SSOKU09 Morning Plenary

Registration after registration starting from this morning at 8,00 a.m. for the 'early wakers' we had 122 people attending the Opening Plenary here at Diamant Centre. After a welcome speech and an introduction on the technical and administrative merge of Software and Service and Grid in the SOKU technologies presented by Geir Horn, ECSS Coordinator. Jesus Villasante, Head of the SSAI Unit, gave an interesting speech on the panorama of Internet nowadays and on the important step further considering also the impact of these technologies on the market....does flickr, facebook, yahoo, and so on ring a bell?

Talking about the future calls (call 5 will close in November with a budget of € 100 M ) and the next Framework Programme (FP8), Jesus Villasante has emphasized the need to raise innovation in the future-to-be financed projects.

The outcomes of the ongoing projects, said Jesus Villasante, have been of great importance and they have enriched the SSAI unit with their different perspectives on the some object of interest (clarifying has been the slide where an elephant (see image above) was shown and to the question 'what is an elephant?' everybody answers with a part of it as he sees it ('A fan', 'a wall', 'a rope'...). Dora Varvarigou (CHALLANGERS Coordinator) and Eva Garcìa (ECSS representative) have explained their different perspective on the “elephant” of the Software and Services and they have promised a deeper insight in tomorrow presentations...