Progress beyond the state of the art from our Project comes mainly from the HOLA CLOUD Platform.
Hola Cloud Platform (HOLA Portal from now on) has evolved to support a new flexible data hierarchy enabling dynamic data modelling. Different types of documents and data are processed such as conference proceedings, journal articles, grants and others. The search engine has evolved to support a new flexible data hierarchy enabling dynamic data modelling on the basis of the CERIF standard currently supporting entities from institutions to merits (publications, grants, patents, etc). In this context, the set of features offered to the user has also achieved an important point. LKN has constructed a usable platform that is nowadays presenting a colourful set of possibilities for exploring and exploiting our knowledge repository.
LKN also included in the index open-data coming from the DB-pedia initiative. LKN included this source of evidence for improving the text mining algorithms in several tasks, enriching the classical contents with semantically enhanced data. Additionally, open-access information has been included for adjusting the index priors of impact of publications and academic institutions according the ‘Scimago Institution and Journal rankings’, and even though this was not described in the proposal was taken into account in the ”back bone” of the search engine for future integrations, and perceived as an improvement according to early user beta-tests.
Finally, LKN has constructed a visually appealing user interface beyond the traditional ten blue links, allowing advance user interaction and refinement with a scatter-gather browsing paradigm. The refinement of the user interface has been carried out in parallel with the improvements and development of new functionalities in the back end. The interface has been tested with users and experts for getting feedback. In fact, a dev version of this interface had obtained very positive impressions during its presentation in the several corporate innovation events in Palo Alto (USA) and Munich (Germany).
This progress sets the basis for part of the potential impact from HOLA CLOUD. HOLA CLOUD on-line platform has been implemented to help players in the R&D and Innovation arena related to software, services and Cloud computing “make sense of research” with one click, and help researchers gain visibility for their work. The core of the platform has been designed to be useful and easy for users, and standardised and automatized. Significantly increasing user experience when navigating through the sea of old and on-going projects and their results, is in the heart for this platform.
The other great impact from the Project comes from the Cloud Forward Scientific Conference, of which 2 editions have been celebrated, in Pisa in October 2015 and in Madrid in October 2016.
CLOUD FORWARD is a future-oriented event with a strong scientific approach, offering the researchers from the academic and industrial fields a real space of debate about the future of the cloud technologies and applications.
It aims to facilitate an effective and collaborative roadmapping exercise to shape mid-to-long term research in the computing area (beyond 2018, towards 2030), by:
1. Identifying the most relevant R&D results and trends from European projects, and related experts, via the HOLA Portal;
2. Inviting projects and experts to participate in the CLOUD FORWARD Call for Papers to summarize and showcase R&D results from European projects and other related initiatives, especially what can be good for the present, and what will be relevant for the future; authors are also invited to participate in the call for “position papers” in order to further explore the potential of their results and related trends in the longer term;
3. Running a uniquely interactive symposium during the event were participants work together for a roadmapping exercise;
4. Running a whole roadmapping exercise from the results of the symposium.
Final users (SMEs and Public Administrations) are also targeted by CLOUD FORWARD. They are invited to participate in order to discuss about their needs and the desired potential solutions. In this light, the second edition of CLOUD FORWARD in 2016 has featured an specific side event targeted to SMEs where they could play in fact a relevant role in R&D efforts in this area, and trying to leverage their knowledge is also an objective around HOLA CLOUD Platform and CLOUD FORWARD conferences.
