wp10 – management

Y1 Review - GenoaY1 Review - GenoaDecember 2011December 2011

European Commission Information Society and Media

GaLAGame and Learning Alliance

The European Network of Excellence on Serious Games

WP10 – Management

ELIOS Lab – DIBE – University of Genoa

1



Consortium management

• Management and supervision• Control activities performed according to the contract and the

Quality Plan• Reinforce the cohesion, facilitate the communication flow• Network hub to support the information exchange• Coordinate release of deliverables, reports, or events• Ensure correctness, timeliness and completeness• Check and control partners periodical reports

– Quarterly and annual

• Integrated annual technical and administrative reports• Continuous monitoring of the world situation concerning market and

technology trends, user needs, EC requirements and carefully adapting the NoE activities accordingly

• Perform risk management• Communication with the European Commission

2



Financial management

• Distribution to all the partners of the advance payment received from the European Commission

• Coordinating all the financial reports to be provided to the EC to ensure correctness, timeliness and completeness, according to the contractual obligations

• Controlling the overall budget and managing all financial issues with the Commission

3



Management team at the coordinator’s

• Alessandro De Gloria– Full professor, coordinator of the NoE

• Francesco Bellotti and Riccardo Berta– Assistant professors– Responsible

• WP1 strategic coordination• Development of the Virtual Research Environment (VRE), for the

collaboration services for the whole consortium

• Elisa Lavagnino– Responsible at full-time of the GaLA secretariat.

• University secretary personnel– Strictly financial management

• Constant presence and full-time availability for partner interaction

4



Network management team

• Network coordinator– Prof. De Gloria, Univ. Genova

• Executive Management Board (EMB)– Leaders of the GaLA WPs, chaired by the NoE Coordinator– EMB meetings at all the 4 GaLA meetings and monthly on Skype

• Strategic Management Board (SMB)– One representative from all the NoE partners;

• Scientific & Technological Coordinator– Prof. Sara de Freitas, of the University of Coventry;

• Technical Committees (TCs) and Special Interest Group (SIGs) leaders;

• Quality Manager– Alessandra Barbieri, of NURC;

• Communication Officer– Prof. Wim Westera, of the Open University of the Netherlands;

• Responsible for the Outreach Advisory Board– Prof. Johann Riedel, of the University of Nottingham

5



Management tasks

• No legal issues so far• Consortium Agreement has taken a long time to reach

the final version, now under the signature process• Quality planned issued at the beginning of the project

– Templates and procedures defined for all the project’s documents and processes

• Outreach Advisory Board

6



T10.4 Outreach Advisory Board (Unott)

• Objectives of OAB– To be a ‘critical’ friend to Gala – provide advice and guidance on the

direction of the network– To control and strengthen the link between research and the market – To guarantee that the NoE activities and services are also of benefit

for the external scientific, technological and industrial community

• OAB Membership – 3 internal members: the Task leader, one representative of the GaLA

companies and the NoE coordinator– 4 external members: a company, an SME, a university and a

research center

• Membership criteria– Experts in SG, international reputation, understanding of European

projects and/or research, diplomatic and constructive manner

7



D10.19 OAB Annual Report No.1

• Selection and nomination process of OAB members elaborated

• Appointment process detailed • Activities of the OAB outlined

• Failure to establish the OAB in year 1– 2 nominated members applied to be associate partners– Nomination process active

• Target to have an operational OAB by April 2012

8



Problems and solutions

• Internal turn-over for some partners caused delays– Strong committment of the partners’ management to cope with the issue

– Collaboration and availability by all the other WP/Ts partners

– Communication and re-scheduling

• Several deliverables delayed– turn-over of personnel

– need to satisfy evolving requirements from partners and stakeholders

– For the next year we expect an overall improvement• All partners now familiar with the procedures

– formats, peer-review process, collaboration tools and modalities

• the first year has posed the foundations for all the major activities of the project, which are now well structured and organized

• Semestral activity and management deliverables cancelled– Overhead of partners activities, info in quarterly (not foreseen in the

contract) and annual reports

• OAB criteria defined. Still to be established

9



Impact of deviations

• All the work planned was done• Major still open points

– Constitution of the European SG Association• Long term sustainability target

• All documents defined and approved by the EMB, to be approved by the SMB

– Outreach Activity Board

• Minor impact of deliverable delays– All the tasks are continuing from the first year to the second, so

the activity is progressing and the delay has been absorbed• The first year had a peculiar initial overhead

– Time needed for reciprocal knowledge, set-up of the collaboration infrastructure, set-up and understanding of the procedures

10



Project meetings

11

Place Date Major topics

University of Genoa

October 11-13, 2011

Kick-off meetingWorkshop presenting each partner’s R&D activities in the SG fieldWorkplan presentation, discussion and preparation

Esade – Barcelona

January 19-21, 2011

Presentation and discussion of the progress of each WP

Heriot Watt Univ – Edinburgh

June 20-24, 2011 1st GaLA Alignment SchoolCollaborative design of game conceptsWP collaboration meetings

BIBA – Bremen

September 19-21, 2011

Presentation of the progress of each WPPreparation to the review meetingReview of the deliverables



Planning and status

• All WPs able to meet the major expected requirements– Exploiting an excellent collaboration among partners, built in the

negotiation and since the beginning of teh project

• Targets for the 2nd year– Internal partner integration is being achieved => better external

defragmentation– High-level publications (journal special issues); Eu conference on

SGs; joint research activities based on the feedback of the TCs and SIGs; business.univeristy dialogue activities; planning for Higher Education on SGs; assessment of SGs and of their deployment in edu. & corporate training; set-up of the Living Labs

• Improvements needed for on-time delivery of the deliverables– Warm-up passed; foundations for all the project’s activities posed

12



Communication between beneficiaries

• Common meetings– 4 physical meetings– Skype conference calls

• EMB, WP, Task

• Joint publications, joint research projects, GaLA event organization

• Bilateral meetings– Project proposals– Visits of institutions for projects and seminars

13



Collaborations with other projects

• Coordination with Technology Enhanced Learning activities under the EU umbrella, offfering a specialized focus on SGs

• Stellar NoE, shaping the TEL landscape in EU• Related IST-ICT projects

– 80 Days, Elektra, eCircus, Siren, Target

• Very useful for a better understanding and integration with the main organizations in EU research on SGs

• For the next year, collaboration expected also with other projects, in particular Terence and xDelia

14



MMs distribution across WPs

15

Planned PMs

Actual PMs

Diff

WP1 7,50 9,50 27%

WP2 17,25 39,50 129%

WP3 17,50 27,80 59%

WP4 20,00 11,50 -43%

WP5 19,75 13,60 -31%

WP6 13,75 16,20 18%

WP7 16,30 16,10 -1%

WP8 17,25 11,40 -34%

WP9 8,50 18,60 119%

WP10 6,00 6,20 3%

TOTAL 143,80 170,40 18%



MMs distribution across partners

16

PartnerPlanne

d Actual Diff.

UniGe 13 15 15%

ESADE 1,5 3,1 107%

CEDEP 3,75 3,1 -17%

ORT 3,5 7,1 103%

BIBA 6 2,8 -53%

TuDelft 3,75 3,4 -9%

NTNU 1,75 0,7 -60%

CNR 5,5 8,6 56%

NURC 3 4,3 43%

UWS 4 7,7 93%

CovUni 6,25 6,3 1%

SGI 4,5 8,5 89%

UCM 7,5 11,3 51%

Cyntelix 6 6,3 5%

UPS 3,75 12,5 233%

Partner Planned Actual Diff.

TuGraz 2,75 5,3 93%

TUT 2,75 1,5 -45%

RWTH 2 2,7 35%

AAU 2,5 1,9 -24%

HWU 3 3,3 10%

Atos 10,75 7,8 -27%

UniGraz 4,5 6,9 53%

Inesc-Id 6,5 3,9 -40%

Unott 5,75 10,5 83%

MAN 5,25 5,25 0%

ETHZ 1,75 1,8 3%

Aalto 2,25 1,8 -20%

Playgen 7 7,8 11%

Polimi 2,5 0,5 -80%

UU 5,25 3,4 -35%

OUNL 3,5 5,5 57%



MMs distribution for each WP

17

Partner Planned PMs

Actual PMs

UNIGE 1,25 2ESADE 0 0,3TU Delft 0,5 0,5CNR 1 1,6UWS 0,25 0,4COVUNI 0,75 0,8CYNT. 0,25 0,3AAU 0 0,3ATOS 0,25 0,3MAN 0,75 1,5UU 1 1,3BIBA 0,5 0,2NURC 0,25 0

TOTAL 6,75 9,5



MMs distribution for each partner

18

COVUNI Planned PMs

Actual PMs

WP1 0,75 0,8

WP2 2 2,60

WP4 0,5 0,2

WP5 1,5 1

WP8 0,5 0,5

WP10 1 1,2

TOTAL 6,25 6,3

wp10 – management

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