Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures
Mia just loves her lollipops
March 27th, 2010
Scan of new baby on the way to the PdL household
March 24th, 2010
Future Internet Public-Private-Partnership (PPP)
March 22nd, 2010I had the pleasure of traveling from one sunny South-East (Waterford) to another sunny South-East (Nice), with a short hop & stop in Luton, for the European Commission lead Future Internet Public-Private-Partnership event on March 12th.
The Commission is underlining the importance of building a Future Internet Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) and committed to kick-start this initiative in 2010 by allocating a total of 300 million euros under FP7 ICT Theme until 2013.
The full agenda for the event can be found here with nearly all the slides avaialble for viewing, but for an easy way of coming up to speed on the event there is a video webinar of the event and each presentation. I would recommend you review the following videos:
Aims of the Future Internet PPP ( 18min )
Presentations on the scope and modalities of the Future Internet PPP ( 19min )
Presentations on the scope and modalities of the Future Internet PPP ( 13min )
Vision from ICT industry on technical aspects of the Future Internet PPP ( 20min )
Contribution of academia and research centres to the Future internet PPP ( 15min )
Hosting a webinar presentation on FP7
March 19th, 2010Wow, now that was an experience and a half. Earlier in the year while attending a presentation session in DIT on FP7, the folks in Enterprise Ireland asked if I would be interested to present a set of slides on how to write a proposal towards the FP7 ICT programme in a webinar. Now given I had just taken the very early train up from Waterford to Dublin, a Luas and then a small walk to the DIT boardroom on Cathal Brugha street and was soon to be rushing back for the train home, the thought that all this travel could be removed and replaced with a 1 hour webinar intrigued me, I said “Yes of course” in an instant, and from that point on worried and wondered about how exactly you host & run a webinar presentation.
I started with a mind map, whenever I come up against an item with a large number of variables I gather my thoughts in a mind map, a little hint of the one for this webinar can be seen below.
I spent sometime attending webinars, and given that gotomeeting were the technology providers for this session, I stuck with their offered meetings over a two week period. A good one to start with is this view on-demand webinar called “Your First Webinar – Understanding What’s Involved” (note you will have to register with the service before viewing the content). I picked up a lot of pointers off of this one and I also attended two hosted webinars as a participant.
Now it was time to prepare the presentation, moving from mind map to full presentation isn’t always a smooth task but I got there.
Next up were the training sessions. The folks in Enterprise Ireland were extremely helpful in this regard, they really allowed for the fact that I hadn’t used such a system before, I mean there are a ton of items on the Gotomeeting control panel, Questions/Answers, Screen Sharing, Voice recognition, IM Chat panel, Poll Panel, as a presenter you can easily got distracted. It was clear that we should have a moderator assigned to the main control of the webinar, and a person assigned to deal with questions/answers & the polls and just leave the presenter …. present.
It was hours before we actually got to do the first full dry run of the presentation, and it was during this period that the usefulness of the screen sharing application really came to light. I edited numerous slides there and then, with only a couple of small items that I had to be fixed up after that particular session, which I think is great.
The big day arrives, we had agreed to meet up half an hour before the presentation time, and low and behold there were people already logged in and ready for the webinar, which throw us all a little as we were unsure what the attendees could or could not see and hear. It transpires they cannot see a thing, but as a panelist in the system you don’t know this, so we had to IM some folks to let us know what was happening from their perspective.
As we got closer to kick off time, “How to write a successful proposal – The views of an ICT expert” is about to start and nerves start to creep in. I hate the word expert, and the expectation is that everything is then going to be perfect, and I could hear a bit of feedback in the headset, which I had not heard before, so I started to think that the vocal part of the presentation would start to degrade!
Before it could be discussed we had to get underway, Intro given by EI, I start the slides get 5 slides in and ……… we had to start again. It turns out the Broadcast button hadn’t been turned on, so attendees could see slides moving but no audio. I had spotted later that some kind folks in the TSSG were sending me IM messages on this, but unfortunately I didn’t spot them as I was in complete presentation mode.
We started again, and this time ran through the slides as you can see below. I received some positive feedback on the session, and I really appreciated this as during a webinar it really is just you and the slides, there is no other sense of a listening audience, and I found this tough, I wondered if people were still interested after slide 21.
Anyway I really liked the polls, it gave me a break from talking for a minute, and the only thing we didn’t do was get a screen shot of the results. At the very end during the question and answer session there was a slight system failure on my side as the CPU on my machine went to 100% usage for about 2 mins, which meant I couldn’t do anything and the audience couldn’t hear anything, but it did eventually come back at the end. Once the controller had filtered some of the questions they were easy for me to see, maybe not so easy for me to answer though!
Would I do this again, absolutely and I will now encourage a number of agencies to host more information sessions through webinars.
The slides from the session can be seen below. Also the full webinar is still available on GotoMeeting, so if you missed it you can still have a sneak peek from when you go to do your first webinar.
Typical hello world
February 20th, 2010My first install of WordPress was Oct 6th 2007, and not one entry was made! Finally I’m up and running again, mobile theme plugin is in, but now the hard task of creating a WP Theme to match the original site style has to be done, oh crap!
Is the face of research and innovation changing in Europe?
February 11th, 2010
Picked up a post recently via ENN Scotland Experts call for new approach to European research and innovation policy and from this a link to a joint statement [pdf] on behalf of the European Research Area Board, Business Panel on Future EU Innovation Policy, Expert Group on the Role of Community Research Policy in the Knowledge?Based Economy, European Technology Platforms – Expert Group and Science | Business Innovation Board, were they have a number of recommendations for a new approach for research and innovation in Europe. To quote the major recommendations that statement highlights
1) Focus on our greatest societal challenges
Such as climate change, alternative energy, healthcare for an aging population, security and social cohesion
2) Encourage new networks, institutions and policies for open innovation
The statements make it clear that the dominant mode of research and innovation is through open collaboration – among small and large companies, university and industry, public and private sector, clusters and trading blocs. This requires an open environment for knowledge, talent and services to flow, and for critical mass to build where needed. Yet the EU policy
focus has not yet adapted to this reality.
3) Spend more on research, education and innovation, in part through bolder co-investment schemes
Access to finance remains the number one obstacle to innovation; there is less risk?capital around, and it’s harder to get at. At the same time, there’s also less public money available for research, education and innovation in the EU on average than in the US or Japan. The suggested solution is to through enlightened fiscal policies and bold experimentation in public private co?financing, making it easier for researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to find
the cash needed to get their ideas to market.
4) Coordinate and plan RDI programmes better – within Brussels and among the member-states
EC and national programmes for research, development and innovation, are strong to a fault. All too often, there are unnecessary duplications, needless contests over administrative territory, and confusing bureaucracy. Greater coordination among all the EU capitals, a reduction in paperwork, and synchronization of all aspects of RDI funding, regulation, and standard?setting to achieve our aim of solving society’s Grand Challenges.
5) Open competition should be standard in EU programmes
Excellence must be the watchword of EU research, development and innovation programmes.
When I look at these recommendations I do wonder will EU policy fall into the innovation dynamics top 40, that is to say humantific’s top forty reasons why most large group meetings, work sessions, working conferences produce little other than feel good vibes.
Or will I stand corrected and find that a recipe for innovation can be cultivated?
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn you have your work cut out for you.
Update on Irish Future Internet Forum
February 7th, 2010I’ve wanted to catch up on my writings in the past few weeks, but before moving on into the new year I would like to take a minute to reflect on what has just passed, and in particular the Irish Future Internet Forum.
I was worried about the running of the event, I knew it was slightly more security focused than I really wanted it to be, but I shouldn’t have worried! As I mentioned in the lead up to the event the TSSG team around me were just fantastic and were always pushing to ensure that the event ran smoothly and man did the workshop run smoothly.
On the prep day, the day before the event was due to kick-off there was a ton of things happening all at once, international speakers were starting to arrive, audio/ visuals were quickly getting into place and sure enough the IT infrastrure folks in the Digital Hub were stress testing the wireless network. I must say I was delighted to see this testing, while I would hope an audience are 100% focused on every single minute of the workshop, well really you have to be realistic and ensure to offer a couple of amiable services, one of which has to be immediate internet access for a tech savy audience.
And prep days are great for pushing you to the limits, highlighting all the little things you’ve forgotten to bring with you to the ‘foreign’ workshop venue, from power cords, to print outs, and that one poster you really should have brought! After a few quick sharpe phonecalls and everything seemed to fall in to shape. Well maybe that’s a bit naive, things don’t just fall into place, I must admit there was a very specific plan in place with some weeks which Deirdre, Zeta and myself tried our hardest to stick to and once we did I really did see things starting to fall into place.
Before closing out the prep-day, there was a late call and interview with Newstalk which lasted about 20 mins, and I think it got airtime the following day for about 30 secs. Oh well so much for the 15 mins of fame, looks like I’d have to do 100 hrs of yapping and really I’m not that bothered.
So the big day arrives and before the crack of dawn I was ready of the early start, but I don’t think the lads will ever forgive me for such an early start and given that the first 45 mins were slow going I wondered myself whether it was worth it, but it turned out it was. There were some small items to sort out but I found that once attendees started to arrive, that was it, there was next to no time to concerntrate on anything for more that 30 secs, as there’s the meet, the greet, the make sure we have all the speakers and their up-to-date slides, the press media, the ATTENDEES. In this supercharged time I can highly recommend code whispers, yes those guys with the walkie talkies were a life saver, and ensured that we were never out of sync between the goings on of the ground floor entrance, the arrival of the Minister and the 1st floor workshop room where everyone had gathered.
We had anticipated some delay in the ministers arrival, but to my surprise he was bang on time and after a few press photos we got the event underway.
I’ll leave to the fine detail of the wokshop outcomes to the official report, although nearly all the slides, including outcome results can seen on Slideshare.
And finally hopefully the photo gallery captures the mood of the event.\
Irish Future Internet Forum 2009
November 22nd, 2009This years running of the Irish Future Internet Forum is nearly upon us (December 3rd 2009), although it has been looming large on my horizon for some time now as I’ve been charged with the workshop chair.
As with any event, the pace of organisation directly from myself was quite slow over the summer months but with the drive into autumn and with significant help of Zeta, Jim, Brian, Kieran, Deirdre, Edel and others over the past few months I think we’ve pulled together an engaging agenda for the day.
So my biggest fear now other than, the days weather, the venue, the speakers, the audio visuals, the catering, and a multitude of other small items .. but no the fear is for the attendees!
I keep wondering, is the programme engaging or is this another one of these same-oh events, packed with presentations, but with little take home ideas and no interaction with the audience?
The team here have been pushing me hard not to let it happen, brainstorming ideas on how to layout the break out sessions, helping with putting things in place that hopefully will entice people to raise questions and even suggest ways forward on the Future Internet and what it may mean for Ireland.
I tell you what, it’s not easy “thinking” about what the audience would appreciate, so as I head into the final week of preparation it might be an idea for me to ask, what would you like to see at the Irish Future Internet Forum?
The comment line is open on this blog post.
On twitter I’ll watch out @IFIForum, or hashtag your comments #ifif
Future Internet Assembly Q4 2009
November 22nd, 2009Busy and interesting couple of weeks coming up in regards to Future Internet activities.
This week sees the running of the 4th European Future Internet Assembly in Stockholm (Kista), with a large contingent from the TSSG in attendance, running & participating in sessions, demonstrating TSSG wares on our stand, and hosting a number of posters on TSSG Future Internet research.
FP6 has MORE than come to a close
September 17th, 2009My first encounter of the FP6 IST programme was in Dublin Castle July 12th 2002 at its Irish launch event in Dublin castle. I remember the day well funnily enough as the there were unexpected roadworks in South Kilkenny that morning so once I made it (late) to the conference room in the Castle, it was packed with people and I got moved into one of those language translation booths, which was great, I had a higher viewing vantage point, a table and a very comfortable chair!
Well 7 years, and eight FP6 projects later and the FP6 IST programme has come to a
Although in fairness my involvement in the research and developments of IST MORE was peripheral as really Chris, Gemma, Chen, Kristian, Niall D., and a whole host of others helped bring the project from a grand vision for a “Network-centric Middleware for GrOup communication and Resource Sharing across Heterogeneous Embedded Systems” to a neatly designed software based middleware that hides the complexity of the underlying heterogeneity of embedded systems and provided a MORE simplified API and management mechanism.
And to prove the it is neat the MORE middleware helped integrate the management of a medical process in Hungry (for doctors and patients). It helped create a virtual organisation, allowing for chronic patients to be monitored continuously by sensors and accessed via mobile devices. The middleware in turn allowed for easy access to an on-line service for the doctors, diabetes patients and patients family to react to emergency situations, but of most benefit it was found that the implement system significantly decreased the number of necessary personal encounters between the doctor and the patient.
Watch the video below for further details
The project, just like any other framework programme project has tons of deliverables, but the one I want to point you towards is the document D5.1 Test Protocol [pdf], which details the building blocks for the MORE testing framework giving third-party developers a frame to test for correctness and compatibility. It also explicitly shows the test bed infrastructure for all the end user scenarios tested during the project, which is broken down into the laboratory environment test bed and the live field testing environment. The laboratory environment is complemented by an intensive test bed for performance evaluation, consisting of real world testing as well as simulation.
Finally the project source is available for your viewing, either head over to the MORESS SourceForge page or just use svn directly
svn co https://mores.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mores mores