network for data exchange in agriculture

The EU-funded projects FutureFarm, agriXchange and CAPIGI-network which joined together in GeoFARMatics 2010 in Cologne, Germany, from 24th-26th November 2010, recognised that agri-food and rural ICT must be an essential part of the European Digital Agenda for 2020. The process of building the Rural Knowledge Society started by the Valencia declaration helps to reduce the digital divide between rural and urban communities in Europe.

I'm getting quite involved now in all kind of activities and nice trips, but it means that I hardly can keep up with reporting. So I decided to make a kind of log book of my activities first. See attachment.

It seems usefull to have some guidelines for introducing new use cases on our website. The discussion in Helsinki shows, that some questions are still open.

From my point of view, one of the important issue is the aim of the discussion about the use cases.
Do we only make a presentation of uses case to give the community a domain of discussion or do we intervent into the discussion and make some proposals?

Yesterday, I joined an introductory field trip of first year students AgriCommerce and AgriScience from Massey University.

Foodstuffs

After a splendid holiday at the South Island, my family and I settled down in Palmerston North. Last week I started my activities for my sabbatical at Massey University; a detailed plan is attached. I am hosted by the Institute of Natural Resources (http://inr.massey.ac.nz/). My closest supervisors are Ian Yule, Ewen Cameron and David Gray.