Info Week H2020 Societal Challenge 2

The Info Week about FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects and calls relevant to agriculture, forestry, marine and maritime activities and the bioeconomy took place in Brussels from 27-29 June. This event gathered around 500 participants and started off with a dDissemination eEvent where over 40 research projects presented their results and dissemination activities. During the concluding discussion, it was highlighted that many projects praised  the benefits of the multi-actor approach and despite the time and effort required to set it up properly from the start and to ensure the real engagement of all the actors, the overall experience was reported to be enriching, rewarding and exciting! The benefit of having a facilitator was emphasised in order to ensure the multi-actor consortium worked well and the involvement of end user networks.

Another positive point about the H2020 research projects which came up was that these projects are a wonderful opportunity to bring the best researchers and experts from Europe and internationally to work together in a transdisciplinary context.

Some challenges were also mentioned by many projects, such as:

• The need to deal with Intellectual Property from the onset of the project and to keep reviewing it to avoid conflict at dissemination and exploitation stages.
• The importance of the Description of Work (DOW) so that all the roles are clear in the consortium.
• How to ensure sustainability of the data once the project is over.
• Quantity of outputs versus quality of outcomes
• To set aside sufficient time and money to disseminate properly
• To effectively measure the impact of the project and developing ad hoc indicators.
• The risk of project's results being unexploited

The second day was the Info Day on the 2017 calls where participants could ask questions to the Policy Officers who wrote the work programme. Many potential applicants said they wanted to involve operational groups in their project but would need practical guidance on how to do so. A brokerage event followed in the afternoon to give applicants the opportunity to network and find potential partners.

The EIP-AGRI Service point took the opportunity to inform the participants on the EIP-AGRI network: brochures and fact-sheets representing the broad range of EIP AGRI-activities and -topics were distributed during the event. Recurring questions addressed Operational Groups and their composition and also the possibility to participate in a focus group.

Finally, the last event was the Coordinators' DayCoordinators Day which brought together the coordinators of the up and running 2014 and 2015 H2020 projects. The coordinators of six multiactor projects dealing with land, soil and crop-related issues were interested in finding out how the EIP-AGRI network could help them disseminate their findings. The EMPHASIS project highlighted how the EIP-AGRI network had assisted them to draw attention to their on-line survey.

After the morning session, the coordinators were grouped in parallel sessions by theme to give them an opportunity to discuss common issues. Eurodairy, 4D4F, Winetwork and Ok-Net Arable all presented their project and expected impacts. They also discussed the writing of Practice Abstracts. Each project is aiming to produce around a hundred of these abstracts which will fill the EIP website with practical and ready to use information!

The sessions from the 27 and 28 June were recorded and you can watch the videos here. You can also download presentations and more.