EIFFEL: 1st Periodic

Review

Petri Mähönen, Janne RiihijärviRWTH Aachen for EIFFEL consortium

April 2009 2

Overview

• 30 Months Project

• 8 Partners– RWTH Aachen (RWTH)– Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB)– British Telecommunication (BT)– Alcatel-Lucent Bell (A-LBELL)– Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI)– University College London (UCL)– Groupe des Ecoles des Télécommunications (GET-ENST)– EURECOM (Eurescom)

April 2009 3

EIFFEL Objectives

• Creation of a pan European community of scientific & technical experts

• Creation of a European Dialog to ensure that the foundational scientific and exploratory investigation leads to cooperative exchanges with the engineering and evolutionary investigations such as to derive deployable design principles within the 2020-2025 timeframe for the Future Networked Society.

• Identification of the areas of investigation and research that are crucial for the transformation of the Internet towards the Future Networked Society.

April 2009 4

Visible results

Impact creation at large, through:1. EIFFEL Think Tank Meetings…to foster community creation

2. Architecture and research manifestos, reports and position papers. These documents will be the direct outcome of discussions and debate…

3. Web-presence and electronic forum as tools for dissemination for selected material.

4. Several highly focused “Future Internet Magazine or Journal” issues as a means for distributing selected highlights of SoA.

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Impact Creation to Community-at-large

EIFFELMobilizing Experts to TT

(visibility, breaking the link between projects and participation)

European Initiatives

Engaging Internationally

Changing the Focus

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Project innovations

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April 2009 6

Work Distribution

• WP0: Management

• WP1: EIFFEL Initiative Secretariat

• WP2: Think Tank Meetings

• WP3: Liaison Activities

• WP4: Exploitation and Dissemination

Main Items• WP0: Management

– Project meetings: four (4) in 2008

– Use of Wiki as an organizational tools

– Project meetings mostly co-located with think-tanks to minimize overhead and costs

• WP1: EIFFEL Initiative Secretariat– Technical support from EURECOM

– Travel subsidy and local organization by local organizers due to different national rules on procurement and travel reimbursement

– Strong use of Wiki-pages and web-based tools

• WP2: EIFFEL Think Tanks– Discussed later

• WP3: Liaison Activities– Discussed later

• WP4: Dissemination and Exploitation– Starting to have a strong momentum – discussed later

April 2009 7

Deliverables

April 2009 8

D0.1 Management Report M12 01.04. 2009 (+4M)

D1.1 The EIFFEL Operational Model M3 23.07.2008 (+4M)

D1.2 Description of EIFFEL Office Tools M6 17.01.2009 (+7M)

D2.1 The Think Tank Meeting Plans… M3 23.07.2008 (+4M)

D2.2 First Eiffel Meeting Report M5 17.01.2009 (+7M)

D2.3 Second Eiffel Meeting Report M11 01.04.2009 (+4M)

D3.1 First Report on Liaison Activities M12 01.04.2009 (+3M)

Deliverables are late on average 4 Months

April 2009 9

1st Observation: The project is late

• Not a single reason, but a combination of reasons for this. However, the project is building the momentum as expected if the lateness is not taken in account.

• Analyzing the reasons:

• The first think-tank meeting slot was missed in M3/M4 due to strong participation to Bled FIA organization. A large part of organization and costs were covered by EIFFEL.

1.4. 2008

April 2009 10

Planned First Meeting (M4)Planned 2nd Meeting (M10)

Actual First Meeting (M10)

Bled FIA Meeting (M4)

Planned 3rd Meeting (M16)

Actual 2nd Meeting (M14)

1.7. 2008 1.10. 2008 1.1. 2009 1.4. 2009

+6 Months

+4 Months

FIA Madrid(M12)

April 2009 11

The project is late (cont.)

• As described the project has been since late with the deliverables, but has been able to catch up from +6 months to +4 months situation.– Content creation is, of course, impossible without Think Tank meetings.

• Partners underestimated the problems of organizing think tank meetings– Amount of needed lead time to ensure a high key experts participation

– “Market” is saturated with almost too many different venues in Europe and US • Difficulties in finding right time slots for many high profile people to attend

– Transition from “old EIFFEL” to “new EIFFEL” took more efforts than expected• Old EIFFEL perceived as EC-initiated think tank• New EIFFEL independent think tank, funded by EC-> this difference has now successfully been conveyed

– Learning experience on technical and local coordination issues• e.g., centralized travel expenses reimbursement really does not work

April 2009 12

Project effort in numbers and volume

• Overall funding use in 2008: – 21% from project resources– Well in line with the fact that 1 out of 5 meetings (20%) is organized

• Good news:– The costs for organizing the first and second TT-meetings has been

lower than expected due to lower travel imbursements and lower costs to ensure meeting places.

– We expect this to continue to be so, because of bad economical climate

April 2009 13

Overview on PM use

Planned lines are linear original estimates with two meetings

April 2009 14

Overview on PM use

Contributed months,Low organization costs for 1st mtg

Problems toparticipate

Office tools,Liaison activities

Bled MeetingISOC

April 2009 15

The core-project: on track

• Apart of being late the project is building a momentum with increasing strength.

• Dissemination and exploitation should be stronger, but as TT is now producing material we are in the place to become more visible in legitimate fashion.

Core Targets

April 2009 16

Creation of Community of Experts

#1 EIFFEL TT-Meetings Achieved (in part)Missing one meetingIncreasing participation

#2 Research Reports, Position Papers Achieved (partially)A first position paper outA new FI-wikipediaBuilding momentum after 2nd TTTarget of 2nd year achievements

#3 Web-presence and electronic forum Achieved Basic web-tools availableLaunching new FI-wikipedia

#4 Dissemination through journals Target of 2nd year

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Impact Creation to Community-at-large

EIFFELMobilizing Experts to TT

(visibility, breaking the link between projects and participation)

European Future Internet ForumLargely inspired by EIFFEL

Partially bootstrapped by EIFFELMany concepts from EIFFEL:

-Care takers- White papers

- By (project) invitation only- Future Internet Book

Engaging InternationallyEIFFEL is now known in the USA

Key participants coming from the USA

Changing the FocusEC has clear emphasis on “Future Networked

Society” instead of pure technological FI-> Lowered the tension between disruptive

and evolutionary R&D debate

New approach on “agreeing on disagreements”

Finding out the Practical Problems

Wikipedia type of community access

Researching out towards regulatory and privacy communities

Understanding better research methodology

Project innovations

Debate on evolution vs. disruption is now more operational

Building the visibility

April 2009 18

April 2009 19

Remedial Actions Proposed

1. Review all the milestone dates and move them to realistic places, so that moral boost can be achieved by meeting deadlines instead of slipping them constantly.

2. All partners to introduce backup day-to-day responsible persons to ensure efficient operation of EIFFEL (mostly done already). Increase coherence and cooperation within the project through tracking dissemination and distributing editorships.

3. Project extension of 6 months to ensure that all Think Tanks and project goals can be achieved in timely fashion.

4. Redistribution of GET-ENST saved resources and most responsibilities to other partners.

April 2009 20

Remedial Actions Proposed

5. Enhance the role of Technical Manager (BT) and stronger tracking to the project: increase the technical tracking of think tank as well as project work by having day-to-day technical manager responsible for progress, and reporting to the coordinator.

6. Ensure clear interaction between FIA, FIRE and EIFFEL by not duplicating actions. Share time-tables for different events, reuse material and tools. Make specific the roles, e.g., EIFFEL manifestos may not be appropriate “in wording” now that it is a FIA tool.

7. Establish remedial action as soon as possible, and re-review the project immediately after 3rd Think Tank meeting to ensure progress and quality.