Getting Started

Last week our group had a 2 day meeting in Cercedilla, located in the famous residence where the Semantic Summer School (SSSW) events have been happening for the past 10 years. The main purpose of the meeting was to identify commonalities between the members of the group and perform some exercises to identify future lines of work, mixing it with some social events and a bit of humor. For example, in the next picture some of my colleagues are trying to find out which role are they having in the current discussion. The role is written in the shower cap they are wearing (e.g., ignore me, obey me, etc.) so everyone else is able to see it but themselves:

One of the exercises: What role am I having in the discussion?

Part of the meeting was also related to the visibility of the group and its members. Having an appropriate personal page, a Google Scholar/Mendeley/LinkedIn profile or opening a blog for sharing what you are doing with the community were some of the ideas brought up by the participants.

I think the meeting was a good experience, something worth doing at least once a year. Standups and short group meetings are great to get an idea of what your colleagues are doing, but these longer encounters give you an idea of where the whole group is going, which is awesome.

As for me, the idea of creating a blog had been around my head for some time now, but I never found the time. Now I have no more excuses, so I have decided to open this blog to talk about the research activities and events that I am involved with (or at least I’ve heard of).

• Miscellaneous