Work Package 1: Project Management
UdG, as the coordinator, established the structure for making decisions. Informed with D1.2 Project manual about all project milestones, ongoing tasks, deliverables and resource utilization. Managed his own financial budget and transferred the proportional part to the rest of the partners. Prepared the main structure of both progress reports. Adhered the intellectual property rules. The rest of the partners followed the Project manual delivered by the coordinator, managed his own financial budget and justified their secondments. Adhered the intellectual property rules.
Work package 2: Research Activities
UNAB was the leader of social currencies task finding common research interest and developing new research lines in social currencies with all partners collaboration proposed new schemes that were used and were analysed.
Work package 3: Training and Networking
All partners contributed with the Guidelines/Proposals report development in order to try to envisage new commercial applications and business opportunities in different sectors and countries, bringing together all knowledge and experiences collected through VirCoin2SME.
Work package 4: Communication and Dissemination
Easyi prepared the project plan and communication agreement, coordinated the events report and collected all trainings and events where all partners participated. All partners participated in different dissemination events and supported the final events organization.
Main results are the following:
Secondments
- Three or four months are very short time for internships. More time is needed to develop and to finish a project. The benefits are obtained in the future and sometimes the secondment can not see the product.
- It is important the guidance of the professional tutor as a key success factor for the secondments, on the company the guidance is done day to day , not by reports.
- Foreign researchers are more motivated than locals and some places are more motivating, however research secondees have to invest their time in their current tasks, it makes that it is difficult to achieve succesfully all projects results planned . The communication skills in English are important, however it is not enough and it is important to know the cultural and some language features.
Competences
- It is possible to train competences during the secondments, transferable and specific ones.
- It is necessary that at the research trains not only to acquire knowledge but also competences.
- There are different meanings for competences (relationship between knowledge-skills –competences).
- Competences are the use of knowledge.
- Added value of Vircoin2SME related to other international internships: training competences, transversal competences and monitoring (academic and professional tutors).
Bridging the gap between universities and companies
- The base learned at the university is useful to work at the company.
- Communication between universities and companies are very important to share the goals of the internship, the priorities, the level of competences required and the level of improvement that are expected to be - achieved. Also the research that has been developed in both sides. Working together.
- It is important to adapt Human Resources company policies to benefit from internships.
