Man. Comm. 12

Date: 27th October 2013

Start: 10:00 CET

Duration: 7 hours

Meeting 12: Agenda

1. Apologies for absence

2. Actions from last meeting

3. Project Co-ordinator's report

4. Workpackage summaries [WP leaders]:

   1. Project highlights (review of achievements);
      This is intended to be an outline of your contribution to the final report and to the promotional leaflet now in production.
   2. Overdue Milestones to be addressed
      
      What strategies are in place to ensure paperwork is complete by the project end? People responsible for completion, timetables and deadlines are expected. It will help our minute-taker if these can be provided in a digital form.
   3. Priorities for the final 4 weeks

5. Budget report

6. Final Project Reports & review

   Last year the panel asked for demos. We should anticipate including demos of products this year.

   WP leader reports will differ from last year with less emphasis on inter-WP activities and a focus on products and users.

7. Follow-on grants
   
   The H2020 site contains a summary of the current situation for the H2020 calls. Vince is working on a framework within which we can embed elements that work towards a single goal (predictive modelling).

   Dimitris Koureas (part of the NHM team)is putting together a COST action intended to facilitate community integration. Cost actions provide a bit of travel money.

8. Associated projects

   1. eMonocot
   2. agINFRA
      Simon will be meeting some people from agINFRA (Antonella Picarella and Valeria Pesce, both in FAO) to discuss merging agriDrupal into the Scratchpad codebase. The meeting will be lunchtime on Monday.
   3. BioVEL
      A hackathon was run in the NHM with the Manchester (Taverna) team that allowed BioVeL workflows to be run in a Scratchpad (on our development server). We're invited to a follow-up meeting in December.
   4. EU-BON
   5. pro-iBiosphere
   6. LifeWatch

9. Any other business

Actions

Minutes

1. Apologies

None

2. Actions
from last meeting

3. Coordinator’s
Report

Final
review meeting is in Brussels on 29 Jan 2014. Dimitris Koureas (DK) standing in
for NC.

Product
brochure: Scratchpad brochure has been produced, ViBRANT products brochure is
in prep. Both will be appended to final report as appendices as demonstration
of what ViBRANT has produced. Laurence Livermore (LL) has circulated template
to WP1 and people responsible for products. Double page per product. Aiming for
A4 size for report. Digital version also available.

 Action:
Relevant people to provide text by 15 November 2013.

4. Workpackage
Updates & 5. Overdue Milestones

WP8 - COMBER – over 400
dives over three years. 95 distinct dive sites. Analysed the validity of the
data collected by citizen scientists. Could be submitted to BDJ or ZooKeys.

 M8.18
and M8.20 are outstanding. Alpha-version delivered and debugging. Need to update
the website. M8.20 lacks some indices which are being fixed at the moment.
Changing routine so user can upload species by station and classification of
species. Need to write up what has been done and the elements that are still to
be done. When do milestones itemise things that are additional so they can be
highlighted in the report. Can mention things that have been done after the end
at the review but not in the report. D8.3 – are GBIF writing up document?

Action:
CA will contact Olaf re writing up D8.3

 WP7 – Key products are
RefBank, GoldenGATE and ReFinder. The user interface of RefBank has been
refined to be more like ReFinder. There are around 220k references in RefBank
now (up from 160k at the end of Year 2). Pro-iBiosphere is looking at using
GoldenGATE. ReFinder has two purposes: search across trusted resources to
explore API, and the ability to download references. RefBank and ReFinder are
to go into Bibliography of Life, but not there yet.

M7.18
is overdue. The first integration stage is complete, but the service needs
deploying and accompanying report needs finishing. New screenshots will be
completed during first week of November.

 WP6 – Key products are
the Pensoft Writing Tool (PWT) and Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). There have
also been 3 special issues in ZooKeys, and 60-70 articles on ViBRANT issues in
Pensoft’s journals.

All
milestones are complete. D8.3 is complete and being written up.

Pensoft
to Species-ID: 13045 treatments with a total of 20714 edits, treatments or
image submissions. It was queried how many people made up these edits, and what
is the overall number of anonymous users.

 WP5 – Key products are
the services available via OBOE. There has been a growth in users and in tasks
submitted.

All
milestones are up to date and will be able to deliver the remaining milestones
in time. Priorities for the final four weeks are to deliver the remaining
milestones and write up D5.3.

 WP4 – Key highlights are
MediaWikis, KOS architecturs, VoMaG, CDM.

M4.35
– Filter functionality CDM export – no plans to extend beyond current situation
as no significant demand for it.

M4.38
– several ways of presenting – can present we have a pipeline with another 52
papers to be produced after ViBRANT (as long as we have 5 papers by the end of
ViBRANT).

CDM
index development – ViBRANT index is live but only indexing a small set and
needs to be more testing.

Xper
– work is done, one more milestone left.

Outstanding
milestones will be completed by the end of ViBRANT.

BioFlor
– why has Gregor not done it? Need him to write up milestone report.

Action:
Gregor Hagedorn to write up milestone report on BioFlor

WP3 – Scratchpads
training has increased (venue, course and participant numbers). Response rate
to questionaires has been about 20%. Ambassadors programme is going well and
sociological studies have been done.

Milestones
will be finished on time.

M3.18
– a workshop is scheduled to take place but no one seems to know about it.

It
was queried whether Peter van den Besselaar should come to the final review.

Need
to find out how many people who are coming to Scratchpad training already have
their own Scratchpad, and what the “conversion rate” is for people who attend
training.

WP2 – key highlights are
Drupal 7, Scratchpads 2 (not the biggest thing for review!). More than one
server for Scratchpads are available. Can use your own domain name if wanted
but then user has to ensure stays active – sustainability issue.

Automated
testing of Scratchpad sites and full Drupal are being developed and delivered
by the end of the project.

Citation
tool from Scratchpads.

M2.15
M2.19 both related. Paper to be written which will be used to write the
report(s) for the milestones.

Priorities:
M2.20 already covered. Ensure 2.15 and 2.19 written up and delivered and
testing deliverable is delivered on time. Look how current workflows and make
minor amendments if necessary.

 5. Budget report

Forecasts
have been received from most partners and the current best estimate is that the
project will have a very small underspend. Forecasts were not obtained from VU,
JKI, MfN, OU or UdlR. VU is the biggest risk but the finance officer is
efficient and communicative.

All
Form Cs have been signed and returned to the Commission and we should receive
payment for reporting period 2 soon. LR will advise once payment is received.

Deadlines
and templates for Year 3 financial reporting will be circulated at the
beginning of December.

6. Final Project
Reports & review

Last
year the panel asked for demos. We should anticipate including demos of
products this year.

WP
leader reports will differ from last year with less emphasis on inter-WP
activities and a focus on products and users.

Templates
have been circulated for the final report. It is important to add things that
have been done that aren’t milestones.

Action:
DR to circulate list of projects that are using ViBRANT products and find out
what, if anything, is missing.

This
template will be used for both the periodic and final reports. Text will be
taken from submitted milestones so don’t have to repeat things in report
template.

Can
ask to present with focus on products rather than from workpackage perspective
but unlikely to be agreed.

CA
suggested using the chromosome design. VS mentioned the diagram he produced in
response to the 2nd periodic review showing integration, thought chromosome is
too ViBRANT-centric and not very useful for external people.

VS
will be leading the ViBRANT team in the review as DR will have retired by then.

Less
emphasis on interWP activities and more on users and integration. Get rid of
the slide on WP interactions. Instead focus on products that WP has produced.

Lean
on partners to get references uploaded of publications, presentations at
conferences etc and ensure website is completely up-to-date

DR will be producing
Yr 3 report in the first 2 weeks of December before he retires. All reports
must be submitted before then otherwise they won’t be included.

Must
get something from every partner in the final report.

Action:
All deliverables to be submitted and email LR to let her know by close of play
Thursday 28 November so they can be submitted to the Commission in time.

Deliverable
reports need to be longer to justify the amount of money spent – can use
milestone documentation and combine into meaningful narrative.

7. Follow-on grants

The
H2020 site contains a summary of the current situation for the H2020 calls.
Vince is working on a framework within which we can embed elements that work
towards a single goal (predictive modelling).

Dimitris
Koureas (part of the NHM team) is putting together a COST action intended to
facilitate community integration. Cost actions provide a bit of travel money.

YdJ
commented that a Network of Excellence needed, e.g. something like CETAF?

DR
responded CETAF too inward looking.

Call
deadlines are slipping dramatically. Calls still confidential, committees have
to meet twice more, expecting calls to be published Dec 13 but first close will
be Sep 14, VRC call close Jan 15. H2020 still deadlocked so dates might still
slip further.

In
practice likely to be a massive project, with individual WPs potentially being
the size of ViBRANT.

If
want to do something before then need to look at something eg DG-Env or
DG-Research.

Call
coming for cooperation between Europe and USA which could potentially be used.

Calls
for Open Access, open data, big data etc

8. Associated
projects

1. eMonocot –

Wrapping up, final products being released.
Finishes end of May

1. agINFRA

Simon will be meeting some people from
agINFRA (Antonella Picarella and Valeria Pesce, both in FAO) to discuss merging
agriDrupal into the Scratchpad codebase. The meeting will be lunchtime on
Monday 28 November.

1. BioVEL

A hackathon was run in the NHM with the
Manchester (Taverna) team that allowed BioVeL workflows to be run in a
Scratchpad (on our development server). We're invited to a follow-up meeting in
December.

1. EU-BON

No update provided

1. pro-iBiosphere

No update provided

1. LifeWatch

No update provided

9. AOB

Thanks
were extended to DR for his work chairing and as PM for ViBRANT.