Technical kick-off meeting: September 2-3 2001 ?

Dear all,

Raja Chatila (LAAS), Henrik Christensen (KTH) and myself (K.U.Leuven)
have met the EU project officer for the Orocos project. Not all
administration is done with yet, but the envisaged starting date of
the sponsored part of the project is September 1st.

Our proposal for having a travel budget of 30000 Euros to invited
people from outside the small official project consortium (LAAS, KTH,
K.U.Leuven) has been accepted. This means that we will be able to
sponsor fifteen people for four technical meetings, with a (modest)
grant of 500 euros per person.

The first such technical meeting would take place at the start of the
EU project, and my suggestion is to hold it in Leuven, on Sunday 2 and
Monday 3 September. The reason to start on a sunday is to keep travel
costs low for people that would need air transportation. I will also
try to get student rooms on our campus in Leuven, which would help in
keeping costs down too. (You find all details about Leuven and how to
reach it on our webpage at
<http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/studeng/a_totaal/geninfo.htm>.)

The meeting would mainly consist of technical discussions, and I plan
to have a ``hacking room'' at our disposal, if there is interest in
having this. Professionals as well as motivated students are both
welcome, as long as they have interesting things to say or a big
desire to learn :-)

In order to prepare the meeting and the project, I now officially
invite everybody to start thinking about the strategic parts of the
project. I have some designs I would like to launch during the
following weeks; other people who have a broad and detailed vision on
some aspects of the software should also take the opportunity to
present them for open discussion on the mailinglist.

So, I welcome your reactions on the suggestions presented above
(technical meeting in Leuven; brainstorming on strategic design
issues), so that I can adapt my preparations to the needs and
desiderata of the community.

An important practical issue: we (= the consortium partners) are free
to spend the travel grants on everybody we think is useful for the
project; of course, we will give priority to people that show to be
really concerned with, and active in, making the design phase of the
project a success.

Best regards,

Herman

-- 
[email protected]
 <http://www.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc/>