Monday, December 17, 2007

HANDS projectmanager wishes all a Merry Xmas!

Dear partners of HANDS!
It has been a terrific year: experience the birth of HANDS, the organization of HANDS and the creation of the HANDS proposal. I am sure, that I talk for all the people here in Aalborg, that we are very thankful for your work, enthusiasm and dedication. It has been and is wonderful. We have received the evaluators score of the HANDS proposal and HANDS is still in the race. We are waiting for the final judgment from Bruxelles which is expected to appear in the end of January(positive answer) or in the end of March(negative answer). We wait, with excitement and worries.
Will HANDS be accepted?



Jesper Thestrup from the "Confederations of Danish Industries", the one of our most experienced EU-consultants, received the Evaluation Report December 15th.

Jesper mailed me shortly after this note:
"I would like to congratulate you with the remarkable good evaluation. A score on 13 points is very very good. I believe, HANDS can make it. The limit is usually between 12,5 and 13. Let us wait and see. You might end up on the reserve list instead.
But - wow, I am very happy, that you have made it this far. Let us press the thumbs and hope you will make it to the negotiations in Bruxelles"



Morten Aagaard


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Agenda
1. The proposal has received its score - How are the chances?
2. Interpretation of the score and comments
3. The wish for next year
4. The X-mas gift



1. The proposal has received its score - How are the chances?
Chairman Peter Øhrstrøm mailed the result of the evaluation of the HANDS proposal december 14h. It consisted of a score and comments to the proposal. The score was 13 points out of maximum 15 points. HANDS received 4,5 points in the areas "Technical and Scientific quality" and in "Dissimination". And 4 point in "Management".
This score means that the HANDS proposal has passed the threshold(12 points) and is a qulified proposal.

Afterwards is he HANDS proposal ranked together with all the other proposals and the Commission chooses the ones with the highest score. Depending on budget for the objective ICT-2007.7.7.2 they will fund one or more. We do not know. And we do not know, how our competitors score are.
The HANDS proposal shall pass an ethical review and that was what we wanted.

The conclusion is:
The HANDS proposal is still in the race and do still have a fair chance.


2. Interpretation of the score and comments
After designing the HANDS project and writing the proposal it is very nice to read how it is evaluated. Quite a few of our values, efforts and ideas have actually evaluated positively. E.g they find Ethics valuable and do make an ethical review of the proposal. E.g. they find the examination of the state of the art satisfying. Eg they do believe, that the proposal can have significant impact. And furthermore: some of the week spots in the proposal has not been registered!

One critical comment which I actually agree upon is(and I know at least Joseph Mintz,LSBU do to) is this:
"However, it is insufficiently explained how the proposed tests (WP2, WP3) are interrelated, how
their results are transferred into SW and HW functional requirements and specifications and
communicated in an operational fashion to the SW development of WP5."


If we are invited inside the Berlaymont building we will have to consider this in more details.



About the score you can comment on it in many ways.
1. The scores we have received in the 3 evaluationareas are 4 and 4.5. The Commission describes 4 and 5 scores like this:
"4 -Good. The proposal addresses the criterion
well, although certain improvements are possible.
5 -Excellent. The proposal successfully addresses all relevant
aspects of the criterion in question. Any shortcomings are minor."


That is a victory.

2. My concern after the submission was, that the three evaluators would have very different background(read: they are recruited from different scientific branches) on the Technical and Scientific Quality. But that seemed not to be the case. They agree in many ways. And at least one of the three evaluators give the HANDS proposal the topscore 5.
Very satisfying.

I believe, that if you have 3 reviewers with different background, other proposals will have difficulties getting the topscore 5 points.

3.That is not the case with the "Management score. Judgment of Management differs not that much from one scientific branch to another(it is a ICT call and the evaluators come from the ICT area). The HANDS proposal do only get an 4, which I do not understand when reading their comment. At least are the critical comments valuable and should be used to optimize the overall project plan.

4. The score for the Impact do I interpret as a "feel good"-judgement. Much of the content in the Impact section of the HANDS proposal is happy smalltalk, with very few consequences. If I where evaluator, I would not find the considerations within such an sections very interesting. But they did find our Impact section worth giving either 4 or 5. My interpretation is, that
1) the evaluators believe the involvement of testschools having a positive effect on the impact,
2) the evaluators found the intention of the proposal read in the name of the proposal("HANDS") positive for the impact and finally
3) the evaluators felt good after reading the previous sections and wanted the HANDS proposal to be accepted.


But the one judgment, that I enjoy the most is this applause to you, dear HANDS partner:
"All of the partners have relevant experience in the area and the coordinator and all of the academic
partners are leading figures in their fields. Complementarity and balance is fine. It is particularly
interesting to have several schools involved as partners."




3. The wish for next year
Since the submission of the HANDS proposal I have heard a lot of different music, but one piece of music seems to reside permanently in my head: Over the Rainbow. A central part of the lyrics sounds like this:

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true


Could it be next year?


4. The X-mas gift

I have uploaded a X-mas gift for all partners of HANDS. I experience, that some partners believe, that Persuasive Technologies are thoughts, which only can be realized, when spending minimum 3 software developers in 3 man month. That is not the case. Persuasive Technology has its roots in rhetorics and quite a few of the ideas can be integrated in everyday electronic communication with very few additional costs. The Xmas gift is therefore a paper, that I have created with the title "Designing Persuasive Technology for a dollar a day".
If HANDS is accepted in Bruxelles I would find it valuable, if Persuasive Technology not only is tested theory, but communication-praxis of HANDS partners.

Download your gift now!

Merry Xmas and a happy new year!

Morten Aagaard