B.J. Fogg visits Aalborg University November 8nd

The author of "Persuasive Technology using the computer to change the way we think and do" visited Aalborg University November 8nd. I was luckily invited by Professor Per Hasle together with a dozen others.

It was an informal gathering where he talked a little and the audience had an oppurtunity to give B.J. Fogg questions in about two hours. My complete summary of the talks is downloadable here.- 3 pages. Afterwards he gave an TV-interview(in english) to the danish magazine "Computerworld". It has not appeared on their webpage yet.

First he told a little about the history of Persuasive Technology and his present interests. The field first started to become something after his book "Persuasive Technology" was published. But since then, the interest has been growing rapidly. The first Persuasive Technology conferences has been held and a scientific group is about to establish.
His interests is mobile persuasion because he believes, that it will be the platform for persuasion.

Second the invited audience got a chance to ask questions. I was first to ask him. Unfortunately did I only have the oppurtunity to ask one question and I did ask any of the questions, that partners of HANDS mailed me. I am sorry.
I asked BJ if he had a need for new softwaretools which support the ideas of Persuasive Technology. And he did. He pointed out a couple of areas, where new tools and functionalities(read the summary) was needed. I could name a couple more.

Afterwards the was a longer debate about ethics initialised by a question from Peter Øhrstrøm. B.J. Fogg was very concered with the ethical aspects of Persuasive Technology and was eager to promote knowledge about the "dark side" of Persuasive Technology.

Finally he was asked to point out challenges of the researchfield "Persuasive Technology" and he pointed to areas out: Ethics and methodology.

When the all-too-fast-session was over I managed to ask him to dedicate my copy of his book, "Persuasive Technology". He happily accepted the invitation.

Proposal Submission Party Meeting November 2nd - the summary

The Party Meeting did not have any agenda and therefore a normal summary is not possible to write. The main objective of the Party Meeting was to have a good time together without any need to make decisions, give talks or simular. Just be together and talk and drink a good glass of non-alcoholic wine.

Participants(named as they sit on the photo to the left):
Myself, Michael Sørensen(Principal of Egebakken) Søren Madsen (Departmentmanager at Egebakken),Kristian Wolling(teacher at Egebakken), Chairman Peter(Professor at Aalborg University), Susan Gulstad(teacher at Egebakken), Carsten Nielsen(teacher at Ullerødskolen), Kirsten Sams(teacher at Egebakken) and Lars Moltsen(Softwaredeveloper at Wirtek).


Personally speaking I had a wonderful night. MeetingParticipants was in a good mood, singing, talking and laughing. So did I.

From the perspective of the proposal the partnership was strengtend.

• The HANDS network seems even stronger. Socially too.
• The Partymeeting sang the first two HANDS songs, "Send a mail"(lyrics, graphics, melody) and "Congratulation"(lyrics, graphics). The lyrics was in version 1.0 and there are room for improvements. The lyrics are opensource and version 2.0 is wanted.
  
• The first HANDS speeddating-algoritm designed by Wirtek worked excellent. Everybody was talking to everybody!
  
• The song contest "Which part of the proposal is singable and with which melody?", was won by Søren Madsen, who discovered, that the proposals abstract could be singed on the danish nationalhymn "Der er et yndigt land". Listen and sing!
  
• A HANDS drink greeting was invented. See the photos.
  

Only one mistake found its place at the Party Meeting: the non-alcoholic wine was absolutely undrinkable!

Morten

Proposal Submission Party Meeting November 2nd

Friday November 2nd will we have a small celebration for the succesfull proposal writing. In this post I will explain why we do it, how we do it and how you can contribute. The invitation for the Party Meeting is by itself a Party -download the PDF-version!

Why do we celebrate the submission of the HANDS proposal?
There are two reasons:
1. Because Partners of HANDS have joy being together, but not have had any chance to do so. We have been together at meetings, meetings and mail. The Party Meeting is the fun part of HANDS.
2. Because the work for creating a FP7 ICT proposal was huge. In terms of money I would estimate the price of the HANDS proposal to be around 30-35.000€. A lot of people did a great job, but the physical product the papers does not seem much.

How do we celebrate the submission?

1. We have this Proposal Submission Party Meeting. Download and colorprint the poster(cut the white margins away to see what it is like. Hopefully we have fun!
2. We hope you, as a partner will send participate virtually with a video. Send appr. 30 second video clip or upload it to youtube.

What can you do to support the HANDS proposal?

1. Participate in the Party Meeting(30€). Yipppi!
   
2. Read more about Persuasive Technology. Download and read the "Compilation for Partners".
3. Consider a Plan B. If the proposal is rejected, what then? Consider national and european oppurtunities. Contact and discuss your ideas with me. Before X-mas. Best before December 1nd.
   

Morten

Submission of HANDS – a great feeling

Five days after the submission I still suffer: I am still all too tired and I have absolutely no need to work effectively for any goal. Luckily do we have the autumm holiday and I will celebrate it by being together with my children. Henrik is on holiday too, Lars have not mailed anything since tuesday and my mailbox is as empty as it can be. It is almost scary. Only chairman Peter and Professor Per Hasle is still active.

Eventhough I still are a very tired my mind is filled with a feeling of thanksfulness to alle those people, who have helped the proposal to be qualified.
I have a feeling of being carried by a lot of people, rather than working alone.

The days before the final submission
Three weeks did I work very intense on the proposal and got approx. 20 HANDS mails pr day, Very little sleep and lots of decisions. At the same time I had to produce papers and participate in meetings.
But it was great joy too. People around me kept being entusiastic and encouraged me to continue. And the engagement of the HANDS involved never failed.

The projectplan of the proposal writing, a evolving prototype, appeared in the final stage to be a good one. All the major considerations was in place before the last two weeks. We had to focus on getting the EU-terminology right and complete the argumenations in various small subsections.

While writing I had a rhetorical discussion going on with myself. Many people involved in HANDS tells me, that I am very entusiastic and it influence them. In the EU application it is emphasised many times, that you have to be sober and formel. In writing and in the argumentation. How can I put my entusiasm in to the proposal? That discussion continued to fill my free timeslots. A week before submisssion I got the clue: the proposal has to argue for the proposal on every single sentence of the proposal. New arguments or variants but endless argue for the ideas of HANDS. Likewise when we argue for taking ethical concerns serious we do not only do so because we believe it is right, but because it is a more efficient in terms of persuasive efficiency.

Looking back on the work I wish I knew all about EU proposal writing that we do know now. The quality of the the proposal would probably be simular due to the fact, that the core idea of HANDS would have been the same. But the details of the proposal would be better and the organisation of the work would too.


But anyway:
Thank you very much!

Morten

Why the HANDS proposal succeed or fail?

The HANDS proposal might get accepted. It might not. The decision is in the hands of the FP7 administrators and their evaluators. It is a partly an sound and rational decision, partly an political decision and partly an matter of national interests.
In the sense that it is a rational proces, we can argue for both.

The HANDS proposal is being accepted because

It is indeed a new approach to caretaking of individuals with ASD

• The results of the HANDS project will have impact on caretaking of people with cognitive disabilities and generally the Mobile Persuasive Healthcare field.
• Persuasive Technology will take a giant step forward - in the Aalborg schools interpretation.
  
• All the ethical considerations are important and new
  
• The consortium is well balanced - geographically, economically, organisationally
  
• The impacts are great and fits well with the EU policies on the areas like: elderly people, marginalised people, the labourforce and more.
  

The HANDS proposal is being rejected because

• Teenagers with ASD is an minority, a too small minority.
• The proposal lacks hardcore ICT research. Design of Gadgets and simular. (We do not agree - knowledge about the users are very important.
  
• The consortium lacks an genuin partner with track record within ICT research for individuals with ASD.
• The ethical concerns plays are to large role in the proposal.
  

HANDS Partner meeting in Aalborg 14/9

Before the meeting, I asked Tobias Berglund from Svedenskolan in Stockholm to be "Guestblogger". He accepted the invitation and here is his story about the visit in Aalborg.
Morten Aagaard

The small delegation from UP Svedenskolan in sweden arrived in Aalborg on Wednesday 12:th.

It was me (Tobias Berglund) teacher at Svedenskolan and Gun-Marie Wicksen our principal.

13/9 Visit at Egebakken

After a good nights sleep we were picked up at our hotel by Kenneth Westergaard from Egebakken.

Once at Egebakken we got to meet head of departement Søren Madsen and principal Mikael Sørensen . We all had a short presentation and then we were shown a ppp about the PDA project at Agernhuset, which were very interesting.

We got some good information about Egebakken as school and we had some reflections about the similarities and differences in swedish and danish schoolsystems.

The tour at Egebakken was very interesting and we saw that when it came to the TEACCH inspired pedagogical systems Egebakken had many similarities to Svedenskolan.

It was in all a good visit and we all agreed that even though the HANDS project does not go through we would all benefit from some kind of cooperation and exchangesystem between the schools. It is always fun and interesting to meet proffesionals that got bit by the “autism fly”, and even more when they also are as nice and bonzer as the staff at Egebakken.

Thank you all for a nice visit!

Then it was off too see Morten at AAU.

And so we meet again. Was a little bit of my thoughts when i once again met this enthuseing dane. We also met professor Miklos Gyori from ELTE University in Hungary.

We sat down in the HANDs office and had a nice meeting wit Morten and Miklos where we discussed HANDs in general.

Morten is showing Gun-Marie the basis of HANDS

Dinner at MadDonna

At Thursday night there where a few of us that enjoyed a good meal and had a really good time together. Although swedes and danes in history have been united under different kings, both danish and swedish ones we have a lot of differences in our culture. One of the biggest one is the relationship to alcoholic beverages, this is nothing that got to be a problem this night , but it was discussed as many other things. A real nice evening ... ( it was a bit tidy for a swede in denmark)

Mad means food in danish so the restaurants name had nothing to do wit a crazy woman

14/9 HANDs Partner meeting

And so the time had come to do what we actually came to do.

I can honestly say that i first was a bit nervous about this, me at this EU project thinggy!? With a lot of professionals in different areas, and we were supposed to talk about economics and budgets... well it was just to get there and “get the party started”

The meeting was very interesting and full of meanigfull discussions. It was obvious that we all came from different professional areas and saw things from different point of views but it seemed like we all were going in the same direction.

Present at the meeting was;

Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University

Morten Aagaard, project manager

Henrik Sand, Aau fond raising

Jesper Krab, Senario

Lars Moltsen, Wirtek

Carsten Nielsen, teacher Ullerød Skolen

Julia Jespersen, persuasive design Aau

Gun-Marie Wicksén, principal Svedenskolan

TobiasBerglund, teacher Svedenskolan

Kristian Wolling, teacher Egebakken

Søren Madsen, head of department Egebakken

Mich

ael Sørensen, principal Egebakken

Søren Madsen, head of department at Egebakken held a short welcoming and we all had a short introduction.

At first it was professor Peter Ohrstrom who was going to have the initial introduction to the HANDs project. Altho

ugh he was not there in person he did it anyway –by letting us see a movie where he did the presentation

PeterOhrstrom- the movie-

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes.... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

Then it was all ears toward whoever was standing in front of the slides!

It was much information and as written earlier we had some giving discussoions.

Here is a short “who said what” and “what was decided”

Objectives and the Proposal

Projectmanager Morten Aagaard

Morten talked about the importance to get the proposal to contain what we actually want to do, and also the importance in writing it in the right way

Heexplained about FP7 and that HANDS is a STREP; Specific Target Research Project. Further he explained what parts the proposal consist of, and how the evaluators scoreboard works. He pointed out the values and properties of HANDs , Persuasive technology, Open source, Usercentric design, the consideration of ethics, Interdisciplinary work with involvement of the proffessional practitioner.

He had some considerations concerning, collaboration between research and development., the role of ethics, and his role in the project.

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

We also had time for lunch, a good and well needed pause in all the "infoinput". It was a modern kind of smorrebrod, (open9faced sandwich) it tasted well.

Suggestions and questions about research methodology in HANDS

Ass.

Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University

Miklos gave us some understanding when it came to research and the importance in having a
standard testing system of the pupils that will be a part of the project.

He also talked about the need to have a control group, or else it will not be possible to have some way of evaluating once the procject is finished.

Miklos Gyori

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

WorkPackage, who do what, when?

Projectmanager Morten Aagaard

We got introduced to the meaning of what a “Workpackage” is and the workpackages of HANDS. We pointed out workpackage leaders and who was to participate in wich workpackage. Timeplans were shown, who is supposed to do what and when and how long it is supposed to take. Morten also showed a estimated amount of manmonths dedicated to every workpackage.

Carsten, Lars and Jesper are looking thoughtfull

...at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

Part a & Budget – an overwiev

Henrik Sand AAU Fund raising and HANDs coordinator

Well what can i say... Coordinator rules....

But... . participants can negotiate

Here it got to be a lot of economic galimatias wich i dont think is necessary to be written here, the core of the HANDS and what we are working with now is pretty much said in the text above.

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal thru and get the tests started with my pupils

We , Gun-Marie and i finished our visit in Aalborg having a beer with Kristian and Carsten before we got a lift to the airport....

I did promise to keep it short .. but i just couldnt ...

Thank you all for a really nice visit hope to see you all again...