Thrilling complications - new informations appears!

While I was in Budapest, Miklos and I talked about the process of writing an EU proposal. I said I expected that there would appear information one day - while writing - that will change the whole proposal. Miklos replied, that he agreed and the only thing you can do is to talk with as many people as possible.
It happened June 7th: new information appeared and should the whole project be put in the trash? Luckily not!

I joined a EU-application information meeting in Aarhus together with Lars Moltsen from Wirtek. I met Anette Fløcke Lorentzen, from the Danish Research and Innovationsministerium, who initially was the person(together with others) who funded the HANDS preproject. While talking with her, she thought that the HANDS proposal did not match the objective(FP7-challenge 7, 2d)! Eventhough she had been funding the HANDS project and implicitly verified the match between proposal and objective!
A true Catch 22 situation - a bureaucratic problem, which should not have existed!

She was very polite(!) and recommended that I call the Danish EU-employee responsible for that challenge and talk with him("....every word in an FP7-objective is very seriously considered - the proposal has to aim to achieve the objective exactly").

She gave me a telephone, where the danish EU-employee phonenumber(Peter Wintlev-Jensen) was dialed, and I just had to press "Call". I got the feeling like someone was giving me a pistol and asking me to commit suicide!
I had to refuse her offer, and plan the talk with Peter Wintlev-Jensen.
It was four days before I could call him. His answer was a clear "Yes, the users in focus of the HANDS project are for sure a socially marginalized group of young people and very interesting".
And more. It was very interesting to get an interpretation of the FP7-text direct from the source.
The most valuable ....were:

• EU wants Proof of Concepts research projects.


• EU wants projects with high quality research foundation.


• EU wants small projects


• EU wants innovative Proof of Concept projects, which afterwards can be the foundation of a larger project, which include products which hits the market.


• Every proposal must seriously consider the expected impact of the project.


• Peter Wintlev-Jensen expected, that he gaming industry will send in a couple of proposals.
  

All summed up: HANDS fits those demands very well and my expectations to the success of HANDS were raised remarkably after the phone call.