Dear all, Today, Thursday, we received the formal message from the European Commission that our SynchroniCity IoT LSP project proposal has been successfully evaluated and invited to start "grant preparation". In short: We won. Congratulations, all. The efforts paid off. Now the real work begins. :) This message is to briefly inform you of the evaluation results and the next steps. There are some crucial actions which need to be taken in the coming days and weeks, so please read both the email and the attached documents thoroughly. Failure to meet the deadlines may lead to rejection of a partner or the entire proposal. So don't take it lightly. SynchroniCity is a complex beast; the wheels must turn smoothly. An invitation to start grant preparation is not a final acceptance. That happens when the grant is signed, and that has to happen within 3 months from today. The attached "Invitation letter" from the Head of the IoT unit, Mechthild Rohen, describes the steps. Before the grant can be signed, there are two formal milestones: 1. Submission of grant data & annexes: 6 weeks after receiving the letter. This gives us the opportunity to improve the Description of Action (DoA, our proposal and work plan), within the limits of the original proposal and the call text, and the obligation to fix gaps. I'll return to that. 2. Signature of the declaration of honour (DoH): 9 weeks after receiving the letter. This is the electronic signature by each partner that they are intending to move forward with the project as planned. As you are most likely aware, the Grant Agreement is between the Commission and the Coordinator (Aarhus University). So in addition, all partners must agree upon and sign a Consortium Agreement. The timing is such that the Consortium Agreement must usually be signed before the Grant Agreement, to ensure a firm legal foundation for the project. This all means that we must work quickly to move through the steps in a timely manner. SynchroniCity is part of the IoT Large Scale Pilots (LSPs), which consists of 5 LSPs. Furthermore, to coordinate across and support all 5 LSPs, there are 2 Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs), one technical and one focusing on co-creation. This means that some timing is foreseen to be synchronized :) with the entire IoT LSP project portfolio, including the kickoff month. We need more details and guidance from the Commission on this, but as for now, starting the project before January 2017 does not seem likely, given the complexity and syncing with the other projects. But we'll have to wait and see. As far as I have heard, the other LSPs and CSAs have SynchroniCity consortium partners and/or affiliates quite well represented. This should bode well for collaboration and synergies. As for the concrete project content, we got some brief feedback from the evaluation. I attach the Evaluation Summary Report (ESR). We got an overall score of 13,5 (5 for excellence, 4.5 for impact and 4 for implementation, with 5 being max), so quite OK -- and in any case the highest among the competition. The main concern raised in the ESR is the duration. The evaluators are skeptical that 27 months is enough, especially to allow for co-creation. We will have to discuss this as one of the main points when we propose improvements to the DoA. The rest is relatively minor stuff, mainly asking for greater detail in task descriptions and exploitation plans. So far, so good. In order to move the process forward, you will receive tomorrow, Friday, a follow-up email. It will ask you to provide updated information on your team and communication preferences, including your availability for a preparatory call in the date range August 9-11 (Tuesday-Thursday). There will be separate mailing lists for project content, admin and legal stuff. July is vacation time in Northern Europe, and August is marking the main vacation time in Southern countries and elsewhere, so I understand that some teams aren't fully operational. However, it is crucially important that you join the conversation in the coming weeks, since we will have a process where we will take non-trivial decisions, e.g. regarding project duration. We will make sure the process is run as well-prepared, documented and smoothly as possible, but it will be impossible to accomodate last minute requests. Also, we do have experience from similar processes, including the legal side of things, and this experience tells us that many issues will be resolved swiftly and constructively, while we still need to allow time to sort out whatever outstanding issues. I therefore encourage you to activate your admin and legal teams immediately so that we can start working right away and be upfront about any preferences. I'm confident that we will find the right balances. Your first task is to go through the proposal again, and note suggestions for improvements. We will set up a structured process to collect and assess them. There are some clerical erros that our internal checks have already found, but we have all become wiser since we put in the proposal in April, so let's see what comes up. That is all for now. I'm sorry for the late notice -- I spent the day, virtually, alas, in Brazil where our Portuguese colleagues in the SynchroniCity consortium are hosting the Beyond 2020 Conference. And while a colleague was there physically representing OASC, I did have the opportunity to say a few words to the audience, including breaking the good news the SynchroniCity is coming. It felt really good. I'm looking so much forward to working with you on this. Thanks for all your efforts, and faith, in our fruitful collaboration. Best, Martin -- Martin Brynskov, Ph.D. Associate professor, interaction technologies Aarhus University Chair, Open & Agile Smart Cities // oascities.org Research director, AU Smart Cities // smartcities.au.dk Director, Digital Design Lab // ddlab.dk Participatory IT Centre // Digital Urban Living // CAVI Tel. (+45) 3068 0424 More info: http://au.dk/en/brynskov@cavi -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Invitation Letter including the information out of ranking-2.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 148924 bytes Desc: Invitation Letter including the information out of ranking-2.pdf URL: <https://lists.fiware.org/private/fiware-oasc-iot-lsp-cities/attachments/20160729/4b7a44ec/attachment.pdf> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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