Steering Committee meeting before the 1st Project Review

Participants

A framadate poll was created

Were present on the steering committee day:

Nicolas THIERY; Benoît PILORGET; Erik BRAY; Viviane PONS; Vincent DELECROIX; Michael KOHLHASE; Dennis MUELLER; Florian RABE; Tom WIESING; Clément PERNET; Wolfram DECKER; William HART; Dmitrii PASECHNIK; Marcin KOSTUR; Mike CROUCHER; Hans FANGOHR; Olexandr KONOVALOV; Stephen LINTON; Luca DE FEO; John CREMONA; Paul-Olivier DEHAYE; Benjamin RAGAN-KELLEY; Jeroen DEMEYER; Konrad HINSEN

Agenda

Minutes

Second amendment to the Grant

Benoît Pilorget (BP) announced that the Second Amendment should be over in April-May. All the modifications concerning deliverables and the scientific context were accepted. The remaining blocking points were purely administrative and require some time. At the moment these notes are being written (19/05/2017), the Commission seems to have fully agreed on all terms and is about to sign the amendment.

Related to this amendment, the consortium expressed their congratulations to Hans Fangohr (HF) for his new position at XFEL, in Hamburg. All points of the amendment can be found on the github issue #193

WP7: overview of the situation and of the measures taken and to be planned:

An open brainstorming session took place. Resulting from the retirement of Ursula Martin, it appears that some aspects of WP7 that require research-grade expertise in sociology will be hardly achievable as it is organised today with the current consortium. Therefore solutions must be found so that we don’t just tick the boxes but actually deliver high quality material.

Several options have been discussed:

1) Hire new staff specialised in sociology or likewise field. This solution would probably lead to the transfer of some funding within the consortium, unless it turns out enough Person-Months are planned at UOXF

2) Subcontract the planned work not feasible. For this solution to work out, one must find an adequate subcontractor (providing enough funds are available within UOXF or the consortium) and sign an amendment to the Grant with the Commission

3) Rethink the scientific content (objectives, tasks, deliverables), to take into account all we have learned since the writing of the proposal, and make the best use of the available ressources and consortium expertise. This of course would require a negotiation with the EU and probably a new amendment to the grant agreement.

The consortium is expecting official feedback from the Project Officer and reviewers after the formal review. In the meantime, the Coordinator and Principal Investigators of WP7 will be informally brainstorming all possibilities. Were an amendment necessary, it will be written after the current amendment for the addition of FAU Erlangen and XFEL is signed by the Commission.

Overview of the deliverables due for M18 and 24

After a tour de table, the Coordinator ensured that all deliverables due for Month 24 (31/08/2017) have a leader and a definite working plan.

Best practice for the Project Review:

BP reminded the consortium of the support slides for the Review that were presentend at the Edinburgh steering committee meeting.

Feedback from the Quality Review Board

HF, the chair of the Quality Review Board (QRB), expressed rough positive feedback from the first QRB meeting. A full report will be made available for all participants.

Project Meetings Project reviews

<