6th Organic.Lingua project meeting in Graz

From Tuesday to Thursday last week, several members working for the IERU team in the project -namely Vassilis, David Martin and Salvador- were in Graz, Austria, for the 6th Organic.Lingua project meeting. We were missing Giannis, who participated from home as he was only 3 days to have a baby (he didn’t know by then that his daughter would be born this monday, congratulations!). So, the meeting took place in the Amedia hotel and was hosted by our Knowledge Center – Graz colleagues, which really did a fantastic job with the organization and recommendations for social activities.

During this meeting we revisited the vision and current status of the project using a scenario where different personas showed their perspective of the Organic.Edunet portal and their contribution to the project. It was a very important meeting as it the project has entered in the last 6 months before its end so the technological achievements are evident and tangible now, but the sustainability plan and the best practices document that will gather all the recommendations from our 3 years effort are right now being discussed and polished as the most important pending issues at this stage. The Ontology Evolution Services, aimed at generating suggestions for the evolution of the ontology based on the use of User Generated Content, the design and planning of the open pilots and the final touches to the Language Technology Framework were other hot topics in the discussions that we had. Below these lines, some snapshots taken during these intense 3 days (including some social activities by the way!).

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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.

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.

Organic.Lingua 3rd Project Meeting

Organic.Lingua partners gathered in the beautiful medieval city of Trento to have the third Organic.Lingua project meeting. The sessions took place in the premises of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), specifically in their research center located in the suburban hills of Povo, few minutes from the Trento’s city center, between the 21st and 22nd of March 2012.

IE members Salvador, Leonardo and Miguel Angel joined the rest of the team, including our greek friend and coordinator assistant Giannis Stoitsis. It was an important meeting in which the final architecture was agreed, the requirements document was validated, the project vision was revised, the validation plan was presented and the machine translation technologies that will be integrated in the portal were tested and presented in depth. As this was the last opportunity to have face to face discussions before the first review of the project (next May in Luxembourg), we took the opportunity to carefully plan and prepare that crucial event in such a way that we can face it with confidence and see the reviewers raise a nice green flag afterwards.

Consortium partners outside FBK's premises at Trento, Italy (Katharine Fuller missing, she was taking the pic)

Final Organic.Balkanet meeting and European workshop in Bucharest

This week the Organic.Balkanet project officially comes to an end. The final meeting is taking place in the University of Agronomical and Veterinary Sciences of Bucharest, Romania, where representatives of all project partners are joining forces to present the results of all work packages and establish the final tasks to achieve before the final report.

Panorama of our last joint dinner... we are all going to miss these good moments :')

As part of the activities, a European workshop called “Training challenges for Agricultural Professionals: the Organic.Balkanet experience” has been organized to disseminate project results and receive feedback from stakeholders and policy makers.

Panorama of the main conference room - European workshop

IE members Salvador Sanchez and Miguel Refusta are in Bucharest these days to present the results of work package 3 which was lead by our group, and also to contribute to the workshop with several presentations about the work of the group in e-courses administration, sustainability and other related efforts such as the VOA3R project.

4th VOA3R project meeting in Izmir, Turkey

Monday to Wednesday this week the VOA3R project consortium representatives gathered together in Izmir for the project 4th plenary meeting. This fourth VOA3R Project Meeting, hosted by Yasar University, formally discussed the next steps to be taken and planned for the project particularly surrounding systems integration, as well as metadata profile definition.

IE members Miguel Angel and Salvador attended the sessions as the University of Alcala is the coordinator partner. Below some pictures taken during these 3 fruitful days of  intensive work.

Different moments of the meeting

Autumn School in Mesta

Salvador just outside the city fortress

Last week, IE member Salvador Sanchez-Alonso was in Chios island attending to the Joint School on IT-Enhanced Organic & Sustainable Education for Teachers. This training course is approved by the European Commission and supported by four European projects: CerOrganic, Organic.Mednet, Organic.Balkanet and ISLE. The training was addressed to all teachers, trainers and professionals interested in the field of Environmental & Ecological Education, aiming to provide a better understanding of the current advances related to Organic Farming, Sustainable Education, Blended Learning and Modern ICT tools. It was collocated with the Green Ideas workshop, an event  aimed at bringing together people and institutions that are interested into agricultural, biodiversity and rural education, so that collaboration opportunities may be explored and exploited.

IE role in the Joint school was twofold: to promote and disseminate Organic.Balkanet results to the attendees of the courses on one hand, and to teach on metadata annotation practices to agricultural experts on the other.

Both events (Green ideas and Joint school) took place in the medieval village of Mesta, heart of the “masticohoria” or mastic villages, a region of the island renowned for their cultivation of mastic trees. This village is a fortress-like complex of narrow streets, a laberinth of houses and arches. Mesta is unique -if we compare it to other medieval villages in the island- because it is the most well-preserved.

A panorama of Mesta from a nearby olive tree field

Organic.Mednet final meeting in Alcala

Last two days the whole consortium of the Organic.Mednet project gathered in Alcala for the final meeting of this project. During the last 2 years, we have developed a level 3 curriculum about organic agriculture and agroecology for vocational students, identified the essential competencies that agricultural advisors, inspectors and experts need to provide to farmers, a methodology of work through the use of innovative training techniques and a set of tools that will facilitate access, usage and exploitation of digital educational content related to Organic Agriculture and Agroecology.

Organic.Mednet partners pose in the patio of the Colegio de Malaga, site of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Alcala

Although we still don’t have the final decission of the Spanish Leonardo National Agency on the results of our project, we are resonably confident about the success we achieved and the results that were produced during these 2 exciting years of fruitful collaboration with this amazing group of people. The IE research unit group wants to thank everybody who participated in our preoject, not only to the people directly involved in the work packages but also to those attending and heling us out during our training events in Turkey, Greece and Spain.

4th Organic.Mednet project meeting in Switzerland

Last 21st & 22nd of June, silent partnet Prodague hosted in Switzerland the 4th Organic.Mednet project meeting. Representatives of our partners from Spain, Greece, Nederlands, Switzerland and Turkey discussed in Geneva, Cully and Lausanne and planned the activities for the last part of this project that will end next 30th September. Besides, representatives of several institutions involved in organic farming in the Romandy area, as well as the coordinator of the brand new Swiss National Agency for European Educational Programmes were involved and present in the discussions in a workshop collocated with the project meeting.

Partner representatives pose in Cully, next to the Leman lake

Organic.Balkanet project meeting in Maribor

These 2 days, representatives of the partner institutions in the Organic.Balkanet Leonardo da Vinci  Transfer of Innovation project are in Maribor, Slovenia. This fairly unknown but beautiful country is hosting this important 4th meeting where we will take the decissions that will guide the final 6 months of our project. IE member Salvador Sanchez is attending the sessions which are taking place in the Rectorate building of the University of Maribor.

Representatives of several partner institutions pose in front of the Rectorate building of the University of Maribor