The DC Steering Group supervises and coordinates a number of reactive activities with the purpose of encouraging cross project collaboration and of challenging project boundaries. The framework in which the activites are structured is discussed next.
More detailed information on individual activities is also available (
1st Round of Activities, 2nd Round of Activities, 3rd Round of Activities, 4th Round of Activities).

Disappearing Days (DD) : These are facilitated 1-day workshops that identify themes of broad interest to the community. Examples may be: Evaluation, privacy, narrative, architecture and ICT, or sensor fusion. Disappearing Days should be the breeding ground for Troubadour Grants and Research Ateliers . To ensure monies are spread over the 18-month period, Disappearing Days are based on lightweight applications open every 3 months with a 2-week response.

Troubadour Grants (TR): These are enhanced travelling grants that enable a researcher or researchers to travel between a number of sites. For instance, being able to support the use of one project's deliverables within other project(s') platforms (assuming appropriate IPR arrangements). Examples may be: a peer review activity, encouraging excellence in PhD student research, a Postdoctoral pool, or I3 integration activities to exchange skills. To ensure monies are spread over the 18 month period, Troubadour Grants are based on lightweight applications open every 3 months with a 2 week response.

Rapid Response Teams (RR): Within any project, or group of projects, unexpected or out of scope challenges will occur which the project team do not have the skills, funds or time to address. Rapid Response Teams provide short (1 week), focused responses to these challenges. A team is assembled and "parachuted" in to help solve these problems. Rapid Response Teams are reactive and continuously "open" to proposals. The SG ensure that the funds are dispersed evenly throughout the 18 month period.

Research Ateliers (RA): These are small budget and short time scale projects (<3 months, typically 7 to 10 days) which merge ideas from different projects, help build new consortia, or encourage new developments. These ateliers reflect a philosophy of "putting the work back in workshop", were real tangible results of mutual interest and benefit to the DC community can be developed. Examples may be: a project that builds up an evaluation structure for DC projects as a whole or, a "great egg race" style event that, while superficially useless, challenges the assumptions, technologies, and creative applications of the component technologies. To ensure monies are spread over the 18-month period, Research Ateliers are based on lightweight applications open every 3 months with a 2-week response.

Jamborees: As a focus for the DC community, two major conference-like events have been organised where projects can present and demonstrate their work. The second DC Jamboree and public DC Exhibition, organised jointly with the Fourth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2002) and was held in Göteborg, Sweden, over 3 days from the 30th September to the 2nd October 2002. A short report can be found here. Information about the upcoming 2003 DC Jamboree at IVREA can be found here.



The Disappearing Computer Initiative © 2002