Final Report Summary - START (Stimulate Aerospace Research and Technology START in Associate Candidate Countries)
Despite of the efforts so far, scientific communities of central and east European countries and of old EU Member States (MSs) form two distinct groups and are not well integrated. There are many reasons for this - political decisions taken in the past, cultural and language diversity, different levels of computerisation, etc. As a result, during the last decades, most of the central and east European countries developed their own aerospace programs and gained lots of experience, but unfortunately, the achieved expertise and results are not well known. The cooperation between European countries is not at as high and productive level as it is necessary. Enormous work is still needed to achieve fruitful cooperation between old and new MSs and Associated Candidate Countries (ACCs) on one hand and between ACCs on the other. START addressed part of the above-mentioned problems.
All partners had dedicated their efforts for the successful fulfilment of START project. The work performed during in the course of the two years is more than impressive. Partners began mapping campaign and within two years managed to create a user friendly, interactive, searchable database of researchers, research organisations, universities, industry parties, small and middle enterprises, etc., involved in aerospace activities or possessing aerospace expertise in 13 countries. Mapping was an activity that will continue even after the end of the project, i.e. after April 2006 as the coordinating organisation (STIL-BAS) promises to maintain the portal with its own resources. It is essential to underline that the database is still opened for new entries. The interested parties are welcome to add their contact details and short description in the database. A user-friendly registration forms are available, which makes the enlargement of the database easy and very quick.
Second important part of START activity was building and operation of START project portal (see http://start.stil.bas.bg online) the portal is a physical place where results of mappings of the aerospace area are and will be kept. It was also used to enhance project communication flow as well as the communication flow between the EU services and the project consortium. Project portal is the place where all information about the project, minutes of meetings and brokerage events, presentations, copies of newsletters, photos, hyperlinks to other organisations connected with aerospace research and / or applications, etc. such as AeroSME, are available.
The portal was and still is regularly visited. This was a result not only of the aggressive advertisement of the project and what it offers, but is also due to the fact that START database and information is useful to aerospace community. So many efforts were dedicated to the web portal because START project is popular and is well accepted as a unique media for aerospace community of central and east European countries. This is evident from the steadily increasing number of visits of project portal. Having in mind that aerospace community is not very large, counted numbers between 30 and 305 (minimum 30, average 143 and maximum 305) unique visits of http://start.stil.bas.bg during the last 12 month is rather impressive.
Additional, mirror website was loaded at http://www.aerospace-start.org. This was done for security reasons only as well as to make the access to the portal easier, especially for aerospace representatives from Asian part of Turkey.
It is essential to underline once again that START project portal and database will be available even after the end of the project. STIL-BAS, Bulgaria, the coordinating organisation that also hosts the portal will continue to maintain it using its resources as long as possible after the actual end of START project. We hope that this will definitely be of help for the further cooperation during the relevant calls of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and for successful integration of European aerospace community.
The organisation of brokerage events was (followed by consortium meeting) with the strategic goal to allow key representatives of aerospace area in European countries to meet with project partners and their colleagues and identify potential areas of collaboration and complementarily. Brokerage events were specifically targeted to the establishment and strengthening of networking and collaboration between stakeholders and therefore directly support the fundamental aims of the START project programme by contributing in practical terms to the stimulation of research and cooperation between stakeholder organisations.
All partners had dedicated their efforts for the successful fulfilment of START project. The work performed during in the course of the two years is more than impressive. Partners began mapping campaign and within two years managed to create a user friendly, interactive, searchable database of researchers, research organisations, universities, industry parties, small and middle enterprises, etc., involved in aerospace activities or possessing aerospace expertise in 13 countries. Mapping was an activity that will continue even after the end of the project, i.e. after April 2006 as the coordinating organisation (STIL-BAS) promises to maintain the portal with its own resources. It is essential to underline that the database is still opened for new entries. The interested parties are welcome to add their contact details and short description in the database. A user-friendly registration forms are available, which makes the enlargement of the database easy and very quick.
Second important part of START activity was building and operation of START project portal (see http://start.stil.bas.bg online) the portal is a physical place where results of mappings of the aerospace area are and will be kept. It was also used to enhance project communication flow as well as the communication flow between the EU services and the project consortium. Project portal is the place where all information about the project, minutes of meetings and brokerage events, presentations, copies of newsletters, photos, hyperlinks to other organisations connected with aerospace research and / or applications, etc. such as AeroSME, are available.
The portal was and still is regularly visited. This was a result not only of the aggressive advertisement of the project and what it offers, but is also due to the fact that START database and information is useful to aerospace community. So many efforts were dedicated to the web portal because START project is popular and is well accepted as a unique media for aerospace community of central and east European countries. This is evident from the steadily increasing number of visits of project portal. Having in mind that aerospace community is not very large, counted numbers between 30 and 305 (minimum 30, average 143 and maximum 305) unique visits of http://start.stil.bas.bg during the last 12 month is rather impressive.
Additional, mirror website was loaded at http://www.aerospace-start.org. This was done for security reasons only as well as to make the access to the portal easier, especially for aerospace representatives from Asian part of Turkey.
It is essential to underline once again that START project portal and database will be available even after the end of the project. STIL-BAS, Bulgaria, the coordinating organisation that also hosts the portal will continue to maintain it using its resources as long as possible after the actual end of START project. We hope that this will definitely be of help for the further cooperation during the relevant calls of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and for successful integration of European aerospace community.
The organisation of brokerage events was (followed by consortium meeting) with the strategic goal to allow key representatives of aerospace area in European countries to meet with project partners and their colleagues and identify potential areas of collaboration and complementarily. Brokerage events were specifically targeted to the establishment and strengthening of networking and collaboration between stakeholders and therefore directly support the fundamental aims of the START project programme by contributing in practical terms to the stimulation of research and cooperation between stakeholder organisations.
