberg (Skolverket, Sweden), including an amazing YouTube video promoting the WCAG standard!
The last session was the 2nd part of the News from the members. Some of the many interesting tools were the following:
the iTEC presented by Will Ellis (EUN), which is a highly customizable online platform featuring a number of widgets which can be selected and added based on the needs of the user.
Edumoodle, an enhanced version of Moodle, including plugins and components, developed by BMUKK. The LTI approach (Learning Tools Interoperability) developed by MSI Global Talso looks promising for enhancing the interoperability between different educational/learning platforms. Presented by Astrid Leeb (Education Group, Austria).
Eduvista: A toolkit which enables school leaders, education policy makers, teachers and ICT suppliers to create and implement Future Classroom Scenarios that provide an clear vision of innovative teaching and learning practices. It can be used to introduce or scale up innovative use of ICT in a school or across schools in an education system. Presented by Will Ellis (EUN).
Edukata: An adaptation of a a research-based design approach for educators to design learning activities for their own educational context. It sounds really promising and is currently under development. Presented by Will Ellis (EUN).
EMU: A web platform providing access to learning materials (in Danish). The recommendations provided to the users are based on the tagging made by the users.
The 2nd day of the Conference closed with the conclusions and next steps. Agro-Know will probably host the next EdReNe meeting in Greece in 2014 so preparations will need to take place in the meantime.
Overall, it was a really well-organized conference, including sessions closely related to what I am actually working on and it was nice to see again the people from the previous EdReNe Conference in the Hague, the Netherlands about one year ago and what they have been working on during these months. You can find some photos from the event here.
If I had to provide a tagline for this Conference, it would be borrowed from the Danish folkeskole motto (found in Leo's last presentation of this Conference):
Gør en god skole bedre (Make a Good School Even Better)
We were on the train from Brussels to the airport, me and my colleague Nikos Manolis, after the end of the EdReNe 10th Conference. He was holding a brochure about Brussels, mentioning the word "Vibrant" and I accidentally though about the Vibrant FP7 project, with which I am quite familiar (due to my involvement with the agINFRA project) and which is closely related to the BioVeL FP7 project, both working in the biodiversity research area. Nikos corrected my and in fact found my mistake funny.
As soon as we reached the airport, still in the train station area, I accidentally met +Matthias Obst, one of the WP leaders of the BioVeL project and the kind host of the 2nd BioVeL workshop that I attended last May. He was travelling with Norman Morisson (also an acquaintance from the same workshop, one of the most active project partners as far as I understood!) and I was really glad to see them. It seems that the team was returning from Spain where the project's review meeting has just taken place. I wished them good luck with the results but I am sure that they will do fine as I am aware of the high quality of the project and its outcomes.
It was not the first time that I got into familiar faces from projects while travelling and this comes to an agreement with my statement that we tend to travel a lot all over Europe (which is not always bad of course!). In addition, it seems that my involvement with linked data has found an application in real life, outside the data and metadata context!
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 ;-)
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!
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!
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 ;-)
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.
The Open Discovery Space project (ODS) deployed a number of Webinars in order to allow stakeholders external to the project to get familiarized with the project itself and its outcomes. One of these webinars was titled "Green Learning Network (GLN)" and was of special interest to the Agro-Know team, as we are the ones actually working on this network, taking care of its various aspects like quality and expansion.
