At ICWE 2010, Martin Gaedke organised a panel on “How to Successfully Teach Web Engineering?“. The panelists where Fabio Casati, Yogesh Deshpande and myself. See the following pictures of the panel:
More photos are available at http://icwe2010.webengineering.org/Conference/photos.aspx.
After a short introduction, we mainly discussed the following two questions: (1) if you would have a chance to study “Web Engineering” today, where would you do that? (2) If you were in a position to hire Web Engineers, where would you require your students from and what profile would you expect?
My personal message I take home from this panel: perhaps we are trying to much too educate “miracle-students”. From my experience at Salzburg Research I know that Web Engineering, i.e., the systematic development of Web applications, is a truly interdisciplinary task. But it is not the people/researchers as single individuals that are of interdisciplinary nature, it is the teams that are interdisciplinary: so I guess we must not aim at establishing curricula that teach everything from Web technologies, via Web science, design, information architecture, etc. That will be too much for one (single) curriculum and also, it will be unfocused and there students would have a hard time to get a job. What we need is a set of complimentary curricula, e.g., technical engineers, information architects, etc.
August 8th, 2010
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I happened to co-organise (together with Birgit Pröll and Martin Gaedke) the 1st International Educators’ Day on Web Engineering Curricula (WECU 2010 – see http://wecu.webengineering.org/2010/) in conjunction with ICWE 2010 in Vienna, see http://icwe2010.webengineering.org/.
Ralf Gerstner, from Springer Verlag in Heidelberg, gave an interesting talk about liquid books. The idea, put simply, is that for publishers like Springer, there is “something” in between the traditional, high quality and longer term printed book publishing and the creative-commons, all-free bottom-up way of publishing in a wiki. They refer to it as the “liquid book”.
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See http://liquidpub.org/ for more information. Interestingly, as presented by Gerstner, there are commonalities between traditional software engineering and the way web applications are engineered today (i.e., Web Engineering). |
E.g., for liquid books there are
- low barriers / short time to market.
- agile development
- new credit attribution rules less constraints
- …
July 12th, 2010
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From May 20-21 EARTO held its annual conference in Gothenborg. Amongst the many excellent presentations, secretary general Chris Hull addressed in his talk “the Grand Challenges: The Essential Contribution of Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs)”. The following shows a slide (presented also at other occasions) which I believe reflects in an excellent way the development of the European Framework Programme. Here it is (copyright Christopher John Hull):
The image expresses IMHO very well how the framework programmes changed – at least during the last 10 years – from a perspective of individual (and co-funded) projects, towards increasingly policy driven initiatives with the idea of making a bigger impact (by larger initiatives such as IPs or by including the member states with Article 169 initiatives, by joint programming, etc.).
I would like to add a second slide that shows involvement of some key Austrian RTOs (AIT, JR, SRFG) in the Framework Programme (the slide has been presented by Klaus Pseiner, FFG):
The slide shows the European participation (in red/orange) and the national participation (in green) of core Austrian RTOs (research and technology organisations). As can be seen from the slide, there is an increase in national participation (for various reasons) and a decrease – at least the last years – in participation in European programmes. One obvious reason for that is the increasing competition through a grown EU; also the year 2003 was an all-time high; there were many national programmes been set-up in Austria; etc. But after all, I would assume, that participation in European framework programmes simply has increased in complexity (not to mention administrative issues). BTW: I should add that Salzburg Research’s participation in FPs has over the years been slightly increasing in absolute figures (1,04 Mio. in 2004 to 1,39 Mio. in 2009); however, we had a bigger growth in our other activities, which means that the relative portion of the framework programmes at Salzburg Research has declined to about 20% in 2009, which is still an excellent value, I believe.
I would assume that if this trend continuous, FP8 will be even more complex: grand challenges will need to be addressed, a closer cooperation between science and industry is requested, national initiatives will be synched, etc. How this fits to the overall wish of fewer administration, reporting, etc. is an open issue.
Amongst the wishes I have for FP8: one should introduce a reputation system. I.e., those organisations (or units thereof) who have a long track record should be able to earn brownie points for that.
May 29th, 2010
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… together with nic.at (Austria’s Internet Registry), we organised the so-called 4th “IT-Businesstalk“. Alex Mayerhofer (nic.at) gave an excellent presentation on how standards on the Internet emerge. I would like to share slide No. 2 of his presentation (the presentation can be found at http://www.it-businesstalk.at/fileadmin/www.it-businesstalk.at/praesentationen/event4/Alex-MayrhoferIETF_Nicat.pdf).
Here is slide No. 2:
Would you guess what this map represents?
- Broadband availability?
- Percentage of the population connected to the Internet?
- Standards for plugs?
It is amazing, the correct answer is (3): it is standards for plugs!
The image and further information is available at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Länderübersicht_Steckertypen,_Netzspannungen_und_-frequenzen.
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Here, there is map on voltage: it is already amazingly coloured, i.e. “non-interoperable”. |
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And one on plugs: and that one is pretty coloured (15 different plugs sizes/formats)! |
And in Software Engineering we often argue that hardware “is easy” and it is the software that’s the source for heterogeneity …
March 6th, 2010
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Trust Researchers is a declaration to the attention of the European Council of Ministers and the Parliament.
The background (text taken from the declaration at http://www.trust-researchers.eu/index.php?file=background.htm):
“Currently research is funded according to many input oriented indicators.
At present the financial regulation – the relevant legal funding framework – treats research in similar way as procurement processes for any goods.
This condition is unsatisfying for researchers, research organisations and the European Community as a whole. It hinders the development of ground-breaking results through ineffective research funding.
The funding of European research should be based on trust. Today European researchers face many red tape and cumbersome financial regulations. We are not against rules. Rules are important and accountability is essential. However, research has to be funded in recognition of the nature of research, thus, the financial regulation and associated rules have to be adapted to primarily output oriented objectives and to conditions creating a transparent justification of costs.
What we need is a change in philosophy! ”
Interestingly, Austria currently leads with respect to the number of signees: see the excerpt form the official web site (http://www.trust-researchers.eu/index.php?file=background.htm) as of today (March 2nd, 2010) on the left. The right figure displays the list of countries in descending order:
At present, 3767 people have signed (March 2nd, 2010).
March 2nd, 2010
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I happened to participate in a discussion organised by FFG (Andrea Höglinger and Sabine Herlitschka) on the evaluation of the European Framework Programmes. The (excellent) presentation was given by Peter Fisch (head of unit A3 Evaluation and monitoring of programmes in directorate Inter-institutional and legal matters – Framework programme). The powerpoints are available here (only the first slide is in German).
Interestingly, previous framework programmes (i.e., before FP7) were characterised by “ad hoc” evaluations, i.e., did not really have a systematic monitoring. Then, some impressive figures about the size were presented:
- 25.000 proposals (!) have been received for the years 2007 and 2008 with 160.000 applicants
- 5.500 proposals where retained, 35.000 participants
- SME participation is down to 15.5% (side issue here: in FP7 SME participation is measured after the financial viability check. As a consequence SME participation rate went down one third compared to previous evaluations where SME participation has been measured on the basis of the data provided by participants themselves when submitting the proposal).
FP7 is a mass business!
Some key findings were presented concerning the ex-post evaluation of FP6 (report of Feb. 2009 available). The core message: the achievements overall had a positive balance (i.e., network building was good, project results were good, etc.), the design of FP6 was “mixed” and finally, in the implementation there was “room for improvement”. Recommendations (amongst others): more bottom-up funding, administrative overhaul, etc.
For FP8 this means that there could be new lines of action (Grand challenges = top down, and Great Ideas = bottom up), a significantly higher budget as well as European excellence through global collaboration and competition.
The following figure (taken from the presentation) shows that the IST programme is the only part with a significant role for industry (the blue bubbles):
The following slide shows the central actors: it’s mostly universities, industry is only at the bottom of the list (Telefonica and France Telecom, both big players):
There is many more other interesting figures and data in the presentation!
Finally, the interim evaluation of FP7 will be available by Oct. 2010.
To me, FP6 (at least) was not for industry but mainly for universities and RTOs. In general, networks effects, publications, etc. seem to be well achieved. So let’s hope (and contribute) for a less-administrative and more industry-oriented FP8 (perhaps also with closer links between research programme and innovation-related activities)!
January 18th, 2010
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Together with Markus Lassnig (head of e-motion competence centre for ICT in the tourism- and leisure-industries) we edited an HMD special issue on eTourism.
„Experience Economy“ is a term to describe a phenomenon in our society, which describes that the experience itself is being made a product. Tourism is one of the branches that takes the role of the dream factory. And because tourism is information intensive it makes heavy use of information and communication technologies.
This special issue has two types of contributions
- on the one hand, we have socio-economic papers that explain the cultural and societal backgrounds and provide facts and figures;
- on the other hand, we have technical contributions which are showcases of knowledge-based systems that explain the state-of-the-art of advanced IS systems.
See http://hmd.dpunkt.de/270/ for further details.
December 21st, 2009
admin
The image above shows the average yearly funding in Mrd. EUR (2.5 for FP5, 3.4 for FP6 and 7 for FP7 sofar) vs. number of projects funded.
There is a short, well written article in research eu, issue June 2009 (unfortunately it is not yet available online at http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-eu/index_de.html). The article is about the development of the European Framework Programms, it is written by Didier Buysse.
The main findings are:
- Over the years, the average annual funding was steadily increased. In FP5 (1998-2002) we talk about 2.5 Mrd. EUR per year, in FP6 (2002-2006) 3.4 Mrd. EUR and in FP7 (2007-2013) sofar 5.7 Mrd. EUR.
- At the same time the competition has heavily increased, we are now talking acceptance rates of about 20-25% across the whole programme (depending on the subject this may even be lower, e.g. ICT in Austria on average has an acceptance rate of 17% in FP7).
- The ambition of the Commission in FP6 and FP7 is to “think big”, i.e., have most of the money being spent in a few projects (this is what integrated projects do/should be doing; actually they cover about for instance 40% of the FP6 budget); also networks of excellence aim at clustering European research expertise to get higher critical masses; at the same time the smaller initiatives should not be neglected.
- The highest competition is in the human mobility programme (less than 20% on average)
- The biggest group amongst the players (about 50000) are the universities and public research labs (they build 2/3 of all participating parties).
- Public-private partnership is strengthened in FP7 with the Joint-technology-initiatives
On a personal note I believe that European research programmes (and the participation therein) are an established method/tool in doing (excellent) applied research. On the negative side, competition on the hand but also auditing on the other hand have increased dramatically, which overall makes the European research programmes less attractive than the used to be. Note on that: the issue in increased competition ist not the competition as such: this is a “healthy” element to ensure quality. However, if the acceptance rates go under 10% the gambling factor simply is too high.
September 13th, 2009
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This days, the advanced networking centre (ANC) of Salzburg Research is organising a Workshop on “SECIT – Security IT”. This is a joint undertaking with UPT Timisoara, Rumania.
Our main idea is to join forces concerning evacuation scenarios: UPT for instance, offers know-how in the domain of object recognition, i.e., they can count the number of people by anlysing videos; companies such as Flexit, are looking for software (and know-how) that helps them developing smart evacuation systems; Salzburg Research/ANC offers know-how by developing models that combine object recognition techniques and evacuation needs and thus helps in linking knowledge from basic research with applied research. The following figure is adapted from a slide from TNO and tries to symbolise these relationships:
Also, I learned that data fusion is the technique that combines data from multiple sources in order to obtain satisfying results. Often, pure object recognition techniques are not sufficient, hence, one needs to combine various data sources (with varying degrees of trust and reliability).
August 25th, 2009
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… with Prof. Sissi Closs as Keynote Speaker.
She started her carrier by studying computer science at the University of Munich. Interesting to see that she came to research because she wanted to do dance courses and Siemens Munich was the only employer that offered flexible working hours at that time (that was in the seventies), so that she could do her dance courses (and work part-time). IMHO an excellent example how flexible working hours are part of a good habitat for acquiring young researchers!
She founded “COMET-Computer” which focuses on technical documentation (not just the technical part, but of course this domain is very technology centric). Naturally, COMET offers flexible working hours.
She argues for the necessity of role models to attract other female students/researchers/etc. And, of course, it is important that women are equally represented on the management (board) level.
News coverage (in German) is available at http://www.salzburg.gv.at/lkorr-meldung?nachrid=43449. And, most important: the ditact summer school is online at http://www.ditact.ac.at/.
August 24th, 2009
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