VOA3R 4th project meeting

Having breakfast at Movenpick Hotel

The meeting is hosted in Izmir, Turkey collocating with the MTSR 2011 Conference in the premises of the Yasar University. The room provided for the meeting looks like a cinema hall, being really comfortable and suitable for presentations at the same time. However, the lack of power outlets created a significant problem regarding the charging of laptops. This was an issue, since the use of laptops was really necessary in some sessions.


It seems that there were a lot of open issues to discuss, including the progress of the tasks and the next steps of the WP5 - Content Population, to which more than half a day was dedicated. The WP5 session was really interesting as it contained presentations on the content part as well as on the more technical part (e.g. the presentation of the VOA3R metadata AP), along with a special presentation by Nikos Palavitsinis from GRNET, who shared his experience on the Metadata Quality Evaluation during the Organic.Edunet project.

VOA3R Family Photo. Izmir, 12/10/2011

In addition, on Wednesday evening the VOA3R Controlled experiment on reviewing lifecycle services will be realized, as the papers submitted to both the 4th International Workshop on Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food and Environment and the VOA3R Controlled experiment will be presented by the authors. I have already dedicated a lot of time and effort to this experiment so I really hope that everything will be ok in the end and the feedback received will be more than adequate.


UPDATE: The controlled experiment went pretty well, despite the difficulties. Almost all papers were presented (I had to make my presentation on the next day) but the hardest part will be to get some valuable feedback about the process followed in this experiment, from both the authors and the participants. In addition, since some of the presentations took longer than expected, so I had to reallocate my presentation to the session of the next morning, just before flying back to Athens! 

Green Ideas 2011

According to me, Green Ideas 2011 was a big success: People from all over the world (e.g. USA, South Africa, India and various EU countries) met in the small, medieval and rural village of Mesta in Chios island, Greece and some amazing things happened!

Some organizations (Agro-Know, Greek Research & Technology Network & Ellinogermaniki Agogi) were responsible for the organization of the event, while a number of EU projects (Organic.Balkanet, I.S.L.E., Rural Inclusion, VOA3R and others) were sponsoring and actively participating in it. The ISKME team presented the Action Collab, to which all participants contributed and enjoyed themselves!

The final outcomes of this really innovative method were the Slidea & Green Dream Team, which may seem a little bit crazy but still they could be sustainable! The Green Ideas 2011 event has a Facebook group as well as a Twitter hashtag #Greenideas2011.

EFITA 2011 Conference

This trip to Prague for the EFITA 2011 Conference will be the last one of the series of 5-days trips during the last month. I am here to make a couple of presentations about the Organic.Edunet Web portal and to support the organization of two workshops (well, mostly the VOA3R one).

The trip didn't start well, as my luggage was left in Geneva, where I changed flight from Athens to Prague. This led to me wandering around the conference with my short pair of trousers and looking really casual... I was really annoyed about that, as well as by the fact that I was informed that there have been two bookings for me at the Hotel!

Some of the giveaways I received from Swiss in order to stand a day without my luggage

The 1st day of the Conference went pretty well, with a wide variety of topics and presentations. Tomorrow I will take some time to work on my presentations and study the organization of the two workshop that I will participate in (VOA3R and Rural Inclusion). Wednesday will be a full, hard day so I'd better be prepared!

vprot next to the Rural Inclusion poster @ the Poster session of EFITA 2011