Working collaboratively on EU technology projects
From a correspondent... Working with people from other organisations on a common challenge broadens the corporate outlook and brings many other benefits. I've contributed as a technologist to several collaborative research projects part-funded by the EU over the past ten years or so, working with universities, corporations and public institutions from at least a dozen EU countries. Projects vary in size: for example, the project Vconect led by University College, Falmouth ran from 2011 to 2014, and involved about twenty people from nine partner organisations across six European countries, with an EU-funded budget of €5.5M. The project website is here: www.vconect-project.eu/home.html.
Vconect's aim was to study how high-quality video could help bring communities together. One of the major elements of the project was a staging of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with the actors performing at two separate theatres in Cornwall, and the audience likewise split so that some were watching from those two theatres and others from their home computers. Family and friends in different locations were able to watch a streamed version of the play in virtual "family boxes", whilst also being able to e-chat to each other.
The project had to develop the technology to manage, stage and stream this live production. This was certainly not simple, when colleagues working together on any particular task could be based in Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium or opposite ends of the UK. But the mix of professional theatre companies, universities and technology organisations was essential, and the different ways of working, combined with the international cultures, made for fascinating and productive work.
In my experience over several of these EU collaboratives, the parent organisations benefit not just financially but culturally, since knowledge is exchanged and outward-looking relationships are developed. On collaborative projects, people frequently live and work outside their home countries, and changing country for work can seem as natural as moving town.