SemaGROW 2nd Project meeting at Rome + LINQ2013 conference

IERU members Miguel-Angel Sicilia, Jaakko Lappalainen and the new member Alberto Nogales, attended the 2nd biannual meeting of this project in Rome. The host of this meeting was the Universitá di Roma Tor Vergata the first two days, and the rest was hosted by FAO at their headquarters in the downtown of Rome.

During the sessions, the partnership went deeper on design issues on the project and presented the status of several deliverables. The work on SemaGROW keeps on going!

At FAO took place the last 2 days the LINQ2013 conference, where IE member David Martín presented his recent research work

Also Miguel-Angel Sicilia gave a keynote speech… the future of the world seems to be decided here at FAO!

 

 

7th VOA3R Meeting & LINQ Conference

This whole week, several IE members (Miguel Angel, David Martin, Salvador, Jaako and Alberto) flew to Rome to attend the 7th VOA3R project meeting and the LINQ 2013 Conference taking place in the FAO premises in this beautiful city.

Panoramic view of one of the VOA3R meeting sessions

Another panorama of the meeting sessions

The meeting was specially focused on the portal update, demonstrating the improvements and new functionalities implemented during the last period, as well as in examining the progress of the content integration and population task.It is relevant to mention the VOA3R – Semagrow Stakeholder joint Meeting that was held during the second day of the meeting.

VOA3R – Semagrow Stakeholder joint Meeting during the second day of the meeting.

As for the LinQ conference, it was aimed at addressing Innovations and Quality in Lifelong Learning, Education and Training: potential points of access to this field include new learning methods and design, Technology-Enhanced Learning, quality standards and certification, human resources development, competences and skills, digital resources, learning materials, and online collaboration and communities. Several projects in which our team is involved were presented (e.g. Organic.Lingua and VOA3R) as well as several papers coauthored by members of the team.

 

Organic.Lingua Pilot & Usability trials in Birmingham

Organic.Lingua pilot trials have just started! This kind of events are a great opportunity to extract valuable information about the renewed Organic.Edunet portal from the usability point of view and we are doing our best to do so. That’s why IE researcher, David Martín-Moncunill was in Birmingham last week, to attend and drive the pilot trials organized by the Birmingham City University.

Arriving to Birmingham City University from the train station.

The event started with a welcome speech and introduction to the portal by Katharine Fuller, whom was hosting the event. Then all participants filled up a profile questionnaire. The information in these questionnaires was useful to select most suitable participants for each kind of trial; while David and Katherine were deciding, the participants enjoyed a really nice coffee (and English tea) break.

Katharine, introducing Organic.Lingua portal & project.

According to the questionnaires, participants were asked to join thinking aloud or interview sessions. David conducted the thinking aloud sessions and Katharine did the same with the interviews.

Screen capture: starting a thinking aloud session (you can see half of David face there!)

After all -usability and interview- sessions were finished 7 users were asked to participate in a focus group to collect more qualitative information about these 3 topics:

1)  General aspects of the portal.

2) Navigational Interface.

3) Understanding “Organic-Lingua” languages.

We collected lots of valuable information which will be really useful to guide the future development of the portal. Thanks to BCU for hosting!

 

Open Discovery Space meeting in Brussels

IE members Enayat Rajabi and Salvador Sanchez attended the ODS consortium meeting in Brussels last 20th and 21st of March. The meetings took place in the center of the city and were lead by the project coordinator partner INTRASOFT. The participation of our group was focused on work packages 7, 8 and 9 but we also participated in discussions related to other parts of the project.

Salvador and Enayat at “la Grand Place” of Brussels

The group presented the UAH part in the portal development, such as the search engine and the summary page, on Thursday during the joint cluster meeting (see picture below these lines), architectural issues related to the portal, and the Strategic Planning session in which we prepared our part of the overall WP7 plan for the next months.

ODS Portal presentation at the joint cluster meeting

 

Organic.Lingua 5th project meeting in Alcala

Wednesday to Friday this week the Organic.Lingua consortium representatives gathered in Alcala de Henares for the 5th project meeting. This is an important meeting as the decisions that we will take are essential to plan the forthcoming pilot tests in England and France, as well as all the preparations for the next review meeting.

IE members Miguel Angel, Giannis, David Baños, David Martin, Leonardo and Salvador attend the sessions as the Faculty of Law in the University of Alcala, in a building that was originally a Jesuit college built at the end of the seventeenth century. Below some pictures taken during these 3 fruitful days of  intensive work.

 

SOCIRES Final Meeting in Graz

During the last 2 days IE member Salvador Sanchez attended the final meeting of the Leonardo DaVinci TOI SOCIRES project.The meeting took place in Graz, and was hosted by ISCN Austria.

The project aim was to define a set of skills needed to analyze and define social influences and responsibilities of an organization, as well as skills needed to define procedures that would ensure the optimal ratio between social responsibilities and economic interests of the organization. In this meeting, as the final after 2 years of activities, the sessions held focused on the results of the different national training events in Spain, Slovenia and Greece, on the dissemination results and finally on the final report that will be submitted at the beginning of the next year to the Leonardo Agency.

On the social side, even if Graz is listed as a UNESCO Human Heritage centre due to the “harmonious blend of the architectural styles and artistic movements that have succeeded each other from the Middle Ages until the 18th century”, the rainy weather and the packed working sessions did not leave much time for walking around and visit. The most remarkable event was the joint dinner at a typical Styrian restaurant, certainly a must for all visiting this beautiful region in the south east of Austria.

 

6th VOA3R project meeting in Limassol

Last week, from 15^th to 18^th October, we were attending the 6^th VOA3R project meeting in Limassol (Cyprus). University of Alcalá is the project coordinator as well as the WP4 “Platform design and integration” leader.

Group photo. 6th VOA3R Consortium Meeting in Limassol (Cyprus)

Miguel and David presented the last changes in VOA3R’s platform according to pilot trials and usability testing information and make and in depth review of project status to put everything on to the rails for the final project review.

A nice view of Limassol Mediterranean Beach Hotel

It was a very fruitful meeting closed with an open access workshop which took place during Thursday 18^th . We want to thank George Adamides from Agricultural Research Institute of Cyprus for his hospitality and the fantastic organization of the meeting, and all the consortium partners for the great work they are doing.

 

agINFRA 3rd Project Meeting @ Belgrade

IERU members Miguel-Angel Sicilia and Jaakko Lappalainen attended the 3rd biannual meeting of this project in Belgrade, Serbia, on days 1st to 5th of october, 2012. The host of this meeting was the Institute of Physics Belgrade, a technical partner of the project.

Before the meeting itself, Jaakko attended a course on porting applications to the grid, just two days before the actual meeting started. IPB member Dusan Vudragovic lectured on how to port applications to a parallelized infrastructure while Riccardo Bruno from INFN, explained the same using the Italian infrastructure. Akos Balasko and Robert Lovas from SZTAKI did the same using the Hungarian grid.

When Miguel-Angel arrived, the meeting started. During the sessions, the partnership went deeper on design issues on the project and presented the status of several deliverables.

 

Open Discovery Space first coordination and cluster meeting in Cyprus

During the last 2 days, selected members of the Open Discovery Space consortium met in Paphos, a coastal city in the southwest of Cyprus. The objectives of the meeting were to present the progress of the work in the different clusters so far as well as to ensure that partner responsibilities, activities and tasks outputs are aligned.

Miguel Angel during one of the sessions for cluster II discussions

Several IE members participated in cluster II meetings, showed the progress of the tasks we have been involved in and agreed with the rest on a detailed plan for the second half of the first period of the project.

Juanma Dodero from University of Cadiz and IE members Miguel Angel and Salvador pose in Tomb 4.

While in Paphos, and during the sessions, we met other spaniards that are also part of the consortium, such as Juanma Dodero from University of Cadiz and Luis Anido from University of Vigo. Together, we did some social activities, the most remarkable being the visit to the Tomb of the Kings, an impressive burial site formed by ancient tombs carved in the stone. This Unesco World Heritage site is very close to the hotel where we stayed -something like 1 kilometer away- so we felt we had to visit it before taking our afternoon flight back to Spain.

 

Organic.Lingua 4th project meeting in Paris

This week, members of the OrganicLingua consortium meet in Paris to attend the different working sessions. We are meeting in the INRA facilities in the 7th arrondissement, a nice neighbourhood of the city, very quiet and located very close to the Eiffel tower.

Tonight we had the social event in a nice restaurant called Leo le Lion (?). It was a nice opportunity to relax after an exhausting 9 hours working session (from 9:30 to 19:00 almost non-stop, only 1 hour lunch break). Below, a picture of consortium members attending the social dinner.

IE members Leonardo, Giannis and Salvador are these days in the city of light planning the soon to come pilot trials, working on the ontology evolution as well as in the portal reengineering and over all, coordinating all project tasks from a management perspective.