Minutes of 3rd RENOIR Executive Board
Friday 11th April 1997,
City University 

Present:

Apologies received from:

 
 

1       Minutes

Minutes of second meeting were agreed, matters arising being considered under later items.

[Item 2 was considered after item 5]
 

3       Communications

Wolfgang Emmerich presented a report on successful improvements to the web site and about its use.

The Board agreed that: All members should be asked to review their information on the RENOIR web site at the beginning of year 2, i.e. in June.
 

4       Membership

Stephen Morris presented a report on membership. All but 8 of the 69 member nodes of RENOIR have provided the requested written commitment to the network. Since the last meeting 4 institutions have expressed an interest in joining and have been sent the necessary forms, plus reminder letters prior to the meeting. One other institution, JRCASE, has completed all the necessary formalities.

The Board agreed that:

The CEC Project Officer circulated new draft guidelines on the financial provisions of network contracts, which contains a table summarising membership and cost charging rules according to country of origin. This provides a very useful guide for checking the allowability of bids and eligibility for membership. The Director agreed to take up again a Brazilian case and to pursue the possibility of members from Eastern European countries.

As requested at the last meeting, the Director reported on the possibility of some kind of 'associate' membership. The Board agreed that this is no longer a pressing need and no further action is required.
 

5       Funding

George Spanoudakis reported on all the proposals for which bids have been received. Stephen Morris reported on the current state of the budget. Expenditure is in line with expectations. However it is well below that which the budget will allow under three of four headings (Labour, Travel and Other). He also reported the delegation of an agreed research training database task to the University of Essen at a total cost of 1.3K ECU.
 

2       RENOIR Year 2  -  General theme of meeting

The major concerns of the Director are that the active central core of the network is not sufficiently large and needs to be more proactive. An important means of overcoming these problems would be some kind of roadshow  presenting key positions, techniques and technologies, which could be taken out to industry. This could be subsidised initially by RENOIR, but would not be available free. The principal objectives would be publicity and technology transfer.

The Board agreed that the Director should investigate the possibility of a  roadshow  and the recruitment of an additional member of staff to be responsible for its organisation and implementation.
 

6       Progress of Committee initiatives

6.1     Research Training

The Chair of the Research Training Committee reported progress on the development of the database of PhD and related work (see item 5 above). The Board agreed that :

6.2     Research Coordination

The Chair of the Research Coordination Committee reported the results of the first meeting of the Committee on 6th December. Although it provided many useful ideas, none have yet been brought to fruition.

The Chair will himself be taking action on the 'road map' proposal and, in the absence of any result from an initial invitation, on an initial programme of 'directed visits'. A matrix of visits, prioritised by the Chair, will direct suitable, well-briefed members to particular sites. The objectives will be to obtain information about RE activities actually going on, to obtain feedback relevant to RENOIOR activities and, initially, to pilot the survey questionnaire proposed by Ind. & Tech. (see 6.4 below).

In addition the Board agreed that :

6.3     Infrastructure

The Chair of the Infrastructure Committee reported on its work identifying the level of interest in (and expertise in) the use of video conferencing as part of network activities.

The Board welcomed the preliminary activity plan, whose initial stages involve collection of relevant information via a questionnaire and small scale trials using available software. These will lead to decisions about the usefulness of
videoconferencing for the network. The initial view is that seminars and tutorials, rather than meetings, would be most benefit.
 

6.4 Industry and Technology Transfer

The Chair of the Ind. & Tech. Committee commented on a number of issues that had come up, emphasising the importance to industry of immediate benefits and its interest in specific domains, e.g. telecomms, and useful tools. Collection of information via, for example, the survey of tools, techniques and methods suggested at the inaugural meeting, would require a well prepared questionnaire and careful planning to ensure that the most receptive and useful sites are visited first. This related directly to the discussions about research  coordination (see 6.2 above)

The Board agreed that this issues should be pursued centrally, in consultation with the committee Chair.
 

7       Calendar / Future Meetings

The Board agreed that the first RENOIR Forum should coincide with the first appearance of the RENOIR Roadshow (see item 2 above)

The Board agreed the following dates and locations for meetings:

 

8       No other business

 

Last up-date: 30 July 1998