First periodic project meeting held in Vilnius

Francisco Sanz
March 31, 2020, 1:46 p.m.

Members of the EU-Citizen.Science consortium met in Vilnius, Lithuania, in September for the first periodic project meeting. Held at the Vilnius Tech Park, a beautiful ‘tech campus’ beside the Neris river, it was a chance to share updates on how the eight work packages are progressing, and to plan the next steps together.

“It’s always a pleasure to visit the charming city of Vilnius,” says Margaret Gold from ECSA. “Gathering all the partners together allowed for some very fruitful conversations across the work packages, and a chance to align our goals for the project.”

One of the first activities was a workshop about work package 3 (WP3), led by IIASA. Participants were asked to reflect on the criteria that will determine which tools, guidelines and materials are hosted on the platform, and how these criteria might be used.

ECSA, which leads WP2, updated the consortium on progress with their first two deliverables – the Stakeholders, network and community mapping report and the Engagement and community-building plan (which have both since been completed). There were further presentations and discussions about project management (WP1), awareness and engagement (WP4), assessing training needs (WP5), communications (WP6) and project evaluation (WP7).

Work will continue on all work packages ahead of some important upcoming milestones: the platform going live next March, complete with a ‘training the trainer’ module, and the second periodic project meeting in Madrid, Spain, which will be held in June.

“It’s exciting to see how all our thoughts and ideas are taking shape, ahead of the platform going online next year,” says Katherin Wagenknecht, the project coordinator at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. “There are still a lot of questions to answer, but already the gears are clicking into place, with the work packages now interlinking well with each other.”