Date: 16th January 2013

Start: 10:00 GMT

Duration: 2 hours

Meeting 9 : Agenda

1. Apologies for absence

2. Actions from last meeting

3. Project Co-ordinator's report

4. Workpackage summaries [WP leaders]:

   Please be brief in this section and only report on things that have come up since your Annual Report summary. We have a lot to get through in this meeting!

   1. Progress highlights;
   2. Milestones; highlighting new milestones & milestones overdue
   3. Interdependencies with other WPs; how are we managing (inevitable) changes to workplans and the knock-on changes that are entailed
   4. Deviations from budget;
   5. Deviations from the Workplan.

    

5. Budget report

   This will include the budget underspend projected at the end of last year.

6. Year 2 Report

7. Final Project Meeting

8. Technical workshops

Topic	Organiser	Location	Date	Status
Workshop on data visualization & mapping for biodiversity informatics	Javier de la Torre	Madrid	November 12	Taken place
Workshop on RefBank/RefFinder	Lyubo Penev	Sofia	Autumn 12/Spring 13	Proposed
Workshop on PWT/BDJ	Lyubo Penev	Sofia	Autumn 12/Spring 13	Proposed
Workshop on the nature and structure of the biodiversity research field	Peter van den Besselaar	?	?	Proposed
Literature mining and markup using OBOE	David Morse	Oxford	Winter 12	Proposed
Text mining and markup with agINFRA and BioVeL	David Morse	Athens	January 13	Proposed
Workshop with JEMU on phylogenetics in Scratchpads	Thierry Backeljau	Brussels	?	Proposed

 

9. Travel plans

ViBRANT can fund partners to travel outside Europe only if they are presenting. We need to apply to the Commission explicitly for permission. We expect all conferences for which ViBRANT funding is used to e listed on the web site. It will be used to build next year's annual report. Specifically, meetings need to be included under 'Presentations' under the 'outputs' tab.

10. Follow-on grants

11. Biodiversity Informatics White Paper

The paper was submitted to BMC Ecology. Alex and I are dealing with referee's comments now.

12. Associated projects

    1. eMonocot
    2. agINFRA
    3. BioVEL
    4. EU-BON
    5. pro-iBiosphere
    6. LifeWatch

 

13. External links

Links to external projects are now on the web site. This item is an opportunity to discuss the appropriateness of including any particular link.

14. Future meeting dates

    1. 17 April 2013 from 10:00 to 12:00
    2. 17 July 2013 from 10:00 to 12:00
    3. 16 October 2013 from 10:00 to 12:00 to 17 October at 12:00




15. Any other business

Actions

Delegates

Minutes

1. Apologies

None

2. Actions from last meeting

1. Integration of Ecological analysis tools – CA to discuss with NC

   Discussion has taken place and ongoing

2. YdJ to add CA and LP to BioVel mailing list

   No update provided (YdJ joined meeting late)

3. Everyone to add text to future milestones

   DR reminded all to add text to clarify milestone.

   Action - All to add text before submission of the report to the reviewers on 24 January 2013

4. CA to provide paragraph outlining reasons for drop in number of COMBER users (CA)

   Done

5. Plan a significant launch of Bibliography of Life mid-late 2013
   Launch will be attached to another conference. It will be aimed to access a wider audience than that of TDWG.
   Action – Plan launch of Bibliography of Life mid-late 2013 (DM)
6. Liaise with DR on interpretation and presentation of D6.2 (LP)
   Done
7. TB to upload new description of D3.2 to website

   Description not changed after all – delivered.

8. SR to change deadline of M2.16 and add justification to website

   Deadline changed and has now been delivered

   Action – Add justification of change of deadline (SR)

9. LR to check UOxf admin email address

   Done.

10. LR to remind admin group of financial reporting deadlines

    Done

11. DR & LR to get a formal view of allowable costs

    Done. Running costs of institution are not eligible; they are covered in the indirect costs.

12. Everybody to send ideas for budget redistribution to the Management Team

    Done (see Section 5)

13. DR to contact Javier to discuss extending CartoDB

    Done.

14. DR to circulate URL for startup page of NPT

    Done.

15. LP to set up a promotion meeting for PWT/BDJ

    A large professional event is to be arranged. Logistical support and timing needs to be considered. March 2013 is not feasible.

    Action – Organise promotion of PWT/BDJ (LP & VS)

16. DM to arrange workshop on bibliographic services

    Will be scheduled to run alongside AgInfra internal meetings.

    Action – Circulate workshop details to ViBRANT partners (DM)

17. Everyone to suggest workshop ideas for integration and user services

    There is a need to attract people who wouldn’t otherwise use ontologies. No ideas yet to attract a more general audience.

    Action – Send YdJ any suggestions significantly outside the TDWG community (All)

18. DR to circulate final meeting options to all partners

    Done (see Section 7)

3. Project Coordinator’s report

Thanks were expressed, particularly to WP leaders for submitting text for the annual report, which looks very impressive.

There is no news on the possibility of successor grants to ViBRANT. The EU has not yet signed off on the budget for Horizon 2020 so the future is still uncertain.

Two key meetings (invitation only) will be held in March that VS & DR will be attending:

• eConcertation meeting (6/7 March)
• LifeWatch meeting (19/20 March)

Need to push for impact (measured by increased engagement), sustainability of key products and cross-WP activities.

DR will be writing the deliverable on sustainability (D2.3, due 31/5/13) and will be contacting various people about cost estimates in the spring.

Presenting ViBRANT at specialist meetings, taxonomic or computer science, that partners might be attending is a good way way to promote general activities. It was suggested that promotional videos could be produced. Costs for a suitably professional product may, however, be prohibitive and concern was voiced that the design would have to be carefully considered so that the video did not become outdated too quickly.

Action – Consider outreach and product demos in video format (TB)

4. Workpackage Updates

WP2: Ben Scott is has been lost to the project, being employed by the NHM as a result of recent restructuring. Alice Heaton will taking over his role. She has been working on a publication tool with Pensoft that is now ready for testing. Some external services have been integrated into Scratchpads. Working with NC on integrating OBOE outputs into Scratchpads with the view to have something to demo at the 2nd year review.

WP3: 2013 courses have been announces and more are being planned. Grants are being provided to Ambassadors who organise training courses to cover some basic costs.

M3.3 might need to be revised but no contact has been had from Peter van den Besselaar.

Action – increase contact with Peter van den Besselaar to get a concrete work plan (TB)

Daphne Duin has left VU and a replacement is being sought.

Action – Contact TB about training for products (All)

TB will keep Laurence and Dimitris at NHM informed.

WP4: Need to discuss pipelining with WP2. Developing import/export tools. Focusing on performance of these tools this year.

There is a need to consider the roles of different platforms within the broader picture, and the role of ViBRANT index (not seen).

Action – Discussions with WP2 to clarify allocation of tasks (YdJ)

Need to consider how to engage the broader community with ontologies. Initially work closely with a community who are already ‘believers’ where ViBRANT has a direct connection and use this to act as a foundation to move forward with other communities.

There is potential for a brief publication on ontologies.

Action – Contact Regine regarding engagement of communities with XPer2 (YdJ)

WP5: CartoDB being installed on local services at UOxf and integrating OBOE services with Scratchpads.

GoldenGate service is now available with Scratchpad integration.

On track for development of one niche-modelling tool per month. The next due date is the end of January but this may be delayed to mid-February.

Integration of OBOE and Scratchpads is a key goal.

WP6: Final phase of BDJ and PWT is ongoing and available on beta-versions. Deadline for completion end of January. BDJ will be available from February. A lot of interest has been shown so far.

Considering RefFinder and the integration with RefBank and Bibliography of Life. Videos are being planned on PWT and BDJ. Companies are currently being scoped.

It was proposed that Isa would act as a central reference for video production companies that might be used for promotion.

Action – Send suggestions for and experience with video companies to Isa (All)

The Committee agreed that there are two discrete audiences for which different video formats would be appropriate: high level promotion; and users, to show functionality. The GeoCat video http//vimeo.com/22739331 on the Vizzuality website http//vizzuality.com/projects/rlat provides an excellent example of a high level promotional video.

WP7: Have been communicating with WhistleDown who produce primarily radio and audio.

Action – Pass details of WhistleDown to Isa (DM)

Started filling the gaps for Year 3. Working with WP2 on RefBank integration with Scratchpads, and WP6 on ReFinder.

There is an opportunity for WP7 to work with WP4 in Year 3 to mobilise, through the use of relevant ontologies, the output of the text mining work that WP7 is doing. This could build upon the principles established by the agINFRA project. The recent Annual Review meeting of the agINFRA project included a demonstration of ontologies and using OAI to exploit them (see for example http://traglor.cu.edu.tr/oai/oai.aspx?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc).

WP8: There has been movement in the EU for citizen science projects and a workshop is being held.

Data about to be submitted to BDJ.

In Year 3 the intention is to expand COMBER.

Considering sustainability there is a potential customer in LifeWatch for some activities of BDJ.

Action – bring up the link between BDJ and LifeWatch at the March meeting (CA)

Will be publishing datasets in BDJ.

5. Financial update

Most financial reports have now been received. UOxf, VU and UNITS have yet to submit. LR is checking and following up with any queries.

Action – Chase up delinquent financial reports (LR)

YdJ has left UvA. The intention is to employ him at RBINS for the remainder of the project and the budget will be transferred. UvA were asked if they would be making any retrospective claims; no response has been received so will not receive any further funds.

Action – Coordinate transfer of funds to support YdJ in RBINS (DR, LR, TB, YdJ)

Overspend in other partners to be discussed with the individual partners.

Action - Resolve spending plans with partners and establish sum for redistribution (LR)

MfN has underpent. Alexander has no other ideas for the final year other than citizen science meeting. €6.6k remaining which could go towards producing outreach videos.

Action - Discuss with Alexander potential Y3 activities (DR)

VU & OU are projected to underspend at the end of the project but definitive figures have not been received.

Action – Check VU & OU figures (LR)

UdlR is predicted to be underspent by €15k.

Action - Discuss with Noël potential Y3 activities (DR)

Currently the project is predicted to be underspent by c.€80k at the end of Year 3.

Following the e-mail discussion within the Management Committee, additional funding approved for HCMR (COMBER extension) and any residual funds will be used for BDJ promotion and GeoCat migration.

iKeys++ was considered to be a demonstration on which we could not capitalise at this stage in the project so. It would also have required all of the budget potentially available, so was rejected.

Action – Circulate final figures once budgets finalised (LR)

6. Year 2 report

The Year 2 report has been circulated and demonstrates an impressive body of work. It will be submitted to the reviewers and Commission on 24 January 2013.

Action – Check sections and respond by Friday 18 January (WP leaders)

Action – Make sure all partners have their list of presentations on the web site up to date and complete (All partners)

The Desk Officer wanted all partners to be represented at the Review. A compromise was reached with all WP leaders, Gregor Hagedorn and Guido Sautter. Eamonn O Tuama and Peter van den Besselaar have also been invited.

Presentations must be no more than 10 minutes long and use a maximum of 6 slides. The timetable is very tight so it is imperative that WP leaders stick to this limit.

VS will pick highlights from each WP and present a brief financial summary in the opening presentation.

Action – Slides to be submitted to DR by Friday 1 February (WP leaders)

Most people will be joining the NHM team for dinner the night before the review: final preparations and discussions will take place then.

Action – Print slides for reviewers (LR)

There will be a software demonstration during the review that DR will set up at lunchtime. The idea is to have a browser with lots of tabs demonstrating different ViBRANT products. With only 20 minutes, we will demo 4 projects: Scratchpads; BDJ; OBOE; COMBER at 5 minutes each

Action – Send a few URLs for product demo to DR by Monday 4th Feb (SR, LP, NC CA)

7. Final project meeting

CA contacted Alberto who will contact DR. The final project meeting will probably work with LifeWatch, BioVeL, AgInfra etc. The date needs to be finalised.

Action – Follow up with Alberto (CA)

Action – Work with Alberto and other project coordinators to agree date, plan programme and make logistical arrangements (DR)

8. Technical workshops

The proposed workshops need to be firmed up. More ideas are welcome.

Action - Contact proposers, establish timetables for proposed workshops (DR)

9. Travel plans

Action – Follow up permissions for International Polychaete meeting in Australia for CA and NC (LR)

10. Follow-on grants

No update

11. Biodiversity Informatics White Paper

Submitted to BMC Ecology and referees comments are being dealt with. Should be finished by the end of the week (18 January 2013)

12. Associated projects

1. eMonocot – Connected with WP4. Looking towards developing a proposal on global floras using Scratchpads
2. agINFRA – review successful. Grid infrastructure is complete so focus will shift to services now. Plan to have several internal workshops and full project meeting in May. There is the potential to bring some ViBRANT people in to build cross-project links.
3. BioVEL – planned link with ViBRANT and BioVEL workflows. Workshop on OBOE services to be planned and include BioVEL. Had a successful first year review. It was suggested that workshops could be brought to the final meeting.
4. EU-BON – kick-off meeting scheduled for mid-February 2013. Can link with data publishing . NHM have a very small role. Symposium on bioinformatics 11-12 February 2013, the same time as pro-iBiosphere. Anke Hoffmann is coordinating presentations.

Action – Contact Anke Hoffmann regarding presenting ViBRANT (CA)

Action – Ask Dimitris to coordinate slides and send to CA (VS)

5. LifeWatch – already covered. ViBRANT integration with LifeWatch is very positive.

13. External links

No comments

14. Future meeting dates

Next meeting 17 April 2013

15. AOB

None