Brief report from the MCAA General Assembly, Porto 6-7 February 2015
Dear All,
The last week we held the General Assembly (GA) in Porto and I am happy to say that it was a really successful event! If I can choose key-word to describe it, it would be certainly positive energy, interesting presentations, good cooperation among participants, brainsotrming for the future of the MCAA...
Thanks for your great energy, time, motivation, excellent ideas and particularly for the social part - I enjoyed every moment of the meeting and looking forward for new opportunities to meet and cooperate.
The official minutes from the General Assembly will be preapred in a due time, but I can take an adventage of this opportunity to brief you about our activities.
According to the Agenda which was available to all MCAA members before the GA, we had two days GA. A day before we had the Board Meeting.
The first day of GA we were mainly focused on the formally required issues: after official openning, we presented minutes from the previos GA (held in Nov 2013), report on activities from the beginning to today, and financial report. All documents were accepted. After lunch we officially appointed Chairs of Working groups and Chapters and provided the opportunity to present their work.
In the late afternoon we had a very interesting programme. First we had two presenters talking on FAMELab activities in fostering popular science communication and the winner of the FAMELab competition in Portugal. Session was indeed very interesting and I as I learned, it made interested many MCAA members in taking part in this international competition :). The final session of the day was informative / training session on H2020, which provided very useful and interesting information and practical hints related to participation in projects, provided by Odissefs Panopouls, EC Policy Officer and Zoran Andjelic, MCCA Board Member. Zoran gave the presentation based on his personal experience of coordinating MC projects.
The second day we had two external speakers: From ESF presenting their Career tracking project based on the surveys and cooperation with different organisations, and from ScienceEurope presenting their various activities and policies. A representative of contractors presented their activities on improving MCAA and invited for input. The MCAA also presented Plan of Activities for the next period and invited members for ideas and input. We had a live discussion during all sessions, especially related to the future work of the MCAA and input and ideas from our members were really appreciated.
The Poster Session was organised during the coffee-break and finally, the GA was finished with the Award Ceremony and congratulations for the MCAA Award winners: Mostafa Moonir Shawrav and Juan Blanco.
Besides, as I had opportunity to learn, many members were very enthusiastic to cooperate among themselves and further contribute to the success of the MCAA. We had opportunity to read on the great plans for activities in the Climate Change group (thanks Riccardo and Luigi for your info)! Other participants may also have news to share!
Finally, I can say that I left Porto full of great impressions. It was particularly inspiring for me to meet personally our members and to share ideas both about the MCAA and research profession. Thanks once again for your great positive energy and motivation to make the MCAA real success!!!
I look forward to continuing our cooperation and seeing you again at another place!
Best wishes and much success,
Snezana
Chair of the MCAA