MTSR 2012

MTSR 2012 - the 6th Metadata and Semantics Research Conference will take place at Cadiz, Spain, between 28-30/11/2012. One of the special tracks will be the 5th International Workshop on "Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food and Environment" (AgroSem2012), to which I also participated last year (as a part of the MTSR 2011 Conference in Izmir, Turkey).

This time I will be more actively involved in the organization of the Workshop, as a member of the Program Committee. Apart from disseminating the Workshop, I am also submitting two research papers as a co-author (one of them is about the recently over Organic.Balkanet project and its use of metadata) and I will get to review some of the submitted paper (hopefully not mine!).

Due to the nature of the Workshop, the VOA3R project is tightly connected to it, so a number of submissions from VOA3R-related authors is expected. After all, Agro-Know and VOA3R are some of the supporters of this workshop!

Agro-Know server issue

Today I realized that I could not access my Agro-Know email account since early in the morning; I kept receiving a message about authentication problems. As soon as I got in the office, I went through the various services hosted at the Agro-Know server only to see that none of them (email, blog, wiki etc.) was available.

I really had to send some rather urgent early-morning emails, to revise stuff at the Agro-Know blog and get some information from the wiki, so I realized how important this server is... it is hard to work without internet, but then it is also scary when you realize how much we depend on this hardware to work with all these Agro-Know server-based services!

I hope that the issue will be fixed soon...

**EDIT** The issue was indeed temporary and was fixed in some 30 mins later, after communicating the issue to our web hosting service.

agINFRA technical meeting in Athens

A one-day meeting for the technical partners of the agINFRA project took places at the premises of Agro-Know on 21/6/2012. The meeting was attended by the majority of the technical partners of the project and since some parts of it were closely related to my work (such as the content population and the workflows that could be used during the project for the connection of new repositories), I took some time participating in it.

Nikos Manouselis presenting (photo by Jaakko)

It was a nice opportunity to meet colleagues from Serbia, Spain, Hungary etc., with whom we have never communicated in the past (since my tasks in the project are not exactly technically-oriented), but still it was nice watching these presentations and getting to know how (technical) things are moving in the project.

Short lunch break (photo by Jaakko)

Jaakko Lappalainen from UAH has already made a short blog post describing the event, which is really interesting (and contains more photos of the event)!

VOA3R 5th project meeting

I recently came back from Paris, where the 5th project meeting of VOA3R was held during 29-31/5/2012. The meeting was interesting as always, discussing a wide variety of issues including the project's management, quality assurance & risk management aspects, dissemination and affiliation plans and activities etc. My part had to do with the content population activities of the project, as I am a member of the GRNET team which is leading the specific work package. The task is rather complex, since it heavily relies on other WPs, such as the one developing the VOA3R metadata AP, the harvesting and portal parts, the quality assurance and dissemination/affiliation plans.We already had some delays with these tasks but during the meeting we tried to describe the current status and define the next steps for the next months.

Presenting the next content population tasks (photo by Imma Subirats)

It was a nice opportunity for me to meet Diane (since we had to solve some issues for the Organic.Lingua project) and David Martin from UAH who has only recently joined the team and has also helped in the Organic.Lingua tasks.

Panoramic photo of the meeting (photo by Imma Subirats)

Apart from that, I had the opportunity to see Paris and its sights for the first time. I managed to get some hours off and really quickly visit the major sights including the Eiffel tower, the Notre Dame, Champs-Élysées, Monmartre, while I also passed just outside the Louvre, taking photos all the time on the road. Despite the bad weather (it was drizzling all the time) I really enjoyed the evening.
Next VOA3R project meeting is to be held in Cyprus, courtesy of George from ARI!

2nd BioVeL Workshop

I recently had the opportunity to attend the 2nd BioVeL Workshop on taxonomic and phylogenetic workflows titled "Developing interdisciplinary methods for conservation biology and ecosystem research – taxonomic and phylogenetic workflows in biodiversity research". It was a joint effort of the BioVeL EU project and the Swedish LifeWatch initiative, and it took place at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden at the Wallenberg conference center between 10-11 May 2012. The workshop was attended by a number of project partners as well as external stakeholders, such as members of the affiliated EU projects ViBRANT and agINFRA (David King and me), along with representatives from other initiatives and natural history museums.

Yeap, that's me taking notes during the workshop.

The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers in the area of biodiversity along with technical people working with related tools and infrastructures, discuss about tools and workflows used and share experiences and ideas in order to optimize these.

I was lucky to attend the social dinner held at the Gothenburg Natural History Museum, as it provided me with a nice opportunity to meet some of the participants even before the workshop (it would be my first time among the biodiversity researchers so there were no familiar faces among them). The museum is really interesting, packed with well-organized specimens and exhibits. The dinner was based on traditional recipes and dishes, which were previously unknown to me; however I have to admit that most of them were really tasty! There was a really friendly atmosphere and I also managed to make contact with the director of the museum, towards the collaboration with the Natural Europe project, through its affiliation program.

The workshop was also interesting, featuring a big number of presentations that helped me understand the way that this specific community works and the needs raised regarding tools and workflows. Some of the presentations were too technical or too focused for me, but still there were interesting points in almost all of them. On the other hand, the social events provided an opportunity for networking and getting to know each other. My impressions of the BioVeL workshop have already been described in the Agro-Know wiki page.

Trivial stuff about my trip to Gothenburg:

1. It was my first trip to Sweden; I had this trip in my mind since I was a teenager!
2. My luggage was left in Paris (did not follow my connection flight) and only reached my hotel at midnight, so I had to be really informal during the social dinner and visit to Gothenburg NHM, wearing a rather tight pair of shoes...
3. As usually, the weather was cloudy and drizzling almost all the time. This weather is really common for my business trips all over Europe, no matter the season...
4. As there was no flight to Athens after the end of the Workshop on Friday, I had to spend the evening in Gothenburg and catch an early flight on Saturday morning. Unfortunately my feet were hurt so badly (see 2) that I could not go around the city. This was the only time that I saw the sun in Gothenburg - an excellent application of Murphy's law!
5. I faced a number of practical issues during my last evening at Gothenburg (such as bad estimations leading me to lack of local currency - exchange shops were closed).
6. I woke up really early and hungry on Saturday, waiting for breakfast before I had to leave, only to find out that breakfast was to be served 1 hour later during weekends (so after I left the hotel)!
7. KLM breakfast/snacks/meals suck big time: They were really poor and in all cases insufficient and not  according to the (high) price of the ticket.

Do you speak Organic?

A survey on language barriers faced by the users of the Organic.Edunet Web portal (and not only) has been launched today by the Agro-Know team of the Organic.Lingua project. This project that aims to identify multilinguality issues and provide software solutions on the Organic.Edunet Web portal.

The survey, along with a short introduction to the whole concept can be found here. All people involved in the field of organic agriculture, agroecology and green fields in general (such as teachers, students, tutors/educators etc.) are more than welcome to participate in this survey and provide their feedback which will allow the Organic.Lingua project to work on the issues identified and hopefully come up with usable solutions!

Open Education Week - Only 10 days to go!

I am reposting a press release for an event that is really important for the open access / open education community, regarding the Open Education Week, organized by the The OpenCourseWare Consortium:

OPENCOURSEWARE CONSORTIUM DECLARES FIRST ANNUAL OPEN EDUCATION WEEK FOR MARCH 5-10, 2012

Efforts to Expand Access to Education and Knowledge to be Featured in Global Events

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., – (February 21, 2012) –The OpenCourseWare Consortium announces today the first annual Open Education Week from March 5-10, 2012.  Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are high-quality, free and open educational materials that offer opportunities for people anywhere in the world to share, use and reuse. 

“The vision of the open education movement is to create a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so, where everyone, everywhere, is able to access affordable, educationally and culturally appropriate opportunities to gain whatever knowledge or training they desire. The movement encompasses producing, sharing, using and modifying content, as well as innovative models of educational delivery,” said Mary Lou Forward, executive director of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. “Open Education Week will showcase projects, resources, people and ideas so that people around the world can see the breadth of what has been accomplished already, and participate in discussions about the future of the movement.”

Open Education Week is being coordinated by the OpenCourseWare Consortium.  The event will take place online and in different locations around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars, discussions and live events. Projects and events will be featured from institutions and organizations from around the world, including: University of Cape Town, University of Michigan, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of California, Irvine, Delft University of Technology, and Creative Commons. Participation is free and open to all. Visit www.openeducationweek.org and follow @openeducationwk for more information.

About The OpencCourseWare Consortium: The OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) is a community of more than 250 universities and associated organizations worldwide. The mission of the OCWC and its member institutions is to advance formal and informal learning for educators and self-learners around the world through the sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials packaged as courses readily accessible on a digital platform.  The Consortium showcases its members to a global audience and provides information and training through webinars, newsletters, and free and open materials. For more information, visit http://www.ocwconsortium.org.

Puzzled by Policy

I just took a break and participated in the Puzzled by Policy survey, just to see what it is about. I found the questions to be clear and focused and the whole process was real fun! It has been really well set-up, both the content and the user interface while at the same time collecting feedback about a specific issue (immigration policy) and bringing you close to the real situation in your country.

I will not reveal the end, but it will really surprise you!

This platform is a product of the Puzzled by Policy, an ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP), part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)  project.

Applying analytics for a learning portal: the Organic.Edunet case study

I was only recently informed of another publication, to which I partially participated. It is titled "Applying analytics for a learning portal: the Organic.Edunet case study" and it was a paper initially submitted, accepted and presented by my colleague Nikos Palavitsinins at the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2011 (LAK '11) in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Nikos had a really hard time there, due to the severe cold and the last-minute revisions that he had to make to his presentation!

So far, only the presentation made by Nikos at the Conference was available through SlideShare; however, the paper is now available in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Unfortunately, this publication is not open access (in fact access to this article costs $15), but the publication of all accepted papers in the Proceedings of the Conference was a selection of the organizers (and surely not up to us). Still it was really nice to see another publication, especially in this accredited series of Proceedings by ACM.

Blogs and wikis - Free tools for publishing information

I really like both blogs wikis. Both of them have a main purpose, but they are easily configurable and can serve additional purposes as well. Here's how I see things and use both of them in different ways:

Blogs: They allow everyone to have a free personal page, which can be easily modified thanks to the wealth of free templates. No need to know about HTML, no need to think about the layout; just experiment with various templates and start entering your own information. For me, a blog provides a virtual space not only to describe some of the most important days of work and achievements, but it also allows me to create my virtual web site, collecting all related information such as my profiles in various professional networking websites, such as Research Gate & Mendeley, my presentations at SlideShare, my latest tweets etc. All my professional information in just one place! I used to keep a diary when I was younger, so it came rather naturally to me.

Another use of blogs is for creating "websites" or reference sites for various events, where creating a new website is not an option. For example, when a project organizes a Workshop or a Conference, all information (such as concept, venue, directions, photo gallery and even submissions in case there is a call for papers or presentations) can be easily hosted in a blog. I have created myself a blog for the controlled experiment of VOA3R project, which includes a wealth of information about the event, including the submitted papers.

Wikis: I am not really familiar with wikis, as I only recently was introduced to a wiki. As I see it, it can partially substitute a website, in the way that it consists of a set of sub-pages, organized and interlinked, providing the information we need in a simple but effective way. A wiki needs some previous knowledge and experience, even when using Mediawiki, which provides a more user-friendly interface. However, it is not as simple as working with a blog, where everything is almost automatically done.

In our case, a wiki temporarily substitutes the website of the company (which is currently under construction). It consists of a number of clearly defined sections such as information about the company, the people, the projects and events. In addition, new wiki pages can be dedicated to specific events, providing information about the events, access to related files etc. See for example the Wiki page for the CerOrganic European Conference.

What I see as a main difference between a wiki and a blog for an event, is the fact that in case a wiki is used for this purpose, it still remains a part of the company's activities so it can be an additional part of an existing set of activities. A wiki should be installed on a server, so this may cause some additional work/expenses. On the other hand, a blog is more individual and autonomous and looks more appealing. In addition, it is usually already installed on a central server, so only a registration is required.

Image taken from keywordy.net

Both tools provide a low cost/free way to present information, avoiding a number of issues such as hosting/servers/reservation of domain names/cost etc. They are easy to use, flexible and remain available without time limitations. Just think of how many times you have tried to reach a website of a project/conference a few years after its end and you ended up with a 404 - Not found error message, because the funding was over...so, when sustainability is an issue, choosing a free option may be the best in some cases, as long as you are willing to make some compromises mostly in terms of appearance ;-)