EFITA 2013

The EFITA 2013 Conference took place in Turin, Italy between 23-27/6/2013. It was a really interesting dissemination opportunity as always and I managed to get involved in two papers (one of them authored mainly by me) that were accepted and published in the proceedings of the Conference:

• Using agricultural learning portals in developing countries: The case of Organic.Edunet (Giannis Stoitsis, Vassilis Protonotarios, Salvador Sanchez-Alonso, David Martin Moncunill, Kostas Kastrantas). It was a paper about the use of the Organic.Edunet portal in regions which include  developing countries and how multilinguality aspects affect the behaviour of users from such countries. It contained the preliminary results of a large study we did earlier this year.

Using Agricultural Learning Portals in Developing Countries: The case of Organic.Edunet from Vassilis Protonotarios

• Green Ideas: A Social Generator of Green Solutions, Deconstructed (Nikos Palavitsinis, Angeliki Papageorgiou, Laura Gavrilut, Vassilis Protonotarios). It was the description of the Green Ideas concept, including the actors involved, the phases and the methodology.

Green Ideas - A Social Generator of Green Solutions, Deconstructed from Nikos Palavitsinis

Despite the fact that I was not able to participate to the Conference, my colleague Babis managed to make a short trip to Turin and present these papers. The Scientific Programme of this Conference is available here.

Last time I participated in EFITA was in July 2011 (Prague, Czech Republic), when I also presented some aspects of the Organic.Edunet portal and also participated in the 2011 VOA3R/EFITA workshop.

Agricultural Education Workshop 2012

The "Workshop on Agricultural Education, Methods, Practices and Technologies" (AgEdWS12) is now over. It took place at Pollenzo, Bra, Italy, on October 25, 2012, right after Green Ideas 2012. The Workshop was attended by about 10 people and consisted of presentations as well as hands-on sessions on several tools. You can find the agenda of the Workshop here, including the presentations of each participant. A detailed description of the workshop is also available through the FAO/AIMS website.

Introduction to the Workshop

Not only I was facilitating the Workshop, introducing each one of the speakers, but I also got to make two presentations, the introduction to the workshop and a presentation about the networks of content providers/the Organic.Edunet network. I was really glad to attend the presentations of Karen Vignare (Michigan State University) on the MetroAg MOOC concept, as well as the one from the FBK team on ontologies and classification schemes used in the educational context. In general, I am pretty satisfied about how the workshop ended, even though the results could be even better if we had more time for the preparations (including our presentations as well!). However, it seems that work was accumulated after my recent trip to Limassol, Cyprus and only limited time was left for adding the final touches for this workshop from my side. You may find photos from the AgEdWS12 Workshop here.

Pollenzo is a beautiful village, consisting of some traditional buildings as well as an archaeological site within the village. The University of Gastronomic Sciences is hosted in a magnificent building that belongs to some centuries ago.

Reaching Pollenzo from Athens was a challenging task, as the route was the following:

1. Suburban railway from home to Athens Airport
2. Flight from Athens to Rome
3. Flight from Rome to Turin
4. Bus from Turin airport to Turin train station
5. Train from Turin to Bra
6. Taxi from Bra to Pollenzo.

It took us more than 7 hours in total, but it deserved it. We arrived at Pollenzo at 19.30 and at 19.45 we had to be at the hotel's lobby to join the rest of the team for dinner, at the excellent Soffitta. The night was short, as presentations had to be revised and emails had to be replied. However, the Workshop on Thursday was better than expected, so I made up for that.

Green Ideas 2012

Green Ideas is always a big celebration for the Agro-Know team (except maybe for the one organizing the event, as (s)he has so many things to take care of, even after the end of the event...)! During the Green Ideas 2011 event, which was held at Mesta, a small traditional village of Chios island, Greece, more than half of the Agro-Know team traveled and actually participated/supported the event.

This year, Green Ideas 2012 takes place at Pollenzo, Bra, Italy and in fact the first day of the event must be over by now. Some of my colleagues have already been there since Sunday or arrived just today. This time I am not participating to the event (even though my Olympus E-300 is already there to grab some photos of the event!), but I will be facilitating the "Workshop on Agricultural Education, Methods, Practices & Technologies", that will take place right after Green Ideas 2012 at the same place. In fact, some of the Green Ideas 2012 participants will also participate in the Workshop.

I will be flying to Turin, Italy on Wednesday and despite the fact that reaching Pollenzo looks like a small adventure, I am really looking forward to go there, meet friends and have a great time during the Workshop!

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.

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...