Last week the small town of Noordwijkerhout was home to the general kick-off of the Dutch national COMMIT programme. We joined representatives from 76 partner institutions at the two-day event to get to know our peers and the wide range of research topics they all work on.
The kick-off consisted of an intensely interactive program with many discussions between different projects, aimed at highlighting opportunities for cooperation. On the first day Arnold Smeulders introduced the opportunities and challenges presented by COMMIT. Each of the 15 projects gave a short elevator pitch summarizing their project, and gave a taste of what they were working on. After this EIT-ICT Labs director Willem Jonker presented opportunities for EU-wide cooperation - important for the archive research work that our R&D department does as we operate both in national and international settings. The first day concluded with a brainstorming session for 'Golden demos' that highlight the strengths of multiple projects. Hopefully we'll see some of the ideas that were generated in this session back as implemented demos within the COMMIT program.
On the second day there was a variety of workshops to choose from in the morning session. These included an interesting and productive workshop on 'Communicating Complex Ideas' organized by Lost Boys Amsterdam. In another workshop, Frank Kresin from the WAAG society defended his argument that 'disseminating' the results of your research (i.e. telling people outside of your professional network what you're working on) has in today's linked society become a part of the research itself. In the same spirit, we'll be telling more about the outcomes of the project on the COMMIT website... and on this blog.
COMMIT and Sound & Vision
COMMIT is a public-private research community solving grand challenges in in information and communication science and its foundation is aimed at stimulating the European knowledge economy. The COMMIT umbrella covers 15 research projects that range from Sensor Networks for Public Safety to Socially Enriched Access to Linked Cultural Media to an e-Foodlab. They incorporate many types of data such as sensor data, text and numeric content, web material, and audiovisual programming. The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision is involved in two of these projects, namely SEALINCmedia (short for "Socially Enriched Access to Linked Cultural Media") and Information retrieval for information services.
LINKS
- About COMMIT/: http://www.commit-nl.nl/about-commit
- The full programme of the kick-off meeting [PDF]
- Blog: COMMIT/ - The Start of the Story by Paul Groth - 21st March 2012
- Blog: First Assembly Meeting of the FES-COMMIT SEALINCmedia Project by Evelien Wolda - 14th September 2011