Objectives and activities of the small project PLATFORM - Autoclusters

„The international cooperative network of educational and research institution with subcontractors and other bodies active in Automotive Industry“

Objectives and activities of the small project PLATFORM

We will target Researchers, engineers, students, industrial partners, government delegates and all relevant stakeholders from SEE area in order to invite them to discuss on-line and exchange ideas about the future and viability of the transportation and automotive industry domain.
We will promote the achievements of young researchers through the on-line students competition and virtual exhibition of the selected students innovative projects.
Partners will disseminate the results of their EU and national projects and link them to possible implementations in industry or for better shaping of regioanal economic and transport policies.
The platform will link AUTOCLUSTERS project, all partners to the experts group in transportation of the European Alliance for Innovation to give a pan-European outreach and larger area for dissemination.
5.platform

PA1 - Portal specification elaboration

Description:
The specification requirements shall be based on the fact that the automotive transportation portal will be set to let the community exchange/access information and benefit from numerous services.
Modern web 2.0 technologies will provide concrete tools for the platform, such as chat, wikis, forum, SaaS document management system to foster the bottom-up participation to innovation activities by enabling better visibility for individual projects and reach an audience that has the expertise that otherwise individual participant is missing in order to succeed.
Each partner will have a staff member with technical and or marketing/communications background to shape the specification of the portal.

Output and remarks:
The expected outputs for this activity were Portal Specifications. In line with deadlines, the first level of specifications has been developed through PPs negotiations and agreement during the Project Meeting in Trento, the 22nd of February 2011. At this point, the platform was decided to be part of the new European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) Web 1.0 portal.
Two more steps were used to better identify the core characters of the Platform:
•    PPs agreement at Sibenik project meeting (end of June 2011): it was decided to investigate the passage into the – under development – new EAI Web 2.0 portal.
•    Document “EAI Portal Integration” circulated to partners (29 July 2011):

PA2 - Testing and official launch of the portal

Description:
This activity is necessary from the technical point of view and in order to improve the features from the marketing/communication point of view. The link with the AUTOCLUSTERS project and SEE programme shall be tested as well to be in-line with the SEE Programme communication requirements.
All partners will provide opinion, remarks, suggestions during the testing in order to improve if necessary the portal

Output and remarks:
The expected output for this activity was an efficient and technically operative portal established. It has been implemented with some delay, but with the awareness of the fact that we worked for a better platform that will support the project community at it best:
•    1st version (web 1.0) in Spring 2011
•    2nd version (web 2.0) in November 2011, by following the requirements presented/discussed during the project meeting in Sibenik and later.

PA3 - On-line Students competition and awards

Description:
In order to implement this activity partners will:
•    Set up a judges’ panel from volunteers to review the submitted papers and innovations from students, using the portal;
•    Ensure that the winner(s) are recognized with an interview, or video/demo of their project on the portal space;
•    Announce the winner(s) during the ISVCS 2011 Conference (t.b.c. with EAI);
•    Find sponsorship opportunities for the Student Innovation Competition to allow the students participate in the ISVCS2011 conference.
Each PP will be involved in the mentioned activies and where necessary will invite Experts.
Output and remarks:
The expected output for this activity was the students’ projects presentations on the portal. Within the deadlines we performed the following tasks:
•    Master and Bachelor Students Competition launched online the 31st/5/11 for Italian, Slovak and Romanian students:
o    On the EAI portal: http://eai.eu/sib-gw/autoclusters-master-competition
o    On countries’ specific portals:
Italy: http://disi.unitn.it/announcements/200
Slovakia: http://www.mtf.stuba.sk/generate_page.php?page_id=6829
Romania: http://www.autoclusters.tuiasi.ro/
•    Defined the judges panel and procedures: June 2011;
•    Winners announcement:
o    online (1/11/11) with posters linked
http://eai.eu/sib-gw/students-competitions-on-Innovation-in-the-automotive-sector
o    during the “winners days” international event in Trento (17/11/11);

PA4 - Portal content maintenance

Description:
Each partner will have a staff member as contact point to provide contents, news, review of interesting articles, funding opportunities, EU policy etc. in order to make the portal meeting virtual place for automotive sector experts from ICT, industry, academia, public authorities, etc. Moreover, via the Platform AUTOCLUSTERS project will establish a close link with the EAI Transportation, Green World and Future Cities Experts Groups (SIBs) and tools in order to exchange information, share experience and create a pool of experts in the field with specific interests in certain domains for joint collaboration.
Each partner will have a staff member as contact point to provide contents.

Output and remarks:
The expected outputs were:
•    populated pool of experts: the platform 2.0 started being populated by AUTOCLUSTERS PPs and innovation experts from November 2011;
•    sustainable portal after the small project termination: the sustainability plan of the portal after the project termination followed the strategy to give sustainability tasks only to interested social groups, in order to avoid the typical falling down of websites at the end of the project. Responsibilities have been distributed as follow:
o    EAI will take care of the portal structure;
o    PPs will take care of the specific sub-portal contents.

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