Athens, Greece – 23/03/2011. NMP TeAm paves the way for successful “virtual” project meetings using an online conferencing tool. In 2010, when the volcano Eyjafjallajökul caused obstacles in air traffic in the most European regions, the NMP TeAm consortium started thinking about technical solutions in order to meet this challenge. One solution NMP TeAm identified was an online conferencing tool that makes them mostly independent from traffic and at the same time it reduces both travel costs and time. With such a tool, virtual team meetings, info days for clients to promote current calls and virtual brokerage events can be organized and managed.
Since then, NMP TeAm partners have tested the tool successfully several times, during trainings organised by the consortium and internal project coordination meetings. The first real extended use of it was during the NMP NCP meeting in Brussels which took place on the 17th of February. Nine NCP colleagues from eight countries, in Europe (from Malta to Iceland) and around the world (Uganda, Taiwan), were able to join in and listen to the entire NMP NCP meeting from their office or home-office premises, simply by using their computer, their headset or speakers and internet connection! Attendants could listen to the speeches and presentations (thereby receiving a more extended view compared to the summary that is given in the minutes) and could comment with the chat function. Carey Su attended the meeting virtually on behalf of the Taiwan National Coordinator NCP and noted: “Congratulations on the success of NMP TeAm meeting. Thanks to the online conferencing tool, we can share the latest information in the online meeting. We really appreciate everything NMP TeAm has done to facilitate transnational cooperation”.
The online conferencing facility was acquired within the framework of project NMP TeAm and will be used by the whole NMP NCP Network and their clients. With this tool, the consortium has the opportunity to organize virtual team meetings, virtual information days to promote NMP calls as well as virtual brokerage events and webinars to support the clients on proposal writing or to guide them where to get information about FP7 related activities. The facility allows every participant to present files, documents or presentations directly from his local hard drive.
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About NMP TeAm:
The NMP TeAm project aims to improve NMP NCP services across Europe for the benefit of its clients. This will be achieved through closer collaboration between the NMP NCPs in Europe and beyond and normalisation of the differences in knowledge as well as improvement in the quality of provided services across the NCP Network. Ultimate beneficiaries of the actions of NMP TeAm are small businesses and research institutions across Europe who wish to form consortia and submit proposals in NMP calls. NMP TeAm receives funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7 (2007-2013), Theme 4: Nanosciences, nanotechnologies, Materials & new Production technologies (NMP), under grant agreement n° NMP1-CA-2009-233160.
Contacts:
Anastasia Constantinou, NMP NCP for Greece, NMP TeAm project coordinator.
Ingo Rey, Materials NCP for Germany, NMP TeAm member responsible for the administration of the Online Conferencing Tool & development and administration of the Partner Search System Tool.