Having a good time with EU

The 6th of February is the deadline for the corrections of the HANDS proposal and 13th of February do we(Chairman Peter Øhrstrøm, Administrator Henrik Sand and I) have the Grant Agreement Negotations in Bruxelles with our Project Officer Anne Salaun.

The Commision did not have ureasonable critics against the proposal. As a extra exercise, the Commission asks us to change the Proposal to a document called "Annex I"(an Annex to the Grant Agreement document.) This demand forces me to read a couple of EU documents:

• Negotiation Guidance Notes(57 pages)
• Grand Agreement Preparation Forms(34 pages)
• Checklist for a Consortium Agreement for FP7 projects(17 pages)
• Guide to Intellectual Property Rules for FP7 projects(45 pages)
• User Guide for Coordinators and Participants(14 pages)
• Note for attention of the Consortium(15 pages)

I do not find it fun any more. Physically and mentally do I need a change.

People around me are working very hard to. Miklos and his folks in Budapest, Joseph & Julia in London, Peter Øhrstrøm & Henrik Sand and all our consultants. I feel very well supported in this stage of the proces, I need to see the work. See the pupils, having meetings with HANDS partners and so on.

And I need to know for sure, that the Commission wants to sign a contract with us. I can image, that I loose conscious, when negotiation with Project Officer in Bruxelles.

An invitation to Grand Agreement in Bruxelles February 13nd!!

Chairman Peter mailed me last week: "Look at this, I believe, we have to talk together". Peter had received a invitation to Grand Agreement negotiations in Bruxelles!! It was just wild! After talking, dreaming, thinking and hoping for almost one year, HANDS finally was choosen! From now on, HANDS only fails, in case the consortium is behaving idiotic. But all partners still needs to do some work. Bruxelles has only suggested, that the budget cut should be 3%!

I recalled the lyrics from "Once in a lifetime" by Talking Heads

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife

And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Last week I wrote a document to myself entitled "20 good reasons, that HANDS should not be realised and now I am in the middle of .... a dream? Or an adventure? Or have EU selected the most demanding, exciting research within the area "ICT for social marginalised people?" With the most exciting perspectives? With parcipation of the wildest combination of exciting personalities and competences: cognitive psychology, mobile telephone developers, Persuasive Technology, ethics, e-learning designcompetences and autism pedagogics?

I only know, that I need to comprehend this new situation.
Somebody has to tell me, what has happend!


Morten

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


______________________________________

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

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