RITE is a done deal - so let's move on

Finally, last week we got the grant agreement from Brussels that we have been negotiating for a while, and the RITE project is finally a reality. We are of course looking forward to finally get the project started!

Although I will be somewhat involved in the project for a while, it also to some extent mean that my role as an advisor in the proposal phase is coming to an end. So what should I do then? Of course get some new proposals going!

Right now I am at the ICT Proposers' day in Warsaw, in order to figure out what the scientific officers behind the new ICT work programme in fp7 really are asking for. We will be looking into possibilities in objective 1.2, 1.4, 8.1 and possibly in 5.2 and 8.2. Related to objective 8.1 we got some good feedback which tells me that the idea Simula-people are working on will fit very well. In objective 1.4, though, the focus of a proposal should probably be more Internet of Things than Smart Cities, and I feel that the idea I that has been presented to me back home is visa versa—so some work may be needed on that idea. For the other fields our ideas are still in early state, so not so easy to comment on them.

Anyway, if someone who reads this are looking for a very excellent research institution as partner in the mentioned fields,  please do not hesitate to get in touch!

More Grant Negotiations, and then some

As mentioned earlier, this project-thing is now walk in the park. But the park is not a small one. And the paths to follow are long on winding. And the descriptions are not always accurate. So, the DoW go back and forth, again and again. And we mess things up on our end from time to time to. Like forgetting to submit changes in subversion, and ending up submitting a version with some important changes missing.

Be structured. Be calm. Be happy. always. And tweak again and again, based on the input you will get from Brussels. And in the end, you end up with a version that all parts agree on.

I think we may have reached that step today. So, maybe was it the final version we submitted in NEF just an hour ago.

The only thing that remains then is the consortium agreement.  The advise regarding discussions on CA is relax. Take it easy, and let the partners play it out - moderate, and consolidate, and in the end we have something that everyone agree on, but no one are exactly happy about.

And soon it is summer. With so many other things to learn!

RITE and grant negotiations

It's been a very busy week, so I never got around to write down impressions after the meeting in Brussels. I just want to mention that it went smoother than any of us imagined. Basically, the project officer had no critical remarks about the DoW, and only minor requests for changes in the work plan.

We are now busy rounding things off, entering a few more milestones and adapting some deliverables, such that the plan works better for annual review of the project. We also try to sort out some nasty typos so we don't need to read them over and over again when we plan the reviews. And it is super-urgent to get the consortium agreement nailed, so I am working on that.

But - the main conclusion is - this is now walk in the park!

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.

Grant Negotiation preparations

As I took it on me to chronicle the Grant Negotiation process for a EC project, I have to keep writing. A week has passed by already since my previous post, and it's again Friday. What was accomplished during the last week, again?

First, we have planned and prepared the practicalities for travel to Brussels. The Coordinator of the project will of course travel together with me, and our finance manager will also join us. We try to put together a group of people that make us looking good (or at least credible), and then it is important to bring a few people who will be able to talk about important things (for the commission) in a reasonable way. I think we have a good group.

Regarding NEF, almost all partners have now confirmed their information on the portal, and I have entered all the work package descriptions and resource estimates into the form. It was easy, but the system was terribly slow. It is also sad to see all the nice formatting done in the proposal just disappear in the web forms, the typography possibilities in the forms are non-existent. It's not even possible to make something bold or emphasised, as far as I could tell. At least, the system was reliable. The most important thing was that it's not possible to add figures in the WP descriptions, and we had some in the proposal. Something to remember for the future, will save some rewriting.

One final thing regarding the NEF. The Deliverables and Milestones need some more descriptive text than we included in the proposal. For now we will just make it very simple in the draft, because we do not want to do more work than absolutely required on this. However, we should also try to make the project officer happy—I still work on finding the right balance between the two.

The Annex 1 of DoW was straight forward to create from the proposal. I have done a few minor tweaks to the LaTeX template, mostly concerning layout of Section headers and design of table of contents, to make it look as much as possible like the Word template provided by EC. Just simple stuff so far. The rest of the work on the annex 1 has been commenting out some sections that are not needed any more, and changing some headers to start-versions to avoid them showing up in the table of contents.

We have discovered that the paragraph on sub-contracting that we intended to write in the proposal, related to production of an animated video that will explain the important parts (and results) of the project, just was gone missing from the proposal. At one point we just commented out the section in the LaTeX sources, and forgot to put them back in. Not strange that it was pointed out in the ESR that sub-contracting must be explained. So this is another thing we need to get into Annex 1. The plan is to draft something by Monday.

Finally, we have started discussions about the Consortium Agreement this week. As expected, there are different points of view on this, and there has been some activity on the mailing list. By an advise from one of the partners, we have proposed to carry out the discussions about CA openly among administrators and legal people on a separate mailing list. The mailing list has been created, and is will be interesting to see how the discussions unfold.

Next steps: get all the administrators together in a telco to discuss the CA. However, I'm not sure we can squeeze that in before we go to Brussels. I will put up a doodle at least. Finalise the Annex 1 draft, and submit for review by P.O. on 15. May.

Grant Negotiations—Make sure everybody is on the NEF

I am still reading up on the documents, and boy are there a lot of information to dwell on. But I understand that I can't just read, I have to do some actions as well. Today I have basically done three things (in addition to more reading):

• I had a meeting with the NCP for Legal and Financial issues. The national research council has established a system with a lot of different contact persons for the various topics. I have used their competence already in the proposal phase, but now I got directly in touch with the one that know more about the grant negotiations, consortium agreements, handling of IPR and so forth. We talked through the major parts of the negotiations, and discussed some of the main things. For instance, he advised us on who will need to go to Brussels. His advice was that the coordinator goes with supporting personnel from the host institution; most of the technical and formal parts of the negotiations takes place in NEF anyway. He also commented on issues like sub-contracting, the number of milestones and deliverables (to keep the number low if possible), as well as counting the project officer as a best friend, we're in to this together. Very useful meeting.
• I communicated with the consortium, to make sure that all of them can access NEF. As a start I asked them to fill in information about authorised persons of their institution, just to get them to know the system and make sure that they have proper access.
• I have start looking at the templates for the annex 1 - the new version of Description of Work that we need to transform the proposal to. Some sections can be just copied over, some sections should be edited, and some new stuff must be added. And we need to address the concerns raised in the evaluation of the project. It seems like the template is fairly similar to the proposal when it comes to layout and typography, so it should be straight forward to use the same LaTeX template, I think. Which should make it very simple to move over the sections that doesn't need to be changed. 

All of this was useful, most of it takes a lot of time. And tomorrow I have to keep pushing forward. One of the things I need to take care of tomorrow is travel arrangements to Brussels.  And of course keep working on the DoW.

Grant Negotiations—first steps

The first you have to do is to make sure that the coordinator (or at least his email) has an account on the Participant Portal. The kind of account needed is an External European Commission Authentication Service (ECAS) account. If the coordinator doesn't have one already, he will receive an email inviting him to create an account. Acting as an advisor (and as and old sys.admin) in this setting, I help the coordinator out, create the credentials for him and pass on the information.

As LEAR it is useful to be associated with all projects in the organisation, also during the negotiations. But EU leave this to the organisations to decide whether this is necessary. For instance, larger RTOs participating in EU projects in the hundreds will probably need to organise this differently. So, the LEAR is not automatically added with a role in the project, even for the host institution. The first thing I do when the coordinator log in (or I log in on their behalf) is therefore to add my self with the Coordinator Contact role in the project.

Now we are all set, and ready to start the real work. One of the first things to check is whether all the participants in the project have their legal status validated. In particular, if someone new participated (without a PIC or self-registered for a PIC during the submission), there will be important things to sort out. More on this and other issues in the next post.

Grant Negotiations

I planned to write a lot about the experiences related to EU project proposal coordination. But I haven't got enough time to figure out what to write yet. However, the results are now in. The proposal I coordinated my self was not good enough, and will not be funded. As I to some extent expected, we unfortunately got low scores on Impact, and was below threshold overall. So, no TEL project for me right now. But the theme will be called again soon, and I will look into the possibilities.

Simula participated in other proposals also, as I have mentioned before. And one of the other proposals we coordinated, and which I worked quite a bit on, was actually successful in terms of evaluation score. The coordinator received today an invitation to Grant Negotiations in Brussels, which will take place already on 22 May. We have never done this before, so I just have to dive in and learn. Hopefully, it shouldn't be to hard, and I know a lot of people to ask about it. So, I believe that in the end we will be just happy about it.

First thing: Read all about it in the Negotiations Guidance Notes at the FP7 Docs.

Next, learn about NEF and what else at the negotiation page.

Let's see if I can document the progress this time.

It is a complex task

As promised in the previous post, I want to review the human relation and proposal management side of coordinating a FP7 proposal. That is a daunting task. Several things appeared to be obvious while I was in the midst of the process. Afterwards and in retrospect, however, it is clear that my used-to-be clear thoughts was muffled with the energy of the process itself. Too many details involved.

Another factor is time available to do the review. Unfortunately, not nearly enough really. That's why you will not get the full review even today. Since the last time I wrote I have been involved in submitting another proposal; for ERC advanced grant this time; so I have gather some more information on the differences. And I am writing on the coordination part offline. So there will be something, only later.

Now, is there anything I can say already? Probably.

My first advice as a coordinator to my fellow coordinators is: Search out as early as possible which parts of the proposal the consortium is reluctant to write. Then, start working on those. Find out who should write it, discuss openly that it will be hard to put together. And make sure that something happen. Be prepared to spend considerable amounts of time on those parts yourself.  One particular thing to watch out for in a STREP proposal will be the Impact section. It's always the Impact section, right? Maybe not always, but certainly it's a recurring topic. Make sure that you start early on that one. And keep refining. Get input from everyone.

My second advice is that you should not let others drag you out of your comfort zone. Maybe you have a plan, but through discussions you as a group end up with something else. If you're not happy with that, don't just let it slip through. Stay on top of it, demand further discussion — either just with yourself, with a few others, or with everyone. It's your thing after all, so you are the one who have to live with the decision. This can be about simple things. Maybe you feel that a face-to-face meeting should happen early, while others demand (for good reason) that some things must be figured out first. Be sure that you are happy with decision, according to the timetable you have defined. And if you are not, don't stick to the plan. It's ok to make new plans. At least if it's still somewhat early. Be demanding within the limits made possible by the role you have been given.

My third advice is simple. Define your timetable. Then multiply it with a factor of, say, 1.5, for each partner you have not worked together with before. There will be events you don't know about today, and eventually those event will make you submit a proposal not as good as you hoped for. It's just a reality. It has nothing to do with whom you work with, besides the fact that since you have a different perspective and background, there will be events you have not thought about which will delay you.

This will be all for today. I plan to continue "later."

Puhh - one major step closer to EC-funding

— or should I rather say; the first step closer to EC-funding, since the first major step is to actually submit something. Any at Simula we submitted three proposals as coordinating partner for the FP7-ICT-2011-8 call, with deadline 17.01.2012, at 17:00; two within networks and one within technology enhanced learning. Let's keep fingers crossed! In addition, Simula participated in four more proposals, so we have actually seven possibilities for funding. That is actually seven steps close to EC-funding then.

The last proposal went in 16:45; Actually, we tried to squeeze in yet a later version since we discovered some issues with the document, but at that time the proposal system experienced close to DOS due to researchers all over Europe with the same idea as us. So, the second-best version is the one that evaluators will see. Not that it matters a lot, but of course I would have liked to get the better version in. This was the one I coordinated myself, in technology enhanced learning. I also helped the other guys a bit,  but those proposals where "finished" a bit earlier, so the better versions will be presented for evaluators.

As this was the first time I coordinated such a STREP proposal, I learned quite a lot. The most important thing I learned by coordinating was that you should never coordinate unless you also have a close colleague interested in the proposal and taking ownership of some of the work. In particular during the last 4–5 days I used so much time on communication (telco's, phone calls, IM-chat, email) that I got too little time to actually write. During these days it would have been a lot better, and the proposal could have improved a lot, if I have had someone "at the end of the table" taking care of all that came out of my discussions. Of course, I had several other people working on the proposal together with me, and a few of them long hours just as me. However, it's never the same as being together in one room. And of course, only a Simula-employee can fill Simula's role in the proposal. 

I learned several other things too. Some of the things I learned will probably never be posted online. But most of the things I learned are general and applicable to any project, so I will try to make a write up such that others can draw on the experiences. I will however try to not just repeat what others have said, so I will think through it before I write. 

On the practical, technical side, I ended up using the following stack of tools:

• For writing: The document was set in LaTeX, so I had to pull out the text-editor stuff;
1. Textmate: become the work horse on this project - because it is easy to keep several files open in separate tabs, and jump back and forth. Decent support for LaTeX macros and search/replace (but not perfect).
2. VIM: as always, because it's my favourite - in particular when working in a single file. I can get whatever LaTeX support I want because I know how to write macros. And vi is excellent when it comes to regexp work.
3. Texpad: a quite new TeX-editor for OS X, available in the App Store. Compiles and view pdf in the tool, can handle several files (and still view them as a single file), decent navigation support. I ended up using this most in the beginning when the outline of the project was created. Later on, when we where editing collaboratively all over Europe I couldn't trust the tool. Maybe I was wrong, but I wasn't sure it updated dynamically when someone else updated a file, and I was afraid of overwriting other people. 
4. Some of my co-writers was on Windows-systems and not familiar with LaTeX. For the future, I will need to find a nice editor that's freely available, or at a low cost; which will handle file encoding correct (had some issues with strange characters in some files), and which also feel familiar for someone coming from a Word-world. Ideally, this should be an editor where they also can drop images in, and have the \includegraphics statements generated for them, etc. Not sure what to use, but maybe texpad will be available for Windows in the future?
• Collaborative editing: We used a Dropbox-folder to synchronise files between all participants. In order to not have everyone running the latex commands all the time in the same dropbox-folder, I set up a bash-script that every other minute run latex on the files, using "latexmk -f -pdf" in order to not choke on errors, and also create a pdf. This was a really nice balance, and somethings most people seems to like. Die-hard *nix'ers would have prefered svn or git or some other collaborative version-control, while others maybe would have just went with sending files by email as default. I think Dropbox with a script at one end doing the LaTeX-compile is a nice balance that is simple to relate to, and easy for everyone to understand. 
• Creating Gantt-chart is a big deal for a EU-proposal, because you need to understand the timeline of your project, and define Milestones and so on. What I realise was that it is really hard to find a program that works well. My first choice was OmniPlan, because it is supposed to be good. It probably is, but only when you have specific people you want to plan the project for, on a by-hour basis. What I needed was to plan related to unspecified person-months, in such a way that 12 months are 1 year, and not some 1500 work-hours or something. OmniPlan turned out to be a mess really. Through the App Store I found SG Project Pro, which did almost all I wanted. The only stupid thing with that tool is that it is very hard to get an image (pdf) output that can be used as graphics in a proposal. I ended up using Print (after defining a custom - big - paper size in order to fit the chart on one page), and then open pdf in Preview, and saving pdf from there. Unfortunately, it was not possible to use undefined project-start and just Month or Quarter markers in the chart, so I had to open the pdf in Illustrator to fix this. It worked, but far from project. Ideally, the Gantt should have been coupled to a database representation of the project, where also budget could have been generated from - I will probably need to make something my self in order to get it right...
• PERT chart is something else needed for a proposal. This was new to me, but I saw that at least Microsoft project (maybe also OmniPlan?) can generate those. Anyway, I just made them on the work-package level, and used Keynote/Powerpoint to do it. Again, this works, but the better option will be to keep all the data in a database, and generate a skeleton or even a nice finished version from the database - which will be in agreement with the Gantt and the Budget. If I create this tool in the future, the tool should have an option of creating PERT on the task or work-package level.
• Budget: That was Excel, unfortunately. The good thing was that I got a nice template from Pera, but totally decoupled from the Gantt and PERT charts. All this should come from one database... Anyway, Excel kind of works and is easy to use for everyone. Just pay attention to formulas if you extend with more rows and/or columns!
• If I create this database thing, I will also add auto-generation of latex code for the important and mandatory tables for work packages, effort, deliverables, milestones, and work package descriptions. Now, I had to sync everything manually by hand - which is not fun. That time could have been better spent on writing important text.
• As mentioned already, the document was set with latex - pdflatex to be exact, with Sorbonne font in 11pt, and with some occasional Verlag. It just look much better that way.
• Finally, some work on citations is required should I do this again (which I probably will). Handling bibtex for those not familiar with it is not easy. I had a look at Mendeley with an idea of collaboratively using Mendeley to collect all references, and then export bibtex from there. But when I searched for some of the things we needed to cite, and found that they where not present in Mendeley, so we would have needed to add them manually, I skipped that idea. However, in the document we submitted there was a lot of citations marked ? because there were some errors in the bib-file. So, this is an area where work is needed. 

Did I used other tools as well? Probably - at least for communication. And notetaking (Evernote), and todo's (Todo by Appigo). In particular the last one should be handled with a collaborative tool the next time (Symphonical.com come to my mind, I think it will be excellent for such a process). Enough about the technical stuff.  On the human relation side, maybe the consortium should have meet twice in the proposal phase, not just once as we did. But this, and other things, will be stuff for a later post.

Until then; take care!

Refleksjon ved ukens ende og start

Ved kontoret for ekstern finansiering får man være beredt på uventede svinger. Er man ikke det, er man ikke på rett sted. De ventede svingene, eller ihvertfall ønskede, skal man også være klar for. Og denne uken bød på begge deler.

Da status ble gjort opp for noen uker siden noterte jeg at Simula er opptatt med ikke mindre enn 9 forskjellige søknader til kall 8 i ICT programmet i fp7. Av disse skulle vi koordinere fem selv, mens vi skulle være med på ytterligere fire til. Nå ser tallene annerledes ut. Først fant det ene konsortiumet ut at søknaden de hadde lyst til å sende inn ikke passer så godt med kaller allikevel. Dermed trakk de inn årene foreløpig. Prosjektet er imidlertid godt, og gruppen har lyst til å gjennomføre, så vi får ha øynene åpne for andre penger. Men så kom det en uventet sving - enda et prosjekt valgte å legge på røret. Her har gruppen kjørt seg opp i et litt kjedelig hjørne; ideen er god, men andre anvendelser må til for å passe med kallet. Nye partnere kommer inn for å få passende anvendelser, men i praksis ender man opp med bare to land. Det er med folk fra et land til, men disse er knyttet til den opprinnelige anvendelse som ikke passer så godt med kallet. Vi forsøker noen dager, via forskjellige kanaler å finne en parter som kan bli en nødvendig bro mellom områdene, men lykkes ikke helt med det. Koordinator tar da den helt riktige og voksne besluttningen det er å si at nok er nok. Uventet, og kjedelig, men sånt må man være klar for. Timene anvendt til prosjektet går på den nyttige lærekontoen.

En annen uventet sving i planene var at noe en avdelingsleder trodde var ett prosjekt viste seg å være to! Og jeg var bare kjent med det ene prosjektet. Dermed ble det noen flere møter, deltagelse på enda en mail-liste, og mer kommunikasjon å forholde seg til. Dette prosjektet er vi heldigvis bare med på, så det krever ikke alt for mye oppmerksomhet fra meg. I tillegg adresseres et av FET områdene, som er spennende (og nytt for meg). Mer å lære, så det er bare å holde seg fast mens opplæringstoget svinser seg frem. Og prøve å komme med gode råd på veien.

Enda et prosjekt vi bare skulle være med på ble satt en stopper for av undertegnede litt tidligere, fordi forskerne som skulle være med virket litt lunkene. Og så er det et prosjekt vi ikke har hørt noe mere fra, så vi tror kanskje det også et droppet (enda en gjenninnsending). Så da står vi igjen med tre prosjektet vi skal koordinere, og deltakelse i fire (eller kanskje fem avhengig av gjenninnsendingen i forrige setning). Ikke helt som jeg trodde for litt siden altså, men allikevel helt naturlig. Det blir spennende å se hva status er når vi kommer til 17 januar.

På den hyggelige siden fikk vi fra en annen finansieringskilde beskjed om at to prosjekter vil få tilsammen omtrent 25mill over de neste fire årene. (Kilde og prosjekter unevnt foreløpig siden informasjonen ikke er helt offentlig enda). Veldig gøy. Og jeg måtte plutselig forestå en blomstersermoni. Du så lite trent jeg er på den slags. Selv med nedskrevet tale gikk det mye dårligere enn jeg kunne ønske meg. Men det viktige var å sette fokus på de som lykkes med å skaffe penger - og det fikk vi gjort.

Uka som kommer blir igjen spennende og krevende. Først en tur til Brussel for å snakke med Project Officer innenfor Future Networks. Jeg reiser sammen med koordinator for den ene prosjektsøknaden vi koordinerer. Det blir første gang jeg besøker hovedstedet for det jeg driver med for tiden, det er litt spennende i seg selv. Jeg har en mistanke om at det ikke blir min siste tur dit.

Fra tirsdag til torsdag skal jeg være i Graz, for ny workshop sammen med Pera for å jobbe ut en god ide for et prosjekt innenfor læring og teknologi. Dette er en søknad jeg selv koordinerer så det blir veldig spennende. Faktisk vet jeg enda ikke helt hvem som dukker opp der, noe som sier meg at kommunikasjon er utfordrende. Jeg trenger å lære mer om det, og finne gode rutiner for å sikre at informasjon flyter godt når man er langt fra hverandre. Det er noe å tenke på gjennom uken.

News from the proposal work?

Not really, there isn't much to report besides the fact that creating good proposals are hard work for everyone involved. Just in case you wondered about that...

We are currently working on four proposals for the fp7 ICT call, targeting challenge 1, 4, and 8. I am deeply involved in one of them and quite involved in the other three. Enough to do!

Get the overview, the details, and the stuff in between right, and you have a good proposal!

Nytt fra søknadsfronten

I løpet av siste døgn har jeg vært involvert i å sende to søknader fra Simula - en søknad om rammebevilgning for prosjektetableringsstøtte og en søknad om ERC Starting grant for en av våre dyktige forskere. Forskningsrådet har opprettet PES ordningen for å stimulere på økt satsning mot EU, og siden det er nettopp det vi ønsker å gjøre i 2012 passer det godt for oss å søke. Det vil være en flott hjelp i arbeidet om vi får innvilget en rammebevilgning.

ERC Starting grant er av det mer prestisjefulle en forsker kan oppnå. Det er tøff konkurranse om bevilgningene, både fordi det er mange som søker og fordi de aller fleste som søker er svært dyktige forskere. Søknaden vi har sendt inn ble også sendt inn for to år siden, og forskeren nådde nesten helt opp. Vurderingen fra EU var så god at det ble bevilget en delvis finansiering av prosjektet fra NFR. I år er søknaden gjort enda bedre, og forskeren har fortsatt å levere gode resultater i perioden siden sist — så vi håper han når helt opp denne gangen.

For meg personlig har det vært nyttig å være i begge prosessene. Jeg har funnet ut at EU har et godt system for elektroniske søknader (EPSS), og både forskningsrådets og EUs system fungerer etter hensikten. Nå skal det jobbes med nye prosjekter mens vi venter på resultatene for disse søknadene!

Figuring out EU funding

It's a bit overwhelming trying to figure out the various funding schemes in the EU system. I'm not really surprised of course as I know there are many different programmes and variations in level of funding, amounts, cost models, etc. between them. Nevertheless the size of the documents alone that you need to read in order to figure things out, can easily overwhelm you.

But I'm not taking lightly on the task of course. I start in one end, and works from there. And as the deadline for the call in ERC starting grant in the domain of Physical Sciences & Engineering is already 12. October, that's where I gonna start. One positive thing to say about the EC funding is that information is easily available. For instance, all the information regarding the ERC call is available directly from the call page. I can just start with the Work programme and the Guide for Applicants, and work from there. So far I have figured out that in the ERC scheme, R&D is funded with 100% of all eligible costs, and a 20% of that is added to cover all indirect costs. I have also figured out that an ERC grant usually covers all eligible costs of a project, so there isn't a need for own contribution from the host institution or some third party. Also, if there are host institution or third party funding for an ERC project, the ERC part should still be major.

Two years ago, a researcher in our lab applied for an ERC starting grant. He got very good score, and was very close to actually receive funding. He will therefore resubmit the proposal in a revised and updated form, and I will do my best to help out. This will probably consume a considerable share of my next week. But I will also travel to a Call 8 Information day in Luxembourg for the objective 8.1; Technology enhanced learning. Together with guys from the CSE programme at the University of Oslo we would like to write a proposal that targets this objective, and I need to be around to meet others interested who may be part of a consortium. Funding-wise this is in the Cooporation programme, with an other set of rules. I will leave that to a later post.

New Office, new title, new job

Starting 01.09.2011 I have a new job. Still at Simula Research Laboratory, but with a new office, new title and new tasks. I will now work with external research funding. After 10 years with IT and Administration, and personnel responsibility for various groups I will now have a more focused responsibility working mainly with the research leaders at Simula, and, at least for now, no group of personnel to manage.

External research funding constitute a significant amount of funding for Simula, and complements basic allowance from the state as well as income related to innovation and commercial activities in subsidiaries. Up until now, the most important funding source has been the Research Council of Norway. An important part of my work will be to increase funding through the european framework programs.
 
I am considering breathing new life into this blog, writing about relevant and public parts from my new position.

Office 325

This is the place to be. And totally cryptic—but it serves its purpose for now. Please comment if you like.

Kveldens eksperiment

Hvilke av husets oster kan spises sammen med en Valdamor Rias Baixas 2008. Det er spørsmålet jeg stiller meg, og først ut er en godt moden Crémier de Chaumes. Den veldig myk, salt, lett bitter men lang fløyelsmyk finish. Funker den sammen med albariño'en? Tja, i grunn ikke noen favorittmatch her. Det blir mest det bitre i osten som trer frem mot vinen, men vinens kommer frem. Men balansen er dårlig.

Ok, la oss forsøke noe enklere. Jeg har en gammel moden gulost fra den Blinde ku. Jeg husker ikke i farten hva den heter, men den var lagret 3år når jeg kjøpte den. I konsistens likner den litt på f.eks manchego eller en reggiano parrmigiano. Den er litt salt, men med en karakteristisk duft og smak (som jeg sliter litt med å finne en god assosiasjon for akkurat nå). Perfekt med vinen, de blander seg sammen og får frem det beste i hverandre. Godt.

Neste mann (ost er hannkjønnet i kveld) er en gammel gruyere jeg hadde liggende. Jeg kjøpte denne på Ultra i sommer, og måtte skrape av litt sånt som ikke ser så godt ut. Men under er den myk, nøtteaktig i duft og smak, og veldig ostete. Litt som forrige ost, bare mer av alt (bortsett fra at den ikke er så tørr i konsistensen). Igjen en fin match til Valdamor. Aner vi et mønster her? Faste gule oster ser ut til å funke bra for meg.

Jeg har en enkel Brie liggende her, men han skal få lov til å vente. Først skal jeg teste en Ingers blå, omtrent signatur-osten fra Den blinde ku (om du spør meg da). Han er en skikkelig hårete ost altså. Jeg har en mistanke om at en halvsøt riesling, eller kanskje en portvin, vil matche han bedre. Men la oss nå se da! Da jeg kjøpte denne blå av Inger sto det på at den måtte ligge minst 8 uker for å få frem skikkelig smak. Så jeg lot den ligge fire månder. Bra trøkk i smaken, og hun som er i glasset der klarer ikke helt å matche—akkurat som jeg tenkte. Men så svelger jeg osten unna, og forsøker noen dråper til. Mmmm; nå kommer frukten og sødmen i vinen frem. Men osten har så lang smak at den vil ikke gi tapt, ikke pakkes inn, ikke riktig enda. Nei, sammen funker de ikke helt. Men hver for seg, på armlengdes avstand så og si, kan de vise frem hver sine kvaliteter.

Brien var forresten ikke spesielt god sammen med albariño'en den heller, så jeg lar han ligge for i kveld—han kan gjøre bedre nytte for meg på brødskiva i morra tidlig. Jeg sparte litt av gruyere må vite.

(Jeg har spart litt av den blå også, men den skal jeg ha til etterpå! Det er ikke ofte jeg skryter av hjemkommunen min, det tar sikkert veldig lang tid før en innflytter gjør det. Men Inger kan lage ost, og de har adresse i Ås. Så om Ås skal bli kjent for noe der ut må det gjerne være ost, synes jeg. Jeg hadde forresten et par oster til i huset; Klovborg ekstralagret og Fløytemysost. Men jeg testet ikke dem, der syntes jeg grensen gikk i kveld.)

Oppfølging - telefoni; igjen

Jeg fikk så mye annet å stelle med, at jeg overlot jobben med å få avgjort telefonisaken til min gode kollega IT sjefen (han som overtok etter meg). Men først ventet vi til Kofa hadde sagt sitt i en av de andre sakene som ble kjørt. Jeg har ikke satt meg inn i detaljene, men jeg forsto det sånn at det endte med noen presiseringer i rammeavtaleverket. De vurderingene vi gjorde først viste seg å være korrekte, men ikke innenfor den opprinnelige avtalen.

Historien har strukket seg over et vesentlig antall måneder, men her summerer jeg den opp på noen få linjer. Uninett sammen med avtalepartnerne TDC, NetCom (og Umoe vil jeg tro, selvom de ikke er innvolvert i denne varianten) har kommet frem til en variant av mobiltelfoniavtalen som de kaller midlere tjenestenivå. I denne versjonen kan man kjøre en minikonkurranse der man legger til grunn de opprinnelige kriteriene, men i tillegg kan man føre opp ekstra betingelser, og man kan legge til grunn eget ringemønster. Simulas IT sjef har kjørt en slik minikonkurranse, basert på trafikkdata fra det siste året for et utvalg av våre brukere og med tilgang til 4G nett anngitt som et tilleggskriterie med noe vekt (ca. 10%). Etter å ha gått igjennom tilbudene vi mottok i konkurransen kom vi frem til at NetCom leverte dette beste tilbudet i forhold til de oppsatte kriteriene. Dette er meddelt deltakerne i konkurransen, og samtlige har akseptert resultatet.

Vi kommer derfor i nær fremtid til å velge NetCom som leverandør. Det er samme konklusjon som vi kom frem til for lenge siden, og den eneste som tjente på klagen som ble levert inn sist var Ventelo som fikk lov til å ha oss som kunde et års tid ekstra.

Det er jammen en interessant bransje det her.

Oppfølging - Telefoni

Det var ikke slutten på telefon historien allikevel. Vi trodde vi var ferdig og alt som sto igjen var å få implementert endringen. Men så var det en av de som ikke vant konkurransen som ikke var så fornøyd. De syntes de skulle vinne, og har derfor valgt å klage på noe av det formelle rundt den forenklede anbudskonkurransen innenfor rammeavtalene. Etter vår mening har vi gjort en god og rettferdig evaluering av de aktuelle kandidatene, og gjort et valg basert på denne. Men anbud, rammeavtaler og offentlige anskaffelser er blitt en juridisk sump. Det beste hadde nok vært å slippe å kjøpe noe som helst. Open source community-based mobiltelefoni, anyone?

Uansett, siden den aktuelle klageren også har åpnet KOFA sak mot noen av de andre som heller ikke har valgt dem innenfor den samme rammeavtalen, ser det ut som den mest fornuftige løsningen er å vente med å gjøre noe som helst til disse klagesakene er avgjort. Selvsagt er det noen andre veier ut også, som vi skal evaluere grundig. Mens vi gjør dette velger vi å bli i dagens avtale med Ventelo. Vi har derfor foreløpig trukket oppsigelsen av avtalen vår. I motsatt fall kunne vi endt opp uten noen avtale i det hele tatt om noen få dager.

Soga om offentlig anskaffelse av telefoniavtale fortsetter en annen gang!

Å velge en telefoniavtale - avsluttet

Vi har valgt! Som jeg antydet sist ble dette et valg mellom to operatører som sto veldig likt. Så likt at vi hadde store problemer med å skille dem.

I prosessen hadde vi litt forskjellige spørsmål til leverandørene, basert på innrettning på avtalene. Og stort sett kom de tilbake med gode svar. Når leverandørene i utgangspunktet var ganske nær hverandre når det gjaldt pris, ble det ikke lett å skille dem på dette punktet. Vi måtte derfor se nærmere på andre kriterier, slik som administrativ løsning, datatrafikk, wlan-soner, og andre mindre detaljer. Etter å ha vurdert alle parametere mot hverandre klarte vi tilslutt å velge en leverandør. Vi kommer til å inngå ny avtale med NetCom.

Når vi nå bytter leverandør på telefoni kommer vi også til å gjøre noen andre grep. Vi kvitter oss med vår fasttelefoniløsning. Etter å ha regnet litt på sakene, fant vi ut at vi betaler omtrent 150.000,- i året for et system som vi bruker for 50.000,- Ingen god deal. Grunnen er selvsagt at de aller aller fleste benytter mobiltelefon uansett. Så dette ble et enkelt valg.

Det som gjenstår før vi er i mål er å finne ut hvor vi parkerer vår eksisterende serie, slik at de som ringer oss kan få vite hvor de skal ringe for å komme i kontakt med oss. Tre månder burde vel være en passende periode tenker jeg. Og så må vi finne et appart som kan brukes som konferansetelefon. Jeg tipper vi finner noe hos Konftel som kan benyttes. Vi må også finne et passende apparat for de som gjerne vil ha en bordtelefon, for eksempel fordi de står veldig lenge på vent ofte, og ikke ønsker å binde opp mobiltelefonen sin.

Parallelt med dette setter vi igang jobben med å konvertere fra Ventelo til NetCom. Mer om den prosessen kommer senere!