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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Dear
community,<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><br>
</span></p>
<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">the
governing board of AALOA has been
invited to organize <b style="">a special workshop</b>
(most probably in April this year in Brussels, jointly with the <u>ICT
for
Inclusion</u> unit of the <u>DG for Information Society and
Media</u> of the
European Commission) with the goal to discuss possibilities <b
style="">for funding projects</b> that could
directly promote the AAL market breakthrough.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">This is
a big opportunity for AALOA to go a
step forward and to give foundation to the Manifesto's ideas
around which this
community is growing. Of course, it is also an opportunity for all
the
satellite projects, which could benefit from this funding scheme.<br>
<br>
</span><i style=""><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">We
are asking all of you, especially people involved in </span></i><i><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">running</span></i><i
style=""><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"> EU
projects
(especially SMEs and enterprises</span></i><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">),</span><i
style=""><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"> to
express their opinion and if desired to
send a representative to the workshop in Brussels. This is the
right moment to
help the community by doing networking to reach all the
potentially interested
stakeholders.<br>
<br>
</span></i><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The
original idea was developed by Reiner
Wichert, spokesman for Fraunhofer-Allianz AAL (which consists of
13 different
Fraunhofer institutes in different cities in Germany), who is also
one of the
first subscribers of the AALOA Manifesto.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Reiner
developed the idea of "stress testing":<br>
<br>
</span>
<blockquote><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Courier
New";" lang="EN-GB">To fill the gap between
research and market</span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Courier New";" lang="EN-GB">,</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Courier New";"
lang="EN-GB"> the industry must
be involved in projects that put selected promising research
results under
"stress tests". That is, companies already offering AAL services
and
products / prototypes start to use these results as underlying
technologies
(platform) in new adapted versions of the existing products in
such projects.
The funding should mainly aim at mitigating adaptation costs for
the
participating vendors.</span></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"><br>
The workshop is expected to examine the
usefulness and feasibility of the idea in conjunction with an
appropriate
funding scheme. For this reason, it is preferable that the
majority of the
workshop participants are such companies already offering AAL
services and
products / prototypes. Other participants should be entities
representing
research results that are </span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"
lang="EN-GB">volunteers</span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"
lang="EN-GB">
to go under stress testing. Last but not least, representatives
of the current
funding programmes, such as FP7, CIP ICT PSP, and AAL JP shall
attend this
workshop.<br>
<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height:
normal;"></p>
<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The
umbrella of AALOA could be the right
place where such action could be implemented. In fact, according
to the
manifesto, AALOA wants to </span><i style=""><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";">"Design, develop,
evaluate, standardize and
maintain a common service platform for AAL"</span></i><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">,
but the problem of creating consensus around a shared platform is
still an open
issue. We think that the open source policy adopted by AALOA is
the right tool
around which consensus can be reached. We are starting to incubate
projects
within AALOA, but </span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"
lang="EN-GB">from among </span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"
lang="EN-GB">the EU
projects supporting AALOA</span><span style="font-size: 9pt;
font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";"
lang="EN-GB">, currently only those that are still
running</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"> have
the required </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">resources</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">
to put their research results under stress test in a production
environment.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">This is
the reason why we started
contacting the universAAL project board. They reacted positively
to the
initiative, provided that it starts </span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">not
earlier than</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">
the beginning of 2012, after the second </span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">development</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">
iteration. In fact, universAAL had already planned to more
actively present its
results to the general AAL community during their third iteration,
in order to
gather and incorporate useful external feedback.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The
reaction of the universAAL consortium,
which is composed of 17 European partners, means</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"> that</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">
we have the first significant endorsement, so we are positive
about the idea of
organising the workshop. In fact, we may be able to candidate
universAAL to be
the first test bed for stress testing. The idea is to grant
universAAL a slot
in the workshop for explaining why it would be a good idea that a
pilot
project is based on their platform. AALOA would ensure that
possible decisions
on this proposal will be the result of the open discussions that
we will have
during the workshop.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">However,
we hope that this is only a first
step: <u>we warmly encourage this community to propose
alternative platform
candidates</u>, and we invite other </span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">consortia</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">
(e.g. </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">OSAmI</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">-commons,
OpenURC,
Continua, </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">etc</span><span
style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">) to
participate
and support the workshop. Given the many ongoing initiatives in
this area, we
expect interesting candidate proposals. However, nobody knows
whether the
general idea of one or more specific candidates will be confirmed
by the
workshop; <u>we do not even know if any solution can be found for
funding
stress testing projects</u>.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">We think
that AALOA is the right umbrella
to promote this interesting initiative, also because it already
has the
strength to mediate among competing solutions and creating
synergies where possible.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Some of
the AALOA Governing Board members
are going to meet physically during the next week and will work on
a first
draft of the announcement of the workshop. The draft will then be
submitted to
the whole Governing Board in order to finalise a version to be
posted to the
AALOA promoters and supporters, with one week time for gathering
feedback. We
must proceed quickly in order to be able to contact the EC by the
third week of
February with a concrete proposal on the organization of the
workshop.</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"></span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">Any
criticism, doubt, further request for clarification, expression of
interest, or active support is welcome and warmly appreciated.
Please provide your feedback as soon as possible so that we can
consider it for preparing the announcement.<br>
<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB">The
AALOA Governing Board<br>
Francesco Furfari<br>
Joe Gorman<br>
Sergio Guillen<br>
Sten Hanke<br>
Thomas Karopka<br>
Antonio Kung<br>
Saied Tazari<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif";" lang="EN-GB"></span>
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