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expres:management:october2006

EXPReS Update - October 2006

T. Charles Yun [ tcyun at jive dot nl ]

CONTENTS

0. INTRODUCTION

Greetings and hello at the start of a new month. With the new month comes another round of communications. I am trying to regularize project communications for EXPReS and am creating a more organized note in response to helpful comments. Hopefully this format is useful. Please feel free to send comments and suggestions along.

ACTION REQUIRED

1. CONSORTIUM AGREEMENT

You should all have received an email asking to sign and return the Consortium Agreement. As of the deadline (yesterday Mon 2 Oct 2006), we received signed copies from a half-dozen sites. If you have not already done so, please print and return signed copies immediately.

Instructions for delivery from the initial email:

Please print 2 (two) copies of the appropriate
signature page of the Consortium Agreement, sign
them and send them back to us by express  courier by
Monday 2 October 2006 at the latest to the following
address:
Joint Institute for V.L.B.I. in Europe
JIVE Secretariat (EXPReS)
Oude Hoogeveensedijk 4
7991 PD  DWINGELOO
The Netherlands

2. MONTHLY REPORTS ARE DUE AGAIN

I realize that these are not popular, but it is time for our monthly report to the EC. I have had conversations with a variety of people and have noted the fact that many (most) of you feel that monthly reporting is too frequent. Unfortunately, our science officer is quite firm on this point.

Therefore, I would like a few paragraphs from each section leader summarizing activities over the past month. Items to note include:

  • why you are not beating/missing milestones
  • recently published/released deliverables
  • new hires, difficulty with hires
  • activities or meetings of note

Section leaders are the leads for NA1, NA2, NA3, NA4, SA1, SA2 and JRA1. Everyone please send section leaders a quick summary with your activities over the past month to help them generate the necessary text.

I would like this information by Mon 9 Oct 2006 so that I can collect the report and send it to our science officer on Wed 11 Oct. Again, I'm only asking for a few paragraphs…

3. ZAANDAM: KICKOFF, BOARD AND EVN-NREN MEETING

We are approaching the date for the Kickoff, Board and EVN- NREN meeting in Zaandam, the Netherlands. The basic agenda is as follows:

Tue 31 Oct 2006
- 09:00 to 13:00  EVN-NREN meeting
- 13:00 to 17:15  Kickoff Meeting
- 18:00 to 20:30  Dinner
Wed 01 Nov 2006
- 08:00 to 17:15  Board Meeting

If you have not yet made hotel reservations with the Golden Tulip Hotel, please do so immediately as the registration date has passed. [phone: +31 075 - 6311711, registration block under JIVE]. In the case that rooms are unavailable, we will attempt to find rooms in another hotel nearby.

UPDATES AND GENERAL INFORMATION

4. Quarterly Financial Reporting

I was informed by our science officer that we are required to provide quarterly financial reports. This means that last month's report should have included financial status information for all activities.

I am about two days from completing a template Excel spreadsheet that should collect all the necessary information. To let you know, this is a quarterly version of the JOR and Form C reports that all sites will need to complete for the annual report. Generating these forms quarterly is actually useful for us all.

I will have the template sent out before the end of the week with additional information on how to complete it.

5. RECENT/UPCOMING MEETINGS

Upcoming Meetings:

  • GigaPort Next Generation Seminar for Astronomers: 2 November 2006; SURFnet, Utrecht, Netherlands

Recent Meetings:

  • 5th Annual e-VLBI Workshop: 17-20 September 2006; MIT/Haystack, Boston, MA, USA
  • FABRIC Meeting: 25 September 2006; PSNC, Poznan, Poland
  • 8th EVN Symposium 2006: 26-29 September 2006; Torun, Poland

6. WIKI

The EXPReS wiki <http://www.jive.nl/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=expres:expres> is being upgraded to allow for better page protection. We hope to have the upgrade in place in the next few weeks so that individuals can create pages that are only visible by the creator and the project manager. We hope that this capability will make the monthly reporting process a bit easier. We will send out a note once the upgrade is complete.

expres/management/october2006.txt · Last modified: 2007/05/11 14:15 by 127.0.0.1