The ECHOES project (European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science) officially started on 1st June, led by The French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) with a consortium of 51 European partners from 15 different countries. An internal board meeting was held just after the start date to plan the initial activities.
The kick-off meeting was held online on 1st July, and all the partners were excited to officially start working together on this project. Around 150 people took part over the day which started with introductions and a project management overview, a standard set of procedures and rules for reporting and finances as well as general administration. In total, the research activities consist of 12 Work Packages (WP) and the each of the partners responsible presented their tasks and initial progress. WP2 is concerned with external communications and the visual design and website are already well under way. WP3 is concerned with enhancing collaboration and integration with the ECCCH stakeholders and one of their first tasks is to prepare an inventory of existing datasets, tools and workflows.
The next eight work packages are divided equally into four pillars:
- Community – gathering a community around the Cloud through the identification of existing groups of actors and the development of training activities.
- Knowledge – is to implement and launch the technical and conceptual infrastructures of the Cloud, and to develop the Knowledge Base.
- Innovation – to develop the application of the tools and to assess the Cloud’s digital ecosystem via an assessment framework.
- Sustainability – to establish a legal entity for the Cloud, all the while maintaining its leading-edge position in the EU and internationally.
Each of the WP Leaders presented their objectives and a roadmap for achieving these.
The final work package, WP12, is concerned around the ethics of AI which will be looked at once ECHOES is well established.
Additionally, a draft schedule of the first ECHOES Annual Event was also discussed. This will run from the 9th-11th September and will be hosted at Castle of Chambord, France. During this event, two other related projects, Automata and TEXTaiLES, will be presented and another important activity, the cascading grant applications is also on the agenda. More detailed information will be available about the event soon.
