Is ATHENA in Rome?
Tomorrow I am off to Rome to a meeting of the ATHENA project. So what happens at one of these?
This meeting will be the second in series of plenary meetings aimed at building a sense team for the project. For those partners who work for organisations that are not work package leaders like us it is probably one of the few opportunities for them to really feel that they belong.
For those who are not familiar with EC-funded ‘project speak’ here is a brief outline of the terms:
- Project – A discrete piece of work, with clear deliverables, and carried out to fixed timetable. Funding for projects is never 100%. ATHENA has 80% funding.
- Work package – A division of a project dealing with part of the project. Projects always have work packages associated with management of the project and the dissemination of the project. Work packages do not stand alone they usually are closely related to one another.
- Co-ordinator – The project partner who is responsible for the overall management of the project, especially the financial management and relationship with the Commission.
- Work package leader – the partner organisation responsible for the leadership of a work package: doing a lot of the work and creating the deliverables associated with it. Unusually the ATHENA project has two organisations leading work packages.
- Deliverable – A concrete result of the project. These can be reports, systems, demonstrators, or ‘other’. The can also be limited in their dissemination or totally available for the public. The quality of the deliverables is the major measure of a projects success and is reviewed regularly by the Commission. The first deliverable which Collections Trust will create is a report on the use of standards in European museum. This will be based on a survey that we are carrying out.
The major reason for me going to Rome is to get feedback from partners on the survey we have designed and to make sure it is clear what they have to do to complete th work in the very short time available in the project plan.
BTW although this overseas travel might sound glamerous a lot of the time is spent in offices listeninng to presentations and having discussions!
Tags: EC-funded projects
