Dear all,

First of all I would like to declare our full support for the rationales and goals for an
iLab (ISA) consortium, as written in the present proposal.

Let me formulate some additional (or deepening) ideas already here. In this way you can
reflect about it and the discussion on Friday may be more efficient.

• As a result of our meeting we should initiate working groups to concentrate the results of the discussions and to elaborate further aspects. These working groups could be: Policy and Administration, Technology, Economics, Education. A deadline for presenting the results has to be discussed, but should be in autumn 2009.
• I agree with the constitution of the four committees. The Policy and Admin Committee should have the role of an Executive Committee of the consortium with for example not more than 10 members. There is a President and CEO (preferred from MIT), may be a president elect for a one or two years cycle and Vice-presidents for Technology, Economics and Education (the leaders of this committees).
• The consortium should have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) combined with a conference. This conference could be for example the annual REV conference: "International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation". This conference has already a certain tradition (6^th REV2009 Bridgeport CT (next week), REV2010 Stockholm, REV2011 St. Etienne, France) and a number of about 100 permanent participants (in sum 150 ... 200 every year).
• A Scientific Advisory Board with international well-known experts could give support in the strategic development and directions.

• Furthermore I would like to suggest to establish:

o Regional iLab/ISA Competence Centers for dissemination, education, further education and support. Our university is ready to act as a regional iLab/ISA Consortium Center for example for Europe (or Middle and Eastern Europe). These centers could give detailed technical support, but also organize workshops and other events.

o An iLab/ISA Academy, which transfers the research results into education and training programs, international conferences, and scientific journals. The academy could also host a repository with educational material, technical descriptions, examples of good practice, ...

o iLab/ISA Summer Schools for young scientists, master and Ph.D. students. We have already financial support within a EU funded project to start with such a summer school in 2011 with 25 participants.

• Within the EU funded project "OntoWiki" our research group develops an Online Lab Portal based on semantic technologies. We would like to offer the consortium to adapt and to use this solution.

I look forward to see you all soon.
All the best,
Michael