On email (or inbox) management

No, I am not the most appropriate person to ask for advice on the way that an inbox is organized; you should better ask other colleagues of mine who are experts either on organizing their Mozilla Thunderbird inbox or on using the Gmail colorful tags. I just try to create some basic structure in Thunderbird (e.g. per project and sub-folders per Work Package in some cases), so that my inbox does not get cluttered. On top of that, I have started using some color codes for defining emails requiring attention, including interesting information and so on. This post mostly refers to the management of the physical archive of an inbox, as a set of precious files and the ways to keep it safe.

As you can imagine, for people like us who spend a high percentage of their daily routine communicating with colleagues and partners all over the world, keeping the e-mail inbox safe is really crucial. Not only a lot of unique information is included in such emails, but there are also files attached and ideas that may not exist anywhere else.

The story behind this post is that a colleague of mine had her laptop stolen at a metro station, during a recent business trip in Paris. The story itself is rather complicated but typical for those of us who tend to travel to places we are not familiar with, so we may get confused, stop in order to ask for information on how to get to our destination, leave our stuff here and there for getting some rest etc., usually carrying more than our luggage and our backpack with our laptops, hard disks and other tools of work. In this case, my colleague only realized that she didn't have her small laptop bag with her after a while and it was too late; the bag was not there when she got back. The bag contained not only her laptop (with all her work and emails) but also her external disk in which she kept a backup of her emails (among others). This left her with a brand new, but totally empty laptop which she has started populating with her documents (which were hopefully backed up in another disk, some days ago).

The issue is that her emails are not available anywhere anymore; the corporate server is emptied every now and then and all emails were downloaded to her local Thunderbird installation. Only a part of them were available in her Gmail account as she was using both the corporate and the private email addresses but with no forwarding between them. This means that a lot of emails (and we mean A LOT of them) are now not available anywhere; to me this sounds tragic (as I heavily depend on email communication).

What could have be done in another way?

Well, now it is too late, but still there are some things to consider:

1. Never keep your luggage unattended! Travel light, and do not carry a lot of stuff in your hands, especially if you are not familiar with the place you visit and you keep going back and forth, asking for information. It will come natural to leave something behind if you have a lot of things in your hands (e.g. handbag, coat, plastic bags with gifts etc.).
2. Never keep your back up with you. Any external hard disks you use for backup should always be in a different physical place, in order to minimize the risk of losing all your staff at the same time.
3. Keep online backups: There are free services that offer a significant amount of free space to use however you want; make use of this space for storing at least the core of your work. On top of that, there are free services like DropBox, SugarSync and Skydrive which automatically sync your folders with the cloud; just imagine that these folders in this case was your inbox... you would have an online, secure backup of your emails.
4. Frequently back up your inbox (and other files). I believe that a weekly backup of the inbox (if a more frequent one is not an option) would provide a safety net in case you happen to lose all your emails. I have a weekly plan (that I don't always follow) but so far it seems to be working well).
5. Forward emails to another account. I have colleagues who forward all emails from the corporate account to another, web-based one for safety (and convenience) reasons. It may come handy to be able to use e.g. Gmail for retrieving information/emails when you do not have access to the corporate inbox (for any reason)

I am using a rather simple approach myself, but the post is getting too big already even without it; let's just stay on the tips for the time being!

1st International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability: Session 2

Session 2 of the 1st International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability themed "Status of data and metadata for germplasm" included presentations on the metadata standards used in the various germplasm data sources, presentations of germplasm data providers and aggregators of germplasm data as well as people who have been working with germplasm metadata. It was deployed using Google Hangouts, thanks again to +Luca Matteis who made all the necessary preparations and organized the Hangout. Despite the fact that it was the second time that we used this platform, we still had some issues like desktop sharing not working, participants disconnecting etc.

The session started with a very quick introduction to the Conference (again) by me; this time I was better prepared and had some more time to introduce participants to the scope of the Conference and the presentations of this 2nd session. The first presentation was made by +Matija Obreza from Global Crop Diversity Trust, who made a presentation of the GENESYS Germplasm Data aggregator. The next presentation (more in the form of discussion) came from +Theo van Hintum and +Milko Škofič who presented the case of the EURISCO germplasm data aggregator and the experience related to metadata adn data sharing between European genebanks. The next presentation was to be delivered by +Maria Antonietta Palombi, (from CRA) about the Italian National Germplasm Database; however, this was not possible due to constant connection issues. +Dag Endresen made a presentation of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) followed by my presentation about the germplasm metadata analysis that we did in the context of the agINFRA project.

agINFRA Germplasm metadata analysis from Vassilis Protonotarios

What I found really interesting about this session (apart from the presentations themselves) was the elaborated discussion among (mostly) the presenters; this was expected, as interesting issues were raised during the presentations. In addition, thanks to the use of the Google Event page, there were a number of comments and links shared between the participants, which was also useful and drove the discussion.

The recording of the 2nd Session is available through YouTube as it was automatically recorded; another convenience provided by Hangouts, while the presentations are available through the event's website.

I believe that this 2nd session was more well-implemented than the 1st one, despite the issues that we faced. Session 3, which will take place on 19/12/2013, will be asynchronous, meaning that presentations will be recorded as videos and shared with the participants of the Conference - there will be no live streaming or coordination. We hope that there will be some comments related to each presentation. Until then, stay tuned!

1st International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability: Session 1

Session 1 of the 1st International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability themed "The vision of Linked Germplasm Data" is now over. It was deployed using Google Hangouts, thanks to +Luca Matteis who set everything up for us. It was the first time that we used this platform for deploying a Conference, so we came across with some issues but they were solved on the fly.

The session started with a very quick introduction to the Conference by me; I felt really lucky to be able to participate to the same meeting with people who have spent many years in the biodiversity and germplasm domain and I was really honored to be asked to make the introduction to the e-Conference (and obviously too nervous to do so!). Then +Eliza Arnaud from Bioversity International made a keynote speech on "Interoperability of Agricultural Diversity Data". The next presentation came from +Michael Marus (CGIAR) (ICT Manager of CGIAR) who presented the "Data Management Landscape", sharing the CGIAR experiences on the topic. It was really interesting to know that CGIAR has adopted Open Access policy for its data, and of course related to the linked open data approach proposed by the e-Conference. Next was +Donald Hobern, (GBIF Director), who made an interesting presentation of the Global Biodiversity Information Outlook and discussed several data sharing issues in the biodiversity area. Then it was my turn to present the agINFRA Germplasm Working Group, a group which aims to enhance the interoperability between different germplasm data sources by developing and deploying a linked data approach. The links of the group with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) related groups were highlighted and the next steps were presented. 

The agINFRA Germplasm Working Group from Vassilis Protonotarios

The last presentation of the 1st Session was made by +Luca Matteis from Bioversity International, who presented the TDWG group of interest on ‘Semantics for Biodiversity’.

Session 1 closed with a short discussion on topics related to the theme of the session, driven by questions posed by the participants/audience of the e-Conference. The recording of the 1st Session is available through YouTube as it was automatically recorded; another convenience provided by Hangouts, while the presentations are available through the event's website.

I admit that I was pretty pleased with the result, despite the fact that I was rather nervous for sever reasons (e.g. the use of a platform that we haven't used in the past, my participation in a Conference about biodiversity and germplasm for the first time etc.). I believe that all went well in the end and that we will all be more prepared and relaxed during the Session 2, which will take place on 11/12/2013. Until then, stay tuned!

International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability

 

The “International e-Conference on Germplasm Data Interoperability” will take place between December 6th and December 20th, 2013. The aim of this e-Conference is to bring in contact stakeholders in the area of plant germplasm and traits and discuss the current status of the interoperability between the different data sources and resources, such as the metadata schemas and classification systems used. In this direction, it aims to focus on the linked data approach to be followed in order to enable the linking of data from heterogeneous data sources and in various data formats.

The e-Conference will consist of both synchronous and asynchronous sessions, facilitating the engagement of participants in both online and offline discussions and including real-time presentations using web-based tools. The event is jointly organized by Bioversity International, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Agro-Know Technologies and supported by the agINFRA EU project. Major players in the biodiversity area, including the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), EURISCO and GENESYS will be invited and involved, along with the Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). The participants will also sessions on germplasm data providers as well as the technical infrastructure need for linking the various germplasm data sources.

According to the tendative agenda, the e-Conference will consist of four (4) sessions, each one of which will be allocated in one week in the aforementioned period:

1. The vision of Linked Germplasm Data (6/12/2013, synchronous)
2. Status of data and metadata for germplasm (11/12/2013, synchronous)
3. Setting up an infrastructure for the Germplasm Data (11-19/12/2013, asynchronous)
4. Semantic standards and metadata needed for bridging the germplasm data to the breeding/in situ/on farm data (20/12/2013, synchronous)

The synchronous sessions will consist of real-time presentations and discussions between the participants while in the case of the asynchronous session, it will consist of a number of presentations available offline, which can be commented and discussed between the participants. The expected audience of this e-Conference is bioinformatics and biodiversity researchers, linked data experts and stakeholders working with linked data.

You can find additional information at the e-Conference website, including the registration form.

Intro Course to Big Data / "Introduction to Data Science for Agriculture"

The course "Introduction to Data Science for Agriculture", was held on Friday, November 29th, 2013 at the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications (IIT) of the National Center for Scientific Research (N.C.S.R.) Demokritos, in Athens, Greece. It was the first part of a modular event which also consists of the following parts:

• a Training Day which will be held on Thursday, December 12th, 2013 at the same venue, during which the participants will be trained on the tools and technologies to be used during the Athens Green Hackathon 2013 and
• Athens Green Hackathon 2013, which will take place from Saturday, December 14th, 2013 to Sunday, December 15th, 2013 at the coLab Workspace in Athens, Greece.

You can find more information about the events at the Agro-Know wiki page.

Dr. Vangelis Karkaletsis (NCSR Demokritos)

The course started with an introduction by Dr. Vangelis Karkaletsis, Research Director of IIT of NCSR Demokritos, who provided an overview of the event and the background of IIT, followed by Angeliki Papageorgiou (Agro-Know Technologies, the organizer and contact person for the event) who explained the structure of the modular event and explained all necessary practicalities. The participants (about 35 people) had the opportunity to introduce themselves and explained why they chose to apply for the specific course. I was amazed by the fact that people with so different educational backgrounds were interested in the specific course; starting with agronomists, there were also mathematicians,statisticians, chemists and biologists, as well as web and software developers, ICT specialists and managers. This is exactly the audience that was needed for providing a trans-disciplinary dimension to the issue that we need to address during the hackathon; combining people with expertise in so different domains will surely provide really interesting ideas and outcomes for the hacking!

Angeliki Papageorgiou (Agro-Know Technologies)

Antonis Koukourikos (NCSR Demokritos)

The first presentation came from Antonis Koukourikos (Research Associate of NCSR Demokritos), who provided an interesting introduction to big data and their connection to linked data / semantic web. The case of the POWDER (Protocol for Web Description Resources), a protocol for publishing descriptions of (e.g. metadata about) Web resources using RDF, OWL, and HTTP developed by the IIT team and currently used in the SemaGrow project was also discussed.

Me, presenting the Drivetrain approach

The next presentation was delivered by me and discussed about data products and how they can be designed using a specific approach called "Drivetrain approach", also including a number of application case studies (outside the agricultural sector). My presentation was heavily based on an excellent report titled "Big Data Now" (2012) by O' Reilly, which as an amateur in the field of Big Data found excellent for providing an introduction. Related information can also be found in the O'Reilly web site, in the form of an easy-to-read article.

Designing Data Products from Vassilis Protonotarios

Dr. Charalampos Thanopoulos (AK)

The last presentation of the first day was delivered by my colleague in Agro-Know, Dr. Charalampos Thanopoulos, who discussed the issue of big and open data in agriculture. In addition, he provided a number of cases where data problems in agriculture were addressed with the use of the Drivetrain aproach. His presentation included really interesting data coming from various sources, as well as some nice case-studies of Greek companies activated in the agricultural sector.

After a short lunch break, it was time for the Creativity Workshop (an interactive session) on the development of (big) data products: Using the cases of Apivita and Stevia Hellas (two Greek companies) as a basis, participants were divided in two groups led by Angeliki and Babis respectively and were asked to provide ideas on the development of added value data services for the two companies, focusing on their websites. The session consisted of three parts:

1. Identification of data types and formats which might be useful for each case;
2. Discussion of current issues or ideas for improvement, in the form additional services for the customers of the two companies;
3. Development of one idea per team (each group was divided in teams of 2-3 people), based on the ones already discussed. Design was depicted in A4 papers (initially) and flipchart sheets (at a later stage);
4. Presentation of each team's idea to the participants of the event.

Participants of the Intro Course

During the Creativity Workshop 

Overall, I found it to be a really interesting experience, especially taking into consideration that this was my first presentation on big data. I really enjoyed discussions with participants, who brought fresh ideas and different approaches to the event. It was also really nice to see my colleagues Andreas Drakos (facilitating the interactive session) and Elena Kokoliou (documenting the process and supporting the organization) during the course, as their help and contributions were really valuable. I would also like to highlight the participation of Anne Bruinsma from the Netherlands who made this long trip in order to participate and explore opportunities for affiliation and future collaboration.

ODS Webinar 1: "Green Learning Network (GLN)"

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.

Introduction to Data Science for Agriculture

Παρασκευή 29 Νοεμβρίου 2013, 10.00 – 17.00 @

Ινστιτούτο Πληροφορικής και Τηλεπικοινωνιών του Ε.Κ.Ε.Φ.Ε. Δημόκριτος

(Πατριάρχου Γρηγορίου & Νεαπόλεως, 153 10 Αγία Παρασκευή)

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 Athens Green Hackathon 2013 λαμβάνοντας μέρος την Παρασκευή 29 Νοεμβρίου 2013 στο Course: “Introduction to Data Science for Agriculture”, εμπλούτισε τις γνώσεις σου στην επιστήμη των δεδομένων (Data Science) σχετικά με την ανάλυση και την αξιοποίηση των ανοιχτών δεδομένων (Open Data) και σκέψου μια ιδέα που θα αναπτύξεις σε τεχνολογική εφαρμογή κατά τη διάρκεια του Athens Green Hackathon (14 & 15 Δεκεμβρίου @ CoLab Workspace)!

Το course διοργανώνεται από την εταιρεία καινοτόμων τεχνολογικών εφαρμογών Agro-Know Technologies σε συνεργασία με το Ινστιτούτο Πληροφορικής και Τηλεπικοινωνιών του Ε.Κ.Ε.Φ.Ε. ΔΗΜΟΚΡΙΤΟΣ στις 29 Νοεμβρίου 2013 από τις 10.00 έως τις 17.00 το απόγευμα και θα φιλοξενηθεί στην Αίθουσα Διαλέξεων του Ινστιτούτου Πληροφορικής και Τηλεπικοινωνιών στην Αγία Παρασκευή!

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 7^ο Πρόγραμμα Πλαίσιο της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης.

Η συμμετοχή στο course είναι 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

Για περισσότερες πληροφορίες, ακολούθησε το link: http://goo.gl/57RUco

Agenda

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”

About time management

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!

EdReNe 10th Conference

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)

Accidental meeting with the BioVeL team - Linked Data in real life

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!