FP7-Winter Academy 2012

We spent last week at the Velence lake, which is approximately an hour away from Budapest next to Székesfehérvár. It’s still not clear to me if this would be the second or third largest lake in Hungary (wikipeida tells it’s the 3^rd) but what is clear is that it was a very nice, interesting and fun week :)

As the name suggests, FP7 Winter Academy is mainly about FP7 at least day time. Evening time was spent in the spa, in the restaurant and in the bar or at the ping pong table. The weather conditions helped to give the real feeling of a Winter Academy, the lake was frozen and it was all beautiful white outside.

One evening we went for a tour to Budapest with a guide, and I also learnt something new, in addition what I already knew about Hungarian history and culture. It was about the Hungarian language. Apparently it’s a visual language and an example to illustrate could be the word „Egészség” which means health, but literally means „the state of being complete”. This was very interesting for me.

Personally, I also learnt many other things from hours of conversations, all kind of topics and lots of joking.  I’ve told it before, but for me the greatest thing with the trainings must be all the people with different background and from different countries coming together for a few days to enjoy each others’ company and share experiences. I also somewhat improved my ping pong skills even if not enough to win the tournament. Maybe next time :)

Bodil

The power of information

I woke up before 5am today with a slightly paranoid idea in my head. It is still there, so I am wondering if anyone has a hypothetical solution.

What if the coordinator withholds information from the partners that they should know? It is not an existing case, but because of a friendly discussion I had a few days ago the idea does not want to go away.

Let’s say that you will have a reporting deadline coming up and you have this feeling in your gut that should know about a problem the EC has with the project. I was thinking of a few reasons why the coordinator would not share.

Well, the first is the worst, which is that they are incompetent and let’s say they choose rather not to deal with the problem then getting embarrassed. Then there is the option that they do not want to bother the partners with problems, they will solve it because this is what coordinators do.

Or, they want to wait till they figure out the solution and then present the problem and the solution together to the partners. I am sure I could come up with something more creative, but it is too early for that.

So besides the fact that the coordinator has the contractual obligation to share the information with the partners what else I can come up with? Because of a gut feeling I do not go around and contact the officer, I might cause more troubles.

The psychological phases the partners are going through in such a case could be an interesting topic for analysis. Joking? Yes, but why not? Comments are welcome.

Gabriella