I have just returned back from a conference in regards to my PhD research that took place in Washington. I was brave enough to go to New York also for one day (8 hours drive in total). Although, it wasn’t my first time in US, I have to admit that I was impressed by the big size of everything! Bigger buildings, bigger people, bigger meal portions, big queues controls in entering US, bigger signs, bigger cars, bigger beds, bigger rooms, bigger roads, bigger monuments (check Lincon’s memorial) etc. Therefore size does matter at least in US. However, on the contrary, we need to be very careful on the size of our proposal requesting funding. As I have already indicated in one of my articles YOU WANT A SUCCESSFUL PROPOSAL? – DO IT LIKE DANISH AND MAKE IT SIMPLE, we need to be concise in our approach. This is based mainly on the fact that the actual time allocated to us as evaluators by the EC for evaluating individually one proposal is just 1.5 hours! Yes, just 1.5 hours for a proposal that you may have spend months for preparing it. Of course, then consensus and panel meetings take place for the final mark and remarks but what you need to always have in mind is that an evaluator would spend in principle just 1.5 hours for reviewing your proposal!
Having said that, it is now obvious that successful proposals ensure that their content is structured in such a way that evaluators can understand its high quality in very limited time. In this way, I will be publishing a series of articles on showing you how to address the different success award criteria and highlight the quality of your proposal to EC evaluators in a very short time.
I will start with the Relevance award criterium (i.e. Have clear objectives and outputs that are aligned with the funding programme priorities and with your organization’s mission) and how this should be addressed in your proposal. More specifically, we need to include a table, (always use table or bullets instead of plain text) as the best structure for highlighting important elements. I use as an example an extract from the H2020 workprogramme (borrowing challenges and Scope) but the same approach should be followed in any programme. Do you agree with the following approach, do you have anything else to suggest?
| H2020 Work Programme challenge and Scope/priorities | Addressed Level in REGAME proposal | Justification |
| Challenge: Digital games and gamification mechanics applied in no-leisure context is a scattered industry | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this challenge since one of its main aim is to produce a repository of reusable open software components, so that small teams (even individual programmers) or training organisations with limited serious games development experience will be able to produce serious games for specific target users. Furthermore, the REGAME project aims also to establish strong collaboration routes between digital game industry players, the linked research community, the Open Source community, the training community and end-users. |
| Challenge: Digital games can also make a real change in the life of a large number of targeted excluded groups, enhancing their better integration in society | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this challenge by focusing on the project but also involving in the consortium also social partners (PARTNER4 PARTNER6) with direct access to a wide number of socially excluded groups such as ex-offenders and people with disabilities. |
| Challenge: The development of new methodologies and tools to produce, apply and use digital games and gamification techniques in non-leisure contexts | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this challenge since one of its main aims is to advance pre-existing games technologies and components whereever possible as well as to develop new methodologies and produce new open tools based on advanced digital gamification technologies. |
| Challenge: building scientific evidence on their benefits-for governments, enterprises and individuals | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this challenge since it aims also to validate REGAME research findings and build scientific evidence through small scale validations and showcase the emerged benefits in learning and education, policy making and social inclusion. |
| Scope: Multidisciplinary research experimentations and collaboration on advanced digital gaming technologies and components (including game engines, emergent narrative, virtual characters, interaction systems and alternative human-machine interfaces, 3D, textures, models for simulation, game design, learner profiles, emotional models, etc) produced by and for the traditional digital game industry but applied into wider scenario in non-leisure contexts | Fully | The REGAME project not only focusses on research and development of the indicated in the scope advanced digital gaming technologies but also will address extensively not indicated ones by the H2020 WP scope that are quite important such as narrative/dialogue design systems, persistent cloud services, visual game creation systems, multimedia repositories, camera scripting, interactive novel systems, AI, security of learner identity and game devices, serious game templates, user interfaces for roleplaying and collaborative work and learning tools. |
| Scope: Activities must lead to the creation of a repository of core reusable, open components to enable publishers and game producers as well as user organisations and individual programmes to build specific games applications in non-leisure contexts. | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this scope since one of its main objectives is the creation of a repository of reusable and open software components so that small teams (even individual programmers) or training organisations with limited serious games development experience will be able to produce serious games for specific target users. |
| Scope: Application scenarios will focus on learning and skills acquisition in formal and informal education, workplace learning and in policy making and collective social and public processes. | Fully | The REGAME project fully addresses this scope since one of its main aims is to validate its research findings through small – scale application scenarios and produce exemplar case studies in the area of education, policy making and social inclusion. |
A fundamental of managing projects is first to plan and then to accomplish. Of course, good project management is a lot more complex as we shall see shortly. In the simplest of terms, if you do not know where you are going you neither know how to get there nor even when you have arrived! Moreover, it doesn’t really matter which road you take nor how long it takes to get there.