Still preparing Grant Negotiations

For those who follow this tread, you may wonder what's going on here since updates are so sparse.

On 15. May we finished the first draft of the grant agreement preparation forms and the Annex-1 of the Description of Work (DoW) in NEF, and submitted this. We believed then that we looked forward to a few quiet days with Constitution Day in Norway, and some preparations for the meeting in Brussels. Little we knew about what Brussels had in the works for us.

Early the next day, 16. May, we received an email from the project officer, expressing his thanks for the draft we submitted on time in NEF. However, he had some concerns about who we planned to send to the negotiations. Basically, he wanted more people to show up, to cover all aspects of the proposal. That's fair, but we got this information late to be honest. Later the same day, we got another email detailing the agenda for the negotiations. What we discovered was that we (or the coordinator) are supposed to give a 20 - 30 minutes introductory presentation on the proposal. And there are comments in the text that make us believe that the content of this presentation will commit the consortium.

Basically, get to work: Get more people in on the negotiations, and start preparing material for the meeting. (And then do some hipp-hipp-hurra in between.)

Remember next time: The first day you are invited to grant negotiations, start working on a presentation that highlights the four or five most important objectives of the proposal and their expected impact. And be modest when doing so—there should not be promises beyond what's already stated in the proposal, because you will get trouble with your consortium if you do so. The presentation should also include what has been done in order to meet suggestions and comments pointed out in the ESR. If you are as lucky as us, with almost no comments in the ESR, that part should be easy. And get enough people to sign up for a trip to Brussels. It's much better have three extra persons drinking coffee and working out of a hotel in Brussels because they are not needed at the negotiations, than having the same people and three more somewhere else in Europe, unable to get to Brussels because schedules and flights were considered to late.

But remember to start this early. At the moment you are notified it is already too late.