This week is one of the weeks where decisions are made. We submitted an application to the Baltic Sea Region Programme together with 12 other partners from Baltic Sea Countries. If the application is approved, this will mean roughly 2 Mio. for the project and 266.353 EURO för Jönköping University. If the project is rejected, well, this means no funding at all.

The project coordinator from Finland received some beforehand information saying that our application is not top-ranked, but still high enough in the project list for the Finish delegation to recommend financing. We tried to convince the Swedish national contact point to support the application. If all other partners did the same, we have a fair chance – I would guess 35% probability to get the project.

Now we can only wait and see …

I’ll keep you posted!

Last week, VINNOVA announced the winners in the latest round of their “Forska & Väx” program. This program is open for applications from companies who intend to do research in order to start new product or service developments. Such applications usually are prepared in a joint effort of the submitting company and a research partner. When approved, the company receives funding and the research partner is sub-contracted.

Last autumn, the information engineering research group joined 2 applications – and both were rejected. This was not really a big disappointment, since less than 20% were approved. This spring, we joined 4 applications – and 3 were approved! What a success!

These “Forska & Väx” projects are not big money – neither for the companies who receive roughly half a million crowns, nor for us who will get less than half a million from all 3 projects. But the projects are some sort of seed money, as you can explore new product or business ideas, do a feasibility study and develop an initial solution design. So, you have to be creative and innovative. – And that’s fun!

I’ll keep you updated how things are going …

Apropos update: Everything on my to-do-list from the last posting is completed!!! Yes! Unfortunately, a number of new issues ended up on this list. Business as usual.

… and one more completed exam in the Information Engineering research group! Today, Annika Öhgren defended her licentiate work on “Towards an Ontology Development Methodology for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises” at School of Engineering. Opponent was Bernhard Holtkamp from Fraunhofer ISST, a researcher applying and using ontologies in different industrial and application contexts since many years.

Bernhard was more than satisfied with the quality of the work and impressed about how early we address this subject of using ontologies in SME. Large enterprises are increasingly starting to use this technology, but for SME this is still the future. The efforts for introducing ontologies are still (too) high, the benefits not so well known and to some extent not sufficiently explored. Annika’s work contributed to a better understanding of how to reduce efforts (and costs).

After the celebration I unfortunately had to return to more serious business: report writing. Earlier I disclosed my to-do list. Here is an update, which does not look so brilliant (running on overtime):

Last Friday, Eva Blomqvist successfully defended her PhD work at Linköping University. Eva is the first PhD student of my research group Information Engineering to finish her PhD, which is a very, very special event – not only for Eva, but also for the supervisors. Celebrations lasted until the next morning …

The opponent for Eva’s work on “semi-automatic ontology construction based on patterns” was Enrico Motta from The Open University (UK) – one of the leading experts in this field. Enrico had much praise for Eva’s work and even claimed that she was too modest when presenting her results. I am sure Eva will add some journal publications exploiting the results. And we plan to employ two new PhD students, one of them is supposed to work in the same area.

Curious about what Eva actually did? Look at Eva’s PhD work and start by reading the introduction!

Since January, Eva continues her academic career as Post-Doc at one of the institutes of the Italian national research organisation in Rome – CNR-ISTC, which also is a cooperation partner of School of Engineering.

Yesterday I checked Jönköping University’s newsletter and found a short note that Per Risberg passed away. He died on April 7 – during my vacation in Germany – otherwise I might have read it earlier in the local newspaper. Per was a very important person for establishment and development of Jönköping University – please see the memorial page  on the University’s website. And he also meant a lot to me:

During my years in Sweden, Per and I met many times in different contexts. I very much appreciate his advice, his support in opening doors to the regional industry, his work as “Kurator” (board member) for Fraunhofer ISST – to name just a few examples. And his personality I appreciated even more. He was agile, straight (without being rude), smart and always looking for new opportunities. In internal meetings, if an idea or a proposal wasn’t good or had flaws, you would hear it immediately from him, right into your face, without hesitating or wrapping it in diplomatic phrases. – This is how it should be, otherwise you won’t make progress and can’t solve problems.

We lost an entrepreneur and true believer in importance of Jönköping University for Sweden.

CenIT has a new guest Professor: Gert Faustmann from Berlin School of Economics and Law. Gert is Professor of Informatics, will stay two weeks in Jönköping and teach on master level at School of Engineering in the course on Software Engineering Methods. The visit is supported by the ERASMUS programme.

And Gert also is an old colleague of mine. 10 years ago we worked in the same department at Fraunhofer ISST in Berlin, for example with Balanced Scorecards for German Railways or Process Re-Engineering for IBM’s solution delivery centre. Great to have you in Jönköping, Gert!

For those of you who read the previous blog posting: here is a quick update on the report writing endeavor:

• DEON annual report: 17 pages (80% completed)
• Section of IMSK deliverable: 1,5 pages (15%)
• Two deliverables of infoFLOW): –
• Final report of infoFLOW: –
• Two project outlines: –

Some progress, but a lot of work is left until April 30!

Maybe you know this old movie with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell: Groundhog Day. A weather reporter is sent to cover a story about the annual Groundhog holiday in a small city. On awaking the following day he discovers that it’s Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then he realizes that he is doomed to spend the rest of his life in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing. Of course the story has a (Hollywood) happy end.

During March 2009, I felt sometimes like this weather man. If you read my blog posting from spring 2008, you know exactly what I did (and will do) in spring 2009: writing and submitting project proposals, reviewing papers, reviewing project proposals, writing papers, writing reports, participating in many meetings – again, and again … – Luckily, the subjects of proposals and papers are different. And to see the same people feels actually like an advantage.

And there is hope: last week my family and I spent a wonderful vacation at the Baltic Sea. Perfect weather, good food, entertainment for the kids (but no groundhogs). Now I feel ready for the next Groundhog Day.

The subject of the next weeks until April 30 will be: report writing. I am supposed to finish one annual report (DEON project), two deliverables (infoFLOW), one final report (infoFLOW), one section of a deliverable (IMSK) and two project outlines. Approximately 80 pages – best to start right away and motivate some people to contribute. I’ll keep you updated about the progress.

February and March seem to be months with an unusually high number of deadlines for reviews, paper submissions, project proposals and similar documents. At least are my working days (and some nights) characterized by trying to meet deadlines.

With all these tasks, it is not easy to keep an eye on all the parallel activities. This became quite clear when I received a fax last Friday. For those of you who don’t remember: Fax is these old-fashioned style of communicating where you send paper letters via telephone lines to some kind of “remote copying machine” of the recipient. It felt ages ago since I received a fax the last time. The colleague who delivered the fax put it on my desk and said: “Look what I found in the printing room. – This must be for you!”.

It was for me and it was the print of an e-mail with a hand-written note: Dear Kurt, my e-mails to you always bounced back. This is why I sent a fax. Please call me. Regards – Stanislaw. My first thought: o.k., we have some traffic congestion in the e-mail system.

But, that’s not all …  The fax was sent on February (!) the 13th, which was exactly 4 weeks ago (looking from last Friday). That’s kind of embarrassing, isn’t it? E-mail doesn’t work, you send a fax instead and nobody notices until 4 weeks later. A convential letter would have been much faster.

So, I called Stanislaw and told the whole story. We both laughed about modern times and “instant communication” – and even managed to finish the business which was the reason for the e-mail / fax.

After all, Friday 13th wasn’t such a bad day …

Can it be of any use to sit in a car and drive during 5 hours, all on your own? No other passenger, just you! Five hours is quite a long time. And driving during 5 hours is not exactly a recreation activity.

But it can actually have some use. When I drove back from Rostock (Germany) last Friday, I finally had time to think about some research ideas (no escape!), like “should I write an application to the Swedish Research Council and – if so – what would be the content?”. I have a much clearer picture now!

Everything would be easy if there weren’t the follow-up challenge: back in the office, I don’t have another 5 hours of undisturbed time to implement the ideas. – Even if I would put up the sign “don’t disturb” and lock the office door, it still wouldn’t work  Partly because I am not disciplined enough, partly because some people just want to “check this tiny little thing with me”.

Maybe I should book some travel days for working, like the direct train to Stockholm and back, without any business in Stockholm, just to take care of the follow-ups …?

It took two years from the initial application for funding to the final decision. That’s a long time, in particular if the decision is “rejected”, i.e. if you do not receive funding. This happened with our proposal EVOLVE in the ITEA-2 program after a long journey:

• January 2007: we decided to go for an ITEA-2 application. Thomas Gustafsson participated in a proposers day in Germany. Writing of the proposal started.
• Spring 2007: the “Project Outline” was submitted – and approved! Work on the full proposal started.
• Summer 2007: the “Full Project Proposal” for EVOLVE was submitted.
• Autumn 2007: the full project proposal was approved. EVOLVE was awarded the “ITEA-2 label”. With such a label, you qualify to receive funding. But the funding is distributed by the national funding agencies (in Sweden: VINNOVA) who has dedicated (and limited) funds for this purpose.
• Autumn 2007: VINNOVA indicated that the available Swedish budget is not sufficient for all projects with an “ITEA-2 label”. Furthermore, they strongly recommended to focus the content and that the industrial partners should get a bigger role.
• Spring 2008: Work with the Swedish EVOLVE application continues. We are trying to get more industry into the project and to agree on a tighter focus.
• August 2008: new focus is defined and industrial participation secured.
• September 2008: VINNOVA encourages us to submit the application as the general situation is “favourable.”
• October 2008: Application was submitted.
• January 2009: Inofficial information from VINNOVA that the application will be rejected due to tough competition.

Well, this was an exceptionally long process, but lead times of more than one year from application to final decision are not at all unusual. So, what are the lessons learned from this endeavor? My personal conclusion is

• there is a big risk to loose your industrial partners in such a long process. A subject which today is important might in one year from now not longer be so important, or the unit taking care of that subject was moved to another location, or business priorities change, or …
• when looking at the ITEA-2 program, you get the impression that the tough part is to get a label, and that to “cash in” this label on national level is a piece of cake. That’s obviously wrong. The value of an ITEA-2 label is overestimated.
• the ITEA-2 program creates the impression that it is industry-driven, i.e. industry demands are decisive when deciding about funding. This is only true for getting the label. For getting the funding, VINNOVA made the decision. 

Summarized in one sentence: I will think twice before trying the next ITEA-2 application.

So let’s have a small symbolic funeral of EVOLVE and then use the project idea for a new proposal – but not in ITEA-2. Check my blog in one year from now for news on this subject …