MFG European Reporter -

The CReATE project, coordinated by MFG and funded within the FP7 – Regions of Knowledge framework,  is organizing the international conference  “CReATE: CONNECTING ICT RESEARCH AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISES”, that will take place in Turin, Italy, on 4th and 5th November 2009.

The conference  will be the meeting point for experts, coming from several countries and different background, to discuss the state of the art of ICT innovation in creative industries and cluster development. It is meant to involve public, political, entrepreneurial stakeholders through targeted workshops and discussions, in order to network them, to identify new ICT development trajectories and ICT research priorities, to focus innovative business models.

The event is addressed to cluster organisations, company representatives (SMEs and MNCs), researchers, intermediaries, enterprise associations, political decision-makers, both from CReATE partner and non-partner regions.

The CReATE conference will be hosted at the Virtual Reality & Multimedia Park in Turin, a high tech facility supported by local university and Regione Piemonte to promote research and development of innovative applications – especially in virtual reality and new technologies – for the audiovisual and multimedia sector development.
Moreover, the CReATE conference is part of a week in Turin full of events and festivals, to explore digital creativity, such as VIEW conference, Share Festival, Club to Club Festival in cooperation with Regione Piemonte.

The conference is part of the programm of the European Year of creativity and innovation and will be be streamed on WIPIE TV.

The event will be enriched by a Matchmaking session, organized for the evening of the 4th November, which will bring together enterprises, working  in Creative sector,  from the hot-spots region involved in CReATE.

On the 9th September the Steibeins Europa Zentrum in collaboration with the MFG Baden Württemberg has run a workshop on the European Seventh Framework Programme (FP/7), with the aim of giving the applicants some useful tipps to present a successful project, being aware of possible tricks. More than 40 german future applicants had the chance to improve their knowledge on the programme and make questions to clear their doubts. Here a brief overview of what has been said.

FP/7 is the short name for the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, the EU’s main instrument for funding research in Europe. The broad objectives of FP7 have been grouped into four categories: Cooperation, Ideas, People and Capacities. For each type of objective, there is a specific programme corresponding to the main areas of EU research policy. All specific programmes work together to promote and encourage the creation of European poles of (scientific) excellence. The programme will run from 2007 till 2013 with a budget of 54.521 billion euro.

The complexity of the programme required a careful understanding of the requirements set up in the call. Take your time to read and understand all the documents and, in case you still have any doubts, there are a lot of european contact points who can help you to work on your proposal.

Heike Fischer from Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum

First of all, who can participate to FP7?

Any company, university, research centre, organisation or individual from the EU-27 Member States may participate in a collaborative project. But also associated, candidate and third countries may take part to a project.

No one can present a project on his on: a fundamental prerequisite to take part to FP7 is to set up a consortium of at least 3 partner.  In choosing partners it’s crucial to look for reliable organisations, which will for sure carry out the work assigned to them. For a successful project management a clear division of tasks among partners is vital. Look for partners with differente expertise, which can bring complementary knowledge and support in the project, adoiving – in the meantime – any form of internal competition. And remember that the transnational dimension of the project is a key factor for its success.

If you have never draw a proposal before, finding the right european partners could not be that easy. Fortunately, there are a lot of database that can help you in your search: in these database organisations looking for partnership can upload their profile by entering their project idea or specific expertise and, of course, can look for other partners reading all the profile divided by projects and countries.

Here are some useful links:

Cordis database

Enterprise Europe Network

Is your idea right for the FP7 and how can you develop it?

This is also an important questions that should be answered before drawing a proposal. Ideas should fit to the detailed request from the EU and should therefore proposed in the framework of the right programm. But good ideas are not enough. A good project should show a high profile project management that takes into consideration a solid risk management and a wide dissemination strategy. If you are not sure that your project has all these requisites you can ask for advise to the one of the many contact point and institutions that all over Europe help applicants to write proposals, check financial matters and evaluate the work done from a outsider’s point of view.

In Germany you can in any time contact the National Contact Point for any problems regarding European project. If you are in Baden-Württemberg you can directly ask the Steinbeins Europa Zentrum, your regional contact point.

Here you can find all the slide and the information provided during the workshop:

Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum

Grundprinzipien der Europäische Forschungsförderung

Der Weg zum Antragstellung und Aufbau eines Konsortiums

Aktuelle IKT Aufrufen in 7. Forschungsrahmenprogramm

Finanzielle Aspekte in einem FP7 Projekt