Salzburg Research has decided to donate money/savings from our yearly christmas promotion-do to the so called “butterfly children”: more specifically, the idea was that we (as researchers) should support (other) researcher. See www.schmetterlingskinder.at and fotos.salzburgresearch.at.

Mag. Binder presented “governance in FTI policy. He presented some figures on R&D spending in Austria (2005).

Binder also mentioned that in the last 10 years, an evaluation culture has emerged in Austria. That is true, actually, I believe we are doing too many (or in a too short sequence) evaluations these days: if you think of competence centres, then the initial proposal is evaluated; you have an intermediate evaluation after 1.5 – 2 years already; another one after 4 years. As we all know, this is a substantial effort. I personally believe we are over target there.

Mag. Neurath then did an excellent presentation from the perspective of the Austrian Research Council. He also argued for a kind of “trial/testing” way of establishing research policy. His argument was that this would make room for new ideas/creativity. I have to say that I am personally not convinced by this approach: as a researcher (depending on public funding and research programmes), I have had some (too many?) experiences with not well designed/targeted programmes that cause a lot of headache. Once these programmes are up and in shape, I would not change them simply for reasons of “bringing in new ideas”.

This is the first entry in a blog on research policy, R&D issues in general and information and communication technology related news/questions. According to Technorati, this is one of 70.000 new blogs of today, this post is one of 700.000 posts today and this site is one of 34.3 Mio. blog sites overall.

Why then this blog? Well, first, my background is in hypermedia information systems so I have a natural relationship to new media (technologies). See a list of CVs; secondly, I came across an article by Jonathan Schwartz in the March 2006 issue of Harvard Business Manager, entitled “Wer bloggt, der führt/If you want to lead, blog”. Schwartz basically argues to outline a strategy and then start blogging yourself (i.e., do not have someone else blog for you). See also Johnathan’s Blogentry from November 29, 2005; thirdly, I want to keep a reference of thoughts/ideas/etc. related to my work life. And perhaps some people are willing to comment, discuss and give feedback.

To follow Johnathan’s advice, I argue my strategy to be as follows:

• Theme-wise I’ll focus on what I know, which is R&D in information systems; also, being head of research of Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, I’ll write about issues in research policy, e.g. Austria’s upcoming competence center programme (see the Austrian Research Promotion Agency for further details).
• I’ll not be writing about company details
• I’ll do my best to “be interesting”

BTW: I found Anton Zuiker’s “Blogging 101″ an excellent introduction to blogging.