Fading Memories

One thing that Ralph Fiergolla made very clear today in Nijmegen is that the European Commission really would like more experts from the free software community to evaluate research proposals. You don't need a Phd (I haven't got one either), but you do need a certain amount of technical knowledge, a certain amount of experience so you know what things are likely to work and what things aren't -- but if you've been coding for a half a decade or more and have been participating in free software communities for about as long, you might very well be the kind of person the European Commission needs for its evaluation process.

From my own experience I can say that it's a fun thing to do, not extremely well remunerated, but you get to meet really interesting people. The evaluation process itself is really thorough and well-designed, and it's a good thing to have experienced. Sure, there are inconveniences, like having to read about 600 pages of dry prose and doing your real best to really understand the issues and the subject. But what's a little inconvenience in a righteous cause? And you have to read up on the relevant EU documents, too, which is a bit of work. Perhaps track the rss feed too.

But if you think you have the right stuff in you, why not go to Cordis website, and check it out, and maybe even register as an expert? The KDE community really is full of excellence -- let's make sure that the wider world benefits from that, too.

Today was my last day at Tryllian, and since my boss had given me the day off I was free to go to Nijmegen, where we had the inaugural meeting of the KDE Research Working Group. As a special guest we had Ralph Fiergolla from the European Commission's FP7 directorate. Sebastian and Adriaan hosted the meeting in the SQO-OSS project room

The meeting was quite productive: we decided on an action plan, came up with a couple of likely proposals, had an enlightening presentation by Ralph about the way the EC funding process works, and afterwards a good discussion on how a loosely-knit community of volunteers like KDE could fit into that. The EC is actively looking for project partners outside the group of "usual suspects", and well, that's where we want to fit in.

Oh -- and Adriaan is dead wrong. There is a place in the Netherlands where you can have truly excellent food for a decent price. In Nijmegen, no less. Indian restaurant Gandhi, Hertogstraat 23. I have never had Indian food that was that good. We had a couple of dishes I hadn't seen before, like lamb pasanda (sweet, with almonds). The spices were exactly right. The texture of the eggplant in the baigan bhajee was amazing: soft with a little bite but nothing of the chalk-on-blackboard squeaking that eggplant often has, while not being overcooked. Completely amazing!