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Welcome.
I'm going to talk about this.
I believe that's
going to be a bit of a framing
I'm going to do of all
the practical advice
and.
And also some some notes I'd
like to make, I'm not sure I mean, first
of all, I would like to know how many of
you actually in some way researchers.
OK, great.
And like how
many of you are,
like, not in car
it like in programing but in something
else like, you know.
OK, that's great.
I think we have a good mixture, so
first of all, I'm not sure how it was
for you, but since Friday the
13th of 2015,
I have been to a couple of events
and usually like I was at a child
theater play or something, and
they felt obliged to make
a note on the Paris
attacks and how we are all against
terror and so on.
So I'd like to
do something similar, but in a different
way, because exactly
one year ago when before the
attacks, I gave a talk
in Paris at
a little squat, actually
was an anarchist conference.
And that talk was about
mostly a paper from Jean Youngblood
and to talk and lecture from two
thousand and twelve, I think, in
Buenos Aires.
And he's a media theorist who has
a lot to say about centralization,
decentralization and how media develop
in the last hundred years.
And he's basically he's describing
something which he calls the broadcast.
Which is if you're in Germany, for
example, Takasawa
are if you are in the
US, maybe CNN or Fox News and so
on, but also a lot more.
And what he actually says is all of these
news sites, when we actually participate,
when we actually listen to this kind of
broadcast, we are actually
creating ourselves in
the image of what is presented
to us.
Right, we are basically becoming part of
that, we are sucked into it and he
basically says if you want to change
something, we actually need to secede
from this broadcast, we need to do
something else.
So that's my note on Perez.
The just to give a bit of
my context so you can
actually interpret what I'm going to say
during the talk, I have been
I'm going to say some positive things
about EU projects, which is maybe
not totally expected.
And also I'm even going to say some
positive things about.
How money is distributed
and how they're trying to do that,
and that might be because I have
participated in three proposals
for new projects and
by being lucky, by maybe working with
the right people so all of them got
accepted.
So that's going to change my view
on this probably a bit.
It's all great and, you know, it's like
easy and whatnot.
The other thing is that I also sends
about 20, 25 years I
created and still maintain
several open source projects.
And I also participated in.
Cooperating for like 10, 12 years or
so community space, which is like owned
by the people that live there and
with lots of
many interesting things happening there.
Here in Germany.
So that's some of my background
when you think of the EU, what
your and the funding and this 80 billion,
that's actually 78 billion.
No, you are actually probably
and that's also what was introduced like
how to make money fast, how
to make it like
for free to just get it right.
And I think that.
This thing that basically money
is an end in itself.
Like, you just, you know,
just get it and be happy to just
have it and do it.
It's on the one hand, I think it's fine.
I kind of like can sympathize with that.
On the other hand, I think this
this whole notion of believing so
much in these numbers, like transferring
some bits from one computer to another
and having like all of society ordered by
this is a bit odd.
So when you look upon this Bitcoin coin,
there is a Graveman
that says virus innumerous
and that means strength or
power or something strength in numbers.
And you can tell also probably not only
for the Bitcoin people, but also for
the I.T. community, which has grown like
crazy in the last
decade.
There's a strong belief in the
numbers, like in counting
and measuring and measuring,
also popularity and all
this.
And there's also a long
criticism of.
Looking at numbers and trying to
understand society and other people by
by putting numbers to them.
One of the first persons who actually
discussed this is like two thousand
three hundred something years ago,
and that was Aristotle totally.
You still like many of the things that
they were discussed at that point,
they're still kind of prevalent in our
thinking, like in many areas.
One of the areas that he actually already
discussed was what does money
do with a society?
And one of the advices he gives, like
it's a longer thing that a friend of mine
actually just gave his talk
to become a philosophy professor on
this particular topic.
And I learned a lot by by
listening to him and understanding
that already Aristotle had
this thing about focus
on the use value of money,
like how can you use it to actually do
something and not on the
exchange value, like just like amassing
money. And you saw this tendency like
already in Athens, like two and
three, two thousand and a bit
years ago my
like 11 days ago my.
My child at the time, I
was preparing the talk and I was thinking
about our studies and talking to a friend
about it, he came into his
room and he built this
bridge
just by himself.
He found some money somewhere.
You know, he built this bridge and he
wanted to basically I think it's a good
picture. And it actually captures also
part of what Aristotle has said, because
you're basically trying to get to another
place.
You want to have a new system.
You want to have a new understanding.
You want to have like different ways
how we organize.
And on your way, you need some money
to actually do this.
But the thing is not about the money.
It's actually about getting somewhere
else.
OK, so with that
all being said, let's get to the money.
The program, the research program,
there's many new programs.
The biggest one in history is the
current research program,
which is called Horizon 2020.
It started in 2014.
It's lasting seven years.
And if you break down the numbers, it
means that for each day
they spend 30 million.
On research projects, right,
like each day, like during the course of
this conference, they spend
three times 420 million.
A bit more expensive than this
conference, I guess.
Previously, we could basically
fly to the moon with this money,
right?
We could we could never
get very far. The whole Apollo program,
like from the inception in terms of
research to actually building the
rockets, testing the rockets, actually
flying to the moon or the trainings,
everything.
Was done with a similar amount of money,
I would argue, because we should be
it should be a lot easier today to
actually do something like this with all
the great technology we have.
Except it seems we aren't even able to
to build an airport in Berlin anymore,
you know, but it's OK.
One of the persons actually involved in
that research that was successful with
the Apollo was Margaret Hamilton,
and she was the director for doing the
software for the onboard
flight system.
So when the thing actually approached the
moon, they program and
the program is actually this paperwork,
right? It's the statelets assembler.
And the
even though this program was a lot of
paperwork, they had a relatively
free organization of how they researched,
like people got together to discuss
certain problems, went off to do
something and so on.
So there wasn't like a lot of hierarchy.
It's the same way how they did it
with the Manhattan Project to build
the atomic bomb.
And it's the same way they, I think,
created laser systems, for example,
back in the days of the 50s, they
actually just got like lots of people
who are capable basically
according to some area,
and they just got them together and said,
go. You know, the goal is this
organize yourself how to get there.
That's not how it's happening anymore.
So the paperwork that we have today
is we are like deep
into bureaucracy.
And I think that's the last
general framing thing I'd like to do.
The one book, it's a very it's discussing
basically the development of research
from David Graeber.
And I think it appeared in this year
earlier this year.
It's called The Utopia of Rules.
And he discusses
how bureaucracy is like
the dominant model.
And it doesn't matter if you were in
living in East Germany, Soviet
Russia or or like
in the US or in Germany,
it's all the same.
Like the bureaucracy
topic is there and it's developing.
And I even argue with that.
And you can talk to me about this
afterwards that.
The software we are building and the
artists we are building are
actually prolonging and deepening
this bureaucracy,
so there's tons of people in call centers
and everywhere who are basically driven
by software.
They just basically just put a voice
to an algorithm.
They have no agency left.
That's what you get like if you have a
total ordering by bureaucracy, like
there's no agency, there's no
nobody can decide anything, it's all
driven by rules.
Right. And there seems to be something
that we find fascinating about this.
It's like we like to
it's impersonal.
It's not like it doesn't depend on the
size of my nose.
It's like, nice.
I can just go there and get get
what I deserve, you know,
according to some rules.
But it does kill agency.
And I think it's a big problem that
extends even further than what he's
talking about.
OK, so let's get to
the practical parts.
Information communication technology is
the one thing that
incorporates, I think, about 18,
20 percent of the budget of
the Horizon program.
And it's
it's basically about all the things
that are going on here at the conference
and various
in various forms.
And what I find it interesting that,
I mean, you as kind of a market liberal
organization that's kind of well known.
But there's also other aspects like
like the main the overarching
goal, what they state is
actually to do something
with a tangible benefit for European
citizens, not for companies.
You know, I mean, the way they want to
achieve that is actually going from
companies. But the idea and that you can
see that actually in many calls
is actually going a bit deeper.
So they are very open now to open source
stuff, to grassroots stuff, and even
appears like in parts, you know, if
you're doing some grassroots stuff, like
Freephone, for example, also received
funding and other people.
So there really there's an opening there,
which is actually, I think already in the
in the main goal, they
have six
main activity areas.
And one thing that is also
apparent, if you actually read some of
the Mehtar docs and of this
ICT strategy, it's not very long.
I think it's good to read it
is that they see that
software is eating the world.
It's like everywhere,
and that also means that there's a
different responsibility.
And that also means that we need
to have something interdisciplinary.
It people cannot hope to, like, have
a good understanding, even though, like,
for example, the Bitcoin people tend to
do this to have a good understanding
how human history actually
evolved, you know, anthropology
and things like this. And David, about
which I which
I mentioned earlier, he is an
anthropologist and he actually knows
about various aspects of the last
5000 years of human development
that are like
well researched, that grounded actually
in research.
Whereas when you find 80 people talking
about society, you
you often get a very like
kind of simplistic view.
And I think that stems from the fact that
we it
got so important that we somehow feel
we are like, you know, we know what's
happening. We can tell the world how
things are going on because of the
importance of it, and you get lots of
money and whatnot.
So I think there's a certain danger that
I'm going to get back to that at the end.
Um, anyway, these six
areas combined with interdisciplinarity.
Are actually a description of
what is going on here at the conference.
Right. I mean, all of these things here
happen at the conference.
So it's on that level, it's, I think, a
perfect match.
So let's look at how does it
actually work?
The what I call the application
environment or the terms you need to know
when you actually go for an application.
I'm going to go into this a bit,
but I'd like to make one note
before the the main
way how?
How the project I'm involved and
started was by personal
relations, talking to people,
not talking to companies, talking to
people who are doing some interesting
stuff.
Right.
And when you have this network and this
is like a perfect opportunity, like last
year literally went around the conference
and talked to random people I didn't know
before.
Of course, you all know some people, at
least most of you will know some people.
But it's a great idea to just talk to
random people.
And and find something out,
you know, and do some networking.
So the application for the
EU, what the ICG publishes
is a two year work program.
They want to program society and they
publish calls.
The calls are kind of brief.
They're like one page or maybe one and a
half pages.
They have all kinds of keywords.
And then like they are about
doing new systems, new
at a big call like this year for
digital social platforms,
I think 200 million or something they
spend on building new
digital social platforms.
And these calls are basically the
they are usually published in advance
like three months ago, and they stem
from things in the work program.
So by looking at the work program for the
next two years, you can actually get an
idea of what they're going to publish
calls on.
And maybe if, you know, some people
attend, I have someone
in your context attend something of
the networking events which are actually
kind of nice, like in Brussels or so
you will get some more information on
when a call is actually upcoming before
and what you do then.
If you already know people
who are interested in a particular topic,
you need to form.
You need to do a few things.
You need to write a proposal.
That needs to get accepted and
you need to form a consortium.
The consortium of companies and other
organizations that can be nonprofit
organizations that can be
universities or research institutes
and so on, already own
companies, the.
When you actually within this three
month, there's a deadline, when you
submit your proposal as a consortium,
then it gets evaluated
and finally, which is now quite
quick, like 10 years ago, it used to take
like nine months.
Now it's like three months.
So usually like three months after
submission, you know, if you accept it or
not.
And all about small companies, something
that changed, which I find very
positive from.
Personal reasons is that
10 years ago, the funding was 50 percent,
so that you basically gave, let's say,
two hundred thousand, but you had to come
up with another 200000, I had to show
that you actually spent four hundred
thousand.
And to make it easier for small
companies, they actually now
give 100 percent funding.
So you get all of that plus
25 percent overheads,
so if you're getting, for example, a
hundred thousand per year as a small
company, you still get twenty five
thousand for overheads, like accounting
and managing some stuff and
so on.
So that's actually a big, I think,
very positive change because it means
that actually small companies can
like like myself.
For example, 10 years ago it was a one
person company or less
than I had some employees.
And I thought, well, maybe subcontracting
is better or not working at all is
even much better.
And then I
also had my in my small company, and I
this time I was again one
person company, which was kind
of fun. I mean, there's people getting
employed and stuff like this, but they're
kind of very flexible about this.
10 years ago, it was a big fight.
So that's a I would say a positive
message, also, the paperwork is much
better. No, it's a bit
hard to actually authenticate to the
system that requires like some overhead
ahead, but otherwise registering
as a company and stuff like this is
basically a matter of half a day
or day or something.
When you write a proposal to whatever
entity, then you need to know
how the evaluation is done.
They have three criteria and for
each of the criteria, they give five
points, its excellence.
That means how the project you're
envisioning the objectives you have in
your project
need to discuss
the state of the art, like what
is currently in that field, what you are
doing something.
What is the state of the art?
And then how do you go,
how do you intend to go beyond that, like
what are you doing, what you're trying to
do with this research project?
And it needs to be risky.
It needs to be bold, like not I'm
doing a small increment improving
like the subsystem.
That's not enough.
Like it needs to be like something that
spends over like two or three years
and involves maybe like 10 people
working on the project and and being
on the edge of research.
That's the idea.
Impact is the basically
the market liberal aspect
because they basically perceive
the succession of the improving
of society through
funding, creating
an European market and strengthening
the European market against
the evil Asians and the evil US
and even Brazil and whatnot.
You know, so it's kind of like this
thinking you will find and
basically you need to make an argument
how this is relating to market
activities, how something actually
this research might be
the basis for some products
to be developed and some further
activities that are
economic.
You know, and then
the third criterion
is quality and efficiency.
And that refers to
how well do you actually allocate the
money between the partners?
How well are the people
who are involved in the project qualified
to actually do this work?
Is there some kind of we need to
create some trust that you're
not just having some grand idea, but you
can actually execute it and actually do
it? So basically, this is where
you bring in past open source projects,
past other projects you did and
and the scientists also that needs to
be involved because you also
need to publish papers.
But not only I mean, that's only just one
aspect.
They also need to have some
track record or that helps at least.
The evaluation
process, I think, is actually somewhat
like I said, I mean, one of these
positive statements actually somewhat
reasonable.
It's when you send in your proposal,
it gets disclosed to independent
review us.
These are people who are
not employed by the European Union.
They actually get a daily
honorarium of 450 euros.
And they get sent
nowadays, they used to actually convene
in some room, which was sealed.
Now it's actually allowed before that
they get the proposal remotely so they
can actually do Internet research, which
they couldn't do before.
They're going to cross-check what you're
saying in their proposal against like
the real world.
Right.
And
the these independent reviewers
also independently give
free times up to five points
excellence.
How well are you going beyond state
of the art impact?
How it's like helping the economy
quality.
Are you up to five points
for each?
It gets summed up and if
two regulars who are reviewing the same
proposal disagree, they
need to talk to each other and either
convince each other or I think
the average is taking, I'm not sure, but
I think they can get a chance.
Like someone says, well, quality is
really just three out of five.
And the other says, no, it's actually
five. It's because blah, blah.
And then they can actually maybe say for
all that you can agree on five, it's like
this is an independent process
between these two reviewers.
And it may be there might also be I'm not
sure about this and also be other
reviewers who then also look at this
in case of conflict.
That changes also a bit.
And it depends also a bit on the call,
the accumulation
of these points up to 15
and there's no threshold.
So it's not like if you have 13, you are
accepted or something or 40, not
even 50, and basically it depends
on the number of proposals for
the particular call.
So if you have 30 proposals.
And you have five projects which
can get accepted, the typical some two
million, but it can be also five,
but typically it's like two, three
million for a consortium.
Um, you will get five projects
in there and you have 30 proposals.
And then basically the highest
ranking ones first take
up the positions.
So maybe it's 14 points or 13 points
that are enough, that depends on the
number of proposals in the budget and so
on.
You also have to know that there's a
whole industry trying to grab this
money.
So there's various companies actually
offering
services to write
proposals.
So about what I know from many people
in the area, about half
the proposals are basically.
Not acceptable at all, because
either they are
very well written, because there
that has been done professionally by
people who do this like for the 20th time
or so, but there's no content.
Right, that's no excellence, basically,
it's like lots of buzzwords, but, you
know, and then you have actually
also the other extreme where
it's like a very ambitious project,
but it's like impossible to understand
what they're actually trying to do.
You know, then on the structure
of their work, it's like implausible or
something like this.
And they are many people actually
resubmit.
They just try again and modify it a bit,
maybe in a slightly different consortium,
do it again.
These are about half the proposals.
And they're typically so actually, you
only have if you actually pass these two
barriers, then you only have like
10 to 15 competitors.
So then the chances actually increase.
Yes, so that's I think
well, the thing is,
it's very easy to criticize.
I mean, as a gated community, it's very
easy to criticize
the EU with all the bureaucracy and,
you know, all the power structures and
the hidden agendas and whatnot.
And I think that's not entirely fair,
because I've been involved
also in program committees like
doing accepting talks
and so on, and these were community
conferences.
And I can say
from my own experience that
the selection process is
in many places kind of random.
It depends on some people taking a stance
and claiming this is a great talker,
that's a great person who holds the talk
and so on.
And it's not really a transparent
process. I mean, the typical mail you get
when you submit something to
a conference, including the 30 to
see free, is how we are sorry.
There were so many interesting proposals
and so we had to choose and it was really
hard problem.
You took like every effort and so on and
so on. And then just, you
know, no information, actually
no information on,
OK, what aspect you know, is it
like the topic?
It's not interesting.
Or like couldn't you understand
what I want to actually do in this talk
or something like this?
Whereas with the things whereas
with the you actually get
the numbers, you see, OK, they
actually thought the excellence of the
they're right.
It's like five points rate.
So the highest score you can reach,
they think there's
even a good impact.
Maybe it's for.
And they think the quantity is actually
just three and they actually even
sometimes have sentences explaining why
they think it's three, so it's actually
somewhat useful feedback because it means
when you get like Excellence five, for
example, that you can stick to the idea
and maybe resubmit, but actually have to
work a bit more on other
contexts and other areas
of your proposal or the other way
round.
I know, for example, that's a very
interesting project.
I know some people, they are not directly
involved called the interplanetary file
system.
It's about a decentralized web.
And many people actually and several
conferences have been very interested in
this. There have been nine
talks submitted to this
conference from India, from multiple
people, and they have been all rejected
and they have no clue why.
Right. So this whole thing that you as
bad and they are doing their their
intransparent and so on, I think it's
it's also good to look at it like
I'll be actually.
Really.
Saying, you give me this, I can give you
this and so on.
It's a difficult thing, actually, if you
actually put yourself into the position
they're.
When you actually get accepted in
accord with your proposal, then,
of course, the thing is actually carrying
out the project
and because you have to do planning
so far ahead, like free, free
for years, actually, when you start with
envisioning the project up until
completion, it's four years.
Who can foresee four years of their life
then the kind of collaboration you do
there and the kind of people you pull
into the project, how you deal with
somebody, you know, falling out because
he or she gets a child or something
happens and so on.
And then you have to deal with all of
that as well.
And of course, you have to you
have to deliver the only
legally binding things you promise
to the EU, which are
like you have this 60 page proposal,
which is typical.
And that's like 15 pages, which are your
work packages where you actually say, OK,
we have these six work packages, that
also a typical thing, that's multiple
partners, that's usually a lead partner
in each work package. And we have for
this book package three deliverables,
a research paper on this release
of this software on that and whatever.
And you have this for all of the work
packages and these deliverables.
They are the legal promises
that you do.
If you don't produce this, you
will get a problem actually getting out
of the money or you get pre-payment
and then you have to pay it back.
That actually happens like that happens,
but it's kind of unusual.
So basically, in your proposal,
you give all of the context
that is important to understand
the work packages and the work packages
are the primary and the deliverables
are then for the review as the primary
focus of attention.
They look at this like how much
money per work package, what are the
various aspects?
How does it all relate to each other?
Does it look like each partner is just
doing their own thing and they actually
try to avoid to talk to each other and
just want to get their product through
and stuff like this?
You know, this is actually what they look
at, like how many partners involved
do they actually intend to collaborate
and so on.
And then, of course, you also have to do
financials and reporting.
And I can say that,
yes, it's a bit of effort, but it's
not actually insurmountable.
I've been with national programs in
Germany and they have.
Well, I hope nobody's listening that
I'm not actually intending to go.
It hasn't been as actually that you
this horizon or this framework program,
I think has a lot of rational, let's
put it positively and operational
processes. So also when,
for example, when one partner actually
can provide the the work
because somebody dropped out who was like
qualified to do it, then shifting some
budget to another partner, it's actually
quite possible. And this is where
the initial trust
and the people relations come in,
because if if you have a discussion in
the consortium between companies who
actually distrust each other,
which happens a lot,
then something like shifting budget to
reach a goal is going to be very hard.
And that can only be prevented, I think,
by people actually, you know,
somewhat trusting each other that they
don't just want to grab money and
they want to give anything and contribute
and so on. That's really something that
you can resolve on the people level.
So an example now for the current
call that a number of people
I'm involved with.
Went in and actually got it, and it's
starting in January, was that and
this is an example of the
multidisciplinary interdisciplinary
tone and aspect that is in many.
And I think it's very important and it
makes a lot of sense in many ICT
information, communication technology
stuff, just like here at the conference.
Basically, they
wanted to have something and a
research project that actually does
technological developments, addressing
anonymity, ethics, privacy,
preservation and so on.
So obviously a topic that is
tied in part, at least
also to to a reaction also within
parts of the EU people
regarding Snowden.
It actually goes back to that.
Right. So they thought, OK, something
needs to be done there.
And what we did, like a number
of people got together.
Um, the first
meeting I was involved in is like a year
ago and the
year and two or three months.
And then the actual thing where
more people got together was here at the
thirty one three, like
at two o'clock in the night, walking out
of the party hall, running into the
persons. And we wanted to talk about
this. OK, let's talk about this.
And then, you know, these were like three
different people from three different
countries, which is also important
and kind of three different contexts,
contexts.
So we got together and
we had heard that that's going to be a
call. And it was.
About this, so we applied for
that oh, I'm sorry,
right. Sorry, this is the product we
applied with that I actually saw this
right.
This is the call that is part
of the text of this one page call.
And we said, right, you know, we just
take this and focus on this
because there's lots of things in this
call.
But you basically are going to tell
your story from a part of the call and
say, OK, this is what we're going to
focus on.
And that's what we did.
We actually said, OK, and it's
stated boldly
also to make it clear, like the people
involved here want to research
into decentralized,
interdisciplinary and privacy,
preserving and so on.
Technologies and protocols actually
develop new protocols.
So there's various peer to peer protocols
and messaging protocols,
including also more transparent
encryption for email and lots of other
things that are in this project.
And also community research like trying
to understand why or how
decentralization projects can succeed
in the current market environment
that we have. Right.
Which is not a trivial problem.
So another project
I'm just going to mention this briefly
is the pipeline project.
I actually talked about this in 2005.
I think also at a conference,
it's just in time compiler for
PayPal. And it wasn't you funded for
three years. The project existed already
one or two years, like between persons
that actually at some point decided, OK,
this is an interesting call, like new
language design or something, what it
was. And we went for that.
We got three years of a three years
funding, one to three million or
something like this.
And the thing is and that's also why the
EU is happy about this project as a
reference is it's actually still
ongoing like in 2015.
And that's not the typical things that
happens with EU projects that exist
at like with the beginning of the
funding. And they end when it's
done. And then that's nothing.
Sometimes has gone,
you know,
and you can imagine that many, like
many people, the project officers were
responsible for projects that kind of
unhappy about this.
They want to have something that actually
has an impact but actually goes on and
they basically try to like they pump some
money into it to actually help it.
And you don't have to pay it back.
It's not a loan or something, but it's
actually for getting somewhere and not
just for getting the money.
So I think the key, again, is like the
people in the project, you want to do the
project idea. The vision is
really what needs to come first
and basically also wanting
to do it even without EU funding.
That's a good start, I think.
And then you basically are even more
happy when the project
actually when you actually get the
funding and can sustain yourself.
One thing that is important is
what is very helpful 10 years ago.
Haven't given it that much now because I
have other means of getting information.
But in each country
in Europe, there's a so-called national
contact point. In Germany, it's called
the index.
It's actually with the moon
landing. The
IMF has called space
no
space travel space travel agency of
Germany. They are also functioning as
as a contact point.
The thing about contact points is the
national contact points.
They are usually super helpful.
They are not employed by the European
Union.
They are actually representing the nation
states and they want to help
the entities in their country to
get the largest piece of
the cake as possible.
Right.
So don't be afraid to talk to them.
When you talk to someone
from the European Union,
it's often a lot harder
to get useful information.
I think it's partly to the rules they are
actually executing.
They had a big scandal of corruption 10
years ago or 12
years ago now or so, and they changed the
rules.
And I think it's still in effect.
But don't name me on this.
It was, at least for a very long time,
the project officer that tells a project
something like, yeah, yeah, you
can make this change. It's going to be
OK, know, ask for some
change I want to make. And they said it's
OK.
And you quote them on this
and you sue them on this because
later on, basically when you actually do
the change and it gets not accepted by
the legal department of the EU,
then this project officer is liable
with at least one year's salary
personally.
And you can imagine what I mean, what
this kind of situation does to
your life, giving
good advice, right?
It's a bit tricky, like when
you say something and you do it and then
there's always this
tension.
And I think it's not a very good idea.
But they try to actually make it harder
for project officers to
do harm to the EU
budget.
OK.
I also said hacking funding.
I already mentioned when I talked about
bureaucracy that I think there's a
certain relation between software and
bureaucracy. Both deal with categories,
both deal with like confining
the world and to certain like pieces
and making relations and so on.
It's just that software automatically
executes and
and the bureaucracy that we know.
At least it's changing, actually, but
it's it's executing
humans.
When I say hacking funding, I mean
hacking in the sense of
understanding, like you understand
how something works, how the process
works, how the rules are executed,
what is involved like the various
pieces.
And then the other part of hacking is
trying to use it for
good purpose, sometimes also
bad purpose.
Right. But in general, trying to, let's
say for your own purpose and it's your
choice,
decentralization.
How is it possible that the EU,
as a kind of a centralized
institution, um,
funds decentralization?
How is how is that logic or something?
Right.
And I'm not going to do go too deep
into this, but I, I mean, there are
several things you can say about this.
One thing is that the
many people in the EU, they are not happy
with all these nation states.
And they to put it very bluntly,
they think that maybe decentralization is
a way the Europe of regions or
other things to actually, you know,
get a more coherent thing and not so much
focus on the nation states.
So it's basically a backdoor to
to change culture
and stuff like this.
The other thing is there's an intrinsic
relation between
centralization and decentralization, and
it depends on the context you look at.
YouTube is a socially
decentralized system.
I can choose which kind of videos I
like to
Google Hangouts. I can choose whom to
hang out with Facebook.
I can choose which kind of friends
I make.
But of course, because we have this x ray
thing, we like look through this and say,
well, but it's all done by one entity who
controls everything.
That doesn't mean that the social
experience isn't actually very
socially decentralized.
And that has been going on for a long
time. And one of the holy grails
basically of of
its development is to make it finally
possible that it doesn't need
to be owned by
by a single entity like such platforms
can actually be collaboratively
done.
Right. And exist basically on
on on all of our devices
without. And we collaborate and we maybe
even have contracts how we do things.
But there's no need to actually have,
like this commercial entity
that tries to capture all the value
in terms of money between
between social interactions
and so but in
the end, like what most users actually
experience, and that's really something
that you need to be very careful.
When you talk about decentralization,
most users actually feel they
are decentralized. I have my mobile.
I can contact whoever I want.
So decentralization on that level
is like the direct experience is actually
decentralized.
It's only the problem that we know how
it's actually operated.
Right. And that's understandable.
But I think it's important to to not
think that people just don't understand.
I understand perfectly well it makes
sense for them.
So I think when it comes to
also this conference and also the
community in general, we have this and
the topic is gated communities.
We have the Vatican problem.
Right. It's always this Vatican problem.
We kind of like not so much at this
conference. I mean, this is not open
to other prominent conferences was
much stronger.
We are kind of like the bishops and, you
know, discussing the world and and
having ideas about grand
unifying theories, how everything must be
done and so on.
But there's only certain aspects of it
here and
the other. It's like more horizontal,
like hippie, like whatever and diverse.
Approach where you don't have a
single ruling idea,
right, you maybe have a
single platform like this conference
with lots of rooms and lots of
possibilities, but then what actually
happens is, again, completely
decentralized, like it's up to us
who we talk to, how we got
and how we go about things
and how
this resolves. I mean, how can we
how can we get away from, I would
also say, bureaucratic systems that rob
people of agency?
That's a big question.
And I think
there's a number of people even in the
project, officers in the EU who
actually want to help this.
Right.
So and they are actually explicitly
interested. I know this from at least one
person in getting
more interesting projects, especially
from contexts from
like the CCC.
Right.
So that's definitely something
to go for. So
finally, just make this picture this
morning.
That's very nice because you have
this more or less horizontal activities
with a little bit of like, you know,
big keynotes and stuff and stuff
in the big room stuff.
And I think it's all a bit in the shadow
of what John Youngblood called
the broadcast.
Right. We have this big overarching
broadcast that basically tries to order
all of the world and integrate
all of the activities into a certain,
what you call it, world system.
And that's a certain
tension that I feel personally.
And since the Paris attacks,
I actually I didn't want to read
any of this like this whole thing,
what they say in the target show,
you know, all the politicians and so on.
I said, OK, this is now a perfect
opportunity to actually listen
to the broadcast anymore.
So I stepped away from all of this,
like Peter Spiegel, whatever.
I mean, all of these broadcast
media, because I don't want to
recreate myself in this image,
but they're painting to be part of that.
Right. I want to create my own context.
I want to have the time and
maybe also the come to actually
to do this and
go somewhere else.
OK, thank you very much.
Hold out for this very nice talk.
We have ten minutes for Q&A.
So if you have a question, please line up
at the four microphones while
you're lining up.
We also have a question from our signal
angel on your seat.
There is the question whether
there are some examples available
from the paperwork submitted,
like the 60 pages of maybe the
successful proposals.
Yes, I think they are.
I'm not sure. Sometimes they are only the
everything except for the budgeting,
like how the money is distributed.
That's so.
And then, I mean, they are basically
hundreds out there.
If you sent me a mail,
I can probably make you available at
least two or three.
And I'm not sure if there's a public
repository, but it's it's a very good
point because I'm
looking at successful proposals,
idealism that got 15
out of 15 points to see
how they are done. That's a certain
structure that's like three chapters,
excellence, impact,
like how you're doing the stuff.
Right.
And you can see this,
how it's done and how people actually
describe things in examples.
Like I said, I'm not completely sure
about a repository, but
also ask at the national contact point
or if all else fails, try to
email me and I can see what I can
provide. And since you're following the
topic, do you also
maybe blog about it?
I'm not following the topic.
I'm just getting some money and.
I see the news value in this, so
I'm not an expert on this, like I'm not,
but I'm not operating a company that does
advise on this, right?
Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
I'm not using Twitter currently, but,
um, I might
post something on the blog. I can
promise. Sorry.
Yes, hello.
Hello.
On Twitter, there's a link for a
proposal which was submitted successfully
about a week here for anybody
who is doing automated as the new project
running with a call will last
until August 2016,
you can get up to 100000 if you're doing
open data projects, that might be.
Yes.
Yeah. I mean, one thing I can offer is
that the people who are interested to
discuss a bit more in-depth, we can
actually gather afterwards and go
somewhere and talk
a bit more about examples and
some background information.
Yes,
I want to know you said those pipelines,
an example. Do you have any do you know
of any other projects that might be
known, perhaps that successfully
funded and that.
Yes. No. And used.
I mean, that's that's increasingly many
open source project, but I think
Freephone was involved.
I'm not sure what to call eMESH something
somebody who knows.
Well that's,
that's the open data.
That's also I think activities in the
open data community.
And if you look for open source, you
funded project, you should find
some examples. And I think it's just
getting more like I still remember that
pipeline was one of the first bigger
ones. They actually funded with
open source because that's the section.
And your proposal about intellectual
property rights.
Right.
Like, how many patents do you actually
plan to submit and stuff like this
before? Like zero?
No, no.
But it's I think it's more
like they understand open source and they
want to have it. So that's not
really a big barrier there at all
anymore.
Another question from the from the right
microphone.
Will you tell us something more about
consortiums and consortium dynamics,
especially what kind of consortium
dynamics founders are
looking for? Like, I
don't know, just as an example,
if you like to play a role playing games,
you know that you always need a clerical
work and a reason.
What do you need for a consortium?
I know
you already said it, I think.
I know at least one or two persons who
were involved in EU projects would, I
would consider kind of visit that
actually made things happen.
Yeah, there's also the Warriors that
actually try to fight for their budget
and don't want to do actually
much. Oh, you didn't deliver in the last
year.
Yeah, but we want to have money anyway.
And then you have this discussion in the
consortium and you can either decide
how we're going to justify this to the EU
or you can put pressure on this
entity.
And that all
depends on it. So it's
I think there's a number of examples.
And that's when you talk to people at
universities, you will get a lot of
negative experiences.
Right.
But I think it depends on how you do it.
I think the if you actually
have people who want to do something
together, that's like
it's like half at least 70 percent
of your success.
Right.
If you have if you
see it all through the lens of like
companies and their budgets and, you
know, the CEOs talking also,
I would say that,
yeah, I mean, I can I can talk maybe
off the records of some disasters.
I know.
Another question from the front left
microphone. It's not a question, it's
actually an answer. There is no central
repository of proposals, but
we published our winning proposal
in entirety at Open Kentucky,
and it got like fourteen point five out
of 15.
So come and talk to us if you
if it's something I say a bit more about
your product, actually, because you're
some people ask, OK, so
it's we're looking at
community driven models of health
and social care. So what would a health
and social care system look like
if it were driven by communities with
the open technology and access
to basically knowledge
that was only accessible to either the
market providers or the
state? So the whole proposal
just go to open karaoke downloaded,
including the budget, whatever everything
we sent him and come talk to us.
We're also the outriders assembly.
How cool.
Very good. Thank you.
So I can see it's it's actually possible
you see another
question from the front drive microphone,
a little more information, a question
about how is a small company
defined to you?
How is it for small
companies easier to apply because
the Bay Area is lower.
So how is a small company
defined how many employees
or.
I think they are also fine with one
person companies. Like I said, I mean,
they don't want to have a consortium, I'm
pretty sure of seven one
person companies, and I'm going to go
with that. So you'd have to have a kind
of a mixture.
And that's one thing I didn't say
clearly, which is there's one
company which is
the ringmaster,
which is the coordinator company,
and that is the primary contact of
the EU. And that usually needs to be some
institution that knows
how to deal with this EU interaction.
So the EU usually much prefers
having an experienced company there.
It also usually wants to have a
university or two and then companies.
But some of the companies can be very
small. That's fine.
Microphone front left
in the case of this criterium
impact, I'm wondering of
how difficult it is for for a
project about privacy or for social
good to abuse or in the case
of the next LEAP project.
How did you argue that this
economic benefit?
Well, we basically stated that there is a
demand for privacy preserving
technology, but it's
currently too hard to actually get
something usable.
And so it's also part of the protocols
about usability and
also developing basically
the call open source technologies in
order to build products with it.
And
there's also I mean, there's various
applications that have millions
of downloads, even on mobile
phones and so on, that are privacy
preserving today.
So you can make the case basically that
doing something in this area, maybe
also relating it to opinion polls
like public opinion polls,
has an impact on a
tangible benefit for European
citizens.
Right. And you can also make this
I mean, we did this argument that can
actually also help and will also help
product development, that people can
actually vote with the citizens.
It's OK. It's not just not only the
marketing. No, no.
I mean, the market needs to be in there,
like I said. I mean, that's just the
framing we are in is the broadcast
we are in is actually market liberal.
So, um,
you can probably go I mean, market
liberals also kind of a big
range, right? I mean, some people focus
more on the liberal part and some people
more on the market. But and
I think you have some freedom there and
how you exactly describe it, but you must
relate to it.
The impact is also about economics.
We have time for a few more quick
questions from the front right
microphone.
I'm sorry, can you please
recount a question that's just
a country where you incorporated in
matter in getting funding?
Yes, you need to have European companies.
Usually you need to know, sorry, you need
to have companies who are incorporated
in the EU
and plus some associated
member states. I think Switzerland is
also possible and
some others.
And there's also some programs that deal
with collaboration with Japan,
you know, going all the way back to the
Second World War.
And
I know that's not really.
I'm just wondering why it's Japan, why
not something else?
I mean, whatever.
And it's and it's and it's
Brazil and I think but otherwise,
basically the main carriers of
the main carriers off of
the main carriers off the consortium need
to be in Europe.
You can employ people from other
countries like from the U.S.
and we're doing this.
But we actually get them.
They don't mind because it's kind of like
getting good people. Here is a good idea.
Sorry, but there's not like a higher
likelihood to get funding if your example
from Germany.
Oh, no, no.
I only know that Germany somehow manages
to get above
proportional payback.
Um, I don't know if that's
how they do this or if it's just
because there's more proposals.
I think there's a quite big support
industry and in Germany
and also I think a lot of activities
actually that qualify.
But, yeah, it's
it's there's no I think sometimes
they have their calls.
They explicitly say we want to have at
least one participant from Greece
or from Spain or, you know,
some some category.
So they are sometimes special conditions
on the calls that actually do this.
But usually it's the whole of the EU
and you need to have usually three
different countries involved.
We're all out of time.
Thank you very much for this very
insightful talk with.