I say polish off our academic credentials, and also make the 'alternative to java for business' pitch and whatever else we can come up with as a good idea. Laura ------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: burt@dfki.de Sender: burt@dfki.de To: Laura Creighton <lac@strakt.com> Cc: lac@strakt.com Subject: EU Projects and Python From: Alastair Burt <burt@dfki.de> Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:10:34 +0200 Laura Creighton <lac@strakt.com> (2003-03-31):

I am interested in acquiring EU funding for Python in general, and the PyPy project in particular. I realise that it is a long, involved, slow process which takes years. (I've worked on EU projects before, just never on the funding it end). I am here for the duration, but I need to get taught what to do. Is this something that you would be willing to teach me? If this teaching is something that you do professionally, I would be most interested in taking a course, tutorial, or whatever else it is that you do. I have some funding now, and matching funding is something I want to investigate. Also I would be interested in doing this via the Python Business Forum, where I am the Treasurer.

I am not sure that I am the fountain of information that Nicolas thinks I am, and, to a large extent, I benefit from the infrastructure here at the DFKI. Here are some general points: - There are far more sources of EU funding than I know about. The main one for computing is the current IST call: http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=1 You are probably too late for the April deadline but another one in October should be fine. There are other sources of funding for e-learning, cross border cooperation between neighbours (Interreg), e-content generation, e-government (from IDA). But I do not have more exact pointers to hand, or much experience in submission to them. - The EU is not going to fund simple application development per se. So somehow you are going to have to show that you innovating in the direction that the EU is explicitly funding, and you will probably want to work with a consortium whose goals are more general than language implementation. I think if were trying to get PyPy funded, I would try to build some bridges with academic research, and I would make it clear how PyPy fits in with the big ideas that the EU is funding, such as ambient computing. In as much as PyPy would seem to make Python more portable and implementable on small devices, I think you could make a good case here. - I guess having EU project administration experience in the consortium would not hurt. The DFKI could do this, but there are actually many small firms these days that specialise in this. You could use one of them and let them handle the paper work. - Whatever you do, having a trustworthy, balanced consortium is the key to a good proposal and successful execution. - The EU themselves are helpful. If you see an EU call that looks fruitful, email the project officer. They will give you pointers. I would like to see Python be advanced by EU funding. I am not sure how much help I can be, but if you have specific questions, just ask. - --- Alastair - --- - ---- Alastair Burt German Centre for AI (DFKI), Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 Saarbrücken 66123, Germany Email: burt@dfki.de Tel: +49 681 302 2565 Fax: +49 681 302 2235 http://www.aswad-project.org/ ------- End of Forwarded Message