4.1 Spread of Excellence activities in general

Marta Nachtmannová, Charles University in Prague (the Czech Republic)

Certainly you have already heard about spreading dimension of the CINEFOGO Network of Excellence - but how should one understand, visualize and even get actively involved in something that sounds more like a technical, abstract and decidedly highly bureaucratic concept?

Imagine that CINEFOGO Network of Excellence interconnects more than 35 institutions and 150 researchers in Europe. Networking means communicating, sharing, combining, matching and developing knowledge within the Network and beyond its structure. One can liken such Network to a big party where everyone has to exchange greetings with all the other parties. How many individual bilateral greetings will be made among 150 researchers? The result is a rather larger number, namely 11.175.

However, this simplified model considers only simple greetings at a closed party. Reality is always far more intricate than a model, so is the Network and its environment. Not only greetings, but complex ideas, concepts and experiences need to be shared and tested within the Network and between the Network and other networks, institutions and other relevant stakeholders. How to manage such communication? Who should communicate, with whom, why, how and when? And how should all these communications be easily accessible for others than those directly involved?

These are the key questions for the Spread of Excellence - or Learning and Dialogue - or just SoE - part of CINEFOGO. Spreading is not a parallel activity but a cross-cutting issue.

The Spread of Excellence activities encompass TV Series, Book Series, Newsletter and training courses for dissemination, etc. The main responsibility for surveying these activities is delegated to a SoE Secretariat, placed at Charles University in Prague. It is clear that the SoE Secretariat can neither follow nor substitute all the greetings that take place at the grand CINEFOGO party. However, the Secretariat should monitor, support, facilitate, debug and evaluate the communication processes. Therefore a Spread of Excellence responsible person has been appointed for each Network's "node" - i.e. for each Work Package. At present, these individuals epitomize bridges between these "nodes" and the SoE Secretariat.

In 2006, CINEFOGO internal communication structures and procedures have been established. In 2007-2008, the spread of excellence activities should animate the internal links in order to focus on the external environment. The cornerstone of the spreading activities is the portal www.cinefogo.org, set up with major contributions from Roskilde University (Denmark). Much information can be found at this website, and new updates are available on a regular basis. Information on upcoming and past events, description of the CINEFOGO structure, aims and tasks and already two 2006 Newsletter issues can be found there. In 2007 the www.cinefogo.org will reflect comments and suggestions made by its users and become an even better place for sharing and advertising CINEFOGO outputs and activities. SoE Secretariat will soon provide the SoE Responsibles with a comprehensive "spreading guide". Furthermore - in 2007 and 2008 - the SoE Secretariat will offer two learning courses on communication addressing a broad spectrum of stakeholders for the SoE Responsibles and other interested CINEFOGO participants.

Let the year 2007 - a year of a Fire Pig in accordance with the Chinese Zodiac - be apt for these tasks.

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Learning&Dialogue