Intelligent Content for the Knowledge Society

1. Intelligent Content in FP7 3rd ICT call 7 December 2007 Genoa Albert GAUTHIER DG Information Society and Media Unit E2 – Content & Knowledge v4 3/12/07

2. Foreword • Content is important • It underpins the Knowledge Society, is the crude oil of our economy • It’s an expression of our culture, identity, diversity • Content is big, and growing • Europe’s creative & cultural sector accounted for 650 billion euro in 2003 • Media & entertainment industries worldwide expected to grow 6.6% per year in the coming years • Global games market expected to grow to $46 billion by 2010 • A billion songs a day flow over the Internet

3. Foreword • Content is changing, rapidly • Social media, Web 2.0; file sharing, many-to-many, long tail … • Analysts predict that in a few years 70% of the Web content will be produced by users More digital bits …

4. More digital bits... Millions in 2006 • Digital Cameras 400 • Camera Phones 600 • PCs 900 • Audio Players 550 • Mobile Subscribers 1,600 • LCD/Plasma TVs 70 By 2010 this installed base of devices and subscribers will be 50% larger.

5. (not so) Hidden costs Content management & business search (IDC) • information workers spend more than 27 hours a week searching, gathering and analyzing information • information workers waste 3.5 hours a week searching for information that is never found and 3 hours a week recreating content

6. A long term commitment • FP5 (1999-2002) • “interactive electronic publishing” • “informationaccess & management” • 124 projects, ~900 contractors, ~165 Meuro funding • FP6 (2003-2006) • convergence of R&D topics & communities • “content and knowledge” • longer term vision, critical mass, concentration of effort • 62 projects, ~700 contractors, ~270 Meuro funding

7. A broad multi-faceted effort • several actions targeting Digital Content: • policy measures & regulation • Audiovisual Media Services Directive • Content Online in the Single Market • Digital rights, DRM interoperability • sector support & business change • Media programmes • eContent programmes • new technology & innovation • ICT under FP7

8. PART I WP, Scope of the Call

9. FP7 & Cooperation Prg. “ICT for content, creativity and personal development:novel forms of interactive, non-linear and self-adaptive content; creativity and enriched user experience; cross-media content customisation and delivery; combining all-digital content production and management with emerging semantic technologies; user oriented use, access to and creation of content.” “Knowledge systems:methods and techniques to acquire and interpret, represent and personalise, navigate and retrieve, share and deliver knowledge recognizing the semantic relationships in information for use by humans and machines.”

10. ICT Challenge 4 Digital Libraries and Content “Make content and knowledge abundant, accessible, interactive and usable over time by humans and machines alike.” • content must be made available and its long termusability, accessibility and preservation must be ensured • effective technologies need to be developed for intelligentcontent creation and management and for supporting the capture of knowledge and its sharing and reuse

11. Complementary tracks • Digital Libraries • cultural, scientific, scholarly content • typically public-interest services • networking, accessibility, sustainability … • acquisition (digitisation, rights) • curation, preservation • Intelligent Content • media & organisational content • mostly private players • commercial (creative industries) or competitive (enterprises) value • from creation through to consumption

12. Intelligent Content .1 • 3 axes: • boost creativity, enhance experience (« better ») • master content (richer & « easier ») • dig out « hidden » information (find & correlate) • 3 forms of content: • (social) media content • enterpriseinformation • scientific data (e.g. biomedicine) everything is multimedia & networked • text, image, video, audio, 3D …

13. Intelligent Content .2 Make digital resources that embody creativity andsemantics (”intelligence”) easier and more cost effective to produce, organize, search, personalise, distribute and use across the value chain. media professionals, enterprise designers, talented amateurs • more expressive, communicative & participative forms of content; enhanced productivity; greater ease of (re)use organisations, communities • more effective acquisition, processing & distribution of digital content and machine-tractable knowledge; sharingin collaborative environments

14. Overall approach .1 • research for a purpose, problem & objective driven • centred around users, data & flows • a compelling use case is as important as the underlying research • meaningful demonstrator(s), field validation & assessment • active promotion & dissemination of results beyond scientific circles Demo or Die

15. Overall approach .2 • address clearly established, widely recognised problems • better quality of output • save time • cut cost • application requirements • driving innovative ICT developments • use of ICT in the application context • prerequisites, incentives, repercussions

16. Applications • key themes: • creativity, user experience & control • content & knowledge management • information access & search • collaboration & communities • data integration • system & process interoperability

17. IST Call 1 • inputs: • 148 proposals • 1210 participants from 50 countries • 473 Meuro requested, 51 Meuro available • outputs (1:10): • 15 proposals retained for negotiation • 128 participants from 21 countries • 55% academia & research centres • 45% business & public sector

18. Response • popular themes: • content creation & processing,media (film, TV, advertising …) & other appls (eg surveillance) • knowledge management in a range of business& public-interest domains • personalisation & summarisation Recurring features:video & 3D; automated extraction, annotation & indexing; social approaches … • gaps: • creative authoring (eg online games, virtual worlds, industrial design …) • immersive rendering,multimodal consumption

19. Successful proposals • post-production tools for the film & games industry • semantic coding of 3D objects, sharing of 3D models • semantic wikis as a knowledge management tool • enterprise knowledge aids integrating social software & semantics • distributed, approximate & incomplete reasoning • …

20. ICT Call 3 3rdCall, same budget (50 M), same WP • closing date: 8 April, 2008 • evaluation & selection: till mid-June • negotiation: from mid-July onward guidance for proposers • analysis of Call 1 submissions • synopses of successful proposals • Call 3 specific guides • handling of inquiries until mid-March • series of infodays (next in Luxemburg 12-13 December 2007)

21. Scope & focus • WP defines the scope of the call • « relevance » • Call guidance notes specify gaps &requirements after Call 1 • « opportunity » • so read carefully both documents before delineating your proposal • especially since we expect many submissions!

22. Some details … (a) Advanced Authoring • explore new forms of content, provide enhanced experience • support creative process & experimentation • more interactive, expressive & perceptual content borrowing from: • game technology, virtual environments • computer animation, visualisation, simulation • non-linear narratives, interactive storytelling … • generate metadata as new content is created/captured; find reference & inspirational material, remix, share ... • … for professional or personal use

23. Some details … (b) Collaborative Workflows • from analogue through digital files to feature-rich objects: • data interoperability across systems • metadata based flows • storage & management of large-scale resources • handling of novel & legacy, local & remote content • packaging & repurposing, adaptation to target groups • segmentation, summarisation, efficient coding & transmission … • focus on flexible & robust solutions likely to be adopted by the multimedia industry

24. Some details … (c) Personalised Distribution & Presentation • progress towards more (re)active, adaptive … content • in particular, atomic objects acting as a container of essence, metadata & ambient intelligence • enabling dynamic user, context & device adaptation • with in-built privacy preserving logging/feedback datamining • where relevant, immersive rendering & multimodal interaction • exploiting new & upcoming appliances • borrowing from games, virtual worlds, etc • emphasis on mobile environments & location based services

25. Some details … (d) Community building & Take-up • aim is to link research to its broader context • emphasis on • Technology assessment, benchmarking • as a precondition for S&T progress & technology transfer – investigate requirements, coordinate ongoing efforts, fill gaps (tasks/media), delineate future strategies & infrastructures • Interactive Media design • as a means to foster ICT-enabled Creativity by bringing closer together technologists & creatives • normally implemented as NoE or CA

26. Some details … (e) Semantic Foundations • beyond current knowledge models & formalisms • approximate reasoning & induction • temporal, probabilistic & modal modelling • focus on temporal & dimensional reasoning • reference implementations incl. web integration of heterogeneous data sources • multimedia resources • (real-time) data streams showing the practical value & power of semantics

27. Some details … (f) Knowledge Systems • architectures, systems & technologies for information bound organisations & communities • very large, fast growing volumes • multi-source, multi-format, (un/semi-) structured info • core tasks: • extract “meaning” (deep structure, semantic clues) from information, social interaction & work patterns • make it computer tractable … and use it! • focus on • decision support (industry, business, science, health, environment …) • collaboration (enterprises, communities)

28. What we don’t do In Call 3 we do not intend to support research into: • basic research with no identifiable by-products within 10 years • developments addressing immediate commercial concernseg content protection & monetisation • issues covered by other Challenges eg media networking, peer to peer, wireless … • topics well covered by ongoing & upcoming projects(see our website) individual proposals can however address one or the other of the above issues and integrate existing & emerging technologies

29. PART II Tips and Hints

30. Time schedule • 50 Meuro in total of which: • 45 Meuro for IP & STR projects • 5 Meuro for NoEs & CSAs • due to close 8 April, 2008 • evaluation/selection until mid-June • negotiations from mid-July on • contract awarding in December • projects due to start Q1 2009 highly selective & demanding process

31. Use of instruments • IPs  impact • up to 4 years, 5-9 Meuro (EU funding) • NoEs  integration • up to 3 years, up to 3.5 Meuro • STRs “research”  S&T innovation • up to 3 years, 2-4 Meuro • STRs “demonstration”  uptake • up to 2 years, 1-3 Meuro • CSAs (coordination & support actions) • up to 3 years, up to 1.5 Meuro

32. NoE’s • main mission: integration & critical mass • integrative research & shared facilities • convergence, bridges between institutions • spreading knowledge, training, mobility • sizeable effort in FP6 • six NoEs (representation, reasoning, m. learning, multimedia semantics, 3D & shapes) • no predefined candidate topics or communities • apart from Benchmarking & Interactive Media Design • let us know …

33. STR-D’s • STREPs especially geared towards use cases & field experimentation(“first use”) • centred around existing, promising but untried technology • designed to go one step forward towards • packaging, configuring … and testing • assess viability • functionality • technical performance & flexibility • usability (hide complexity!) within a well defined domain / user context • rigorous evaluation plans & metrics • active user involvement & feedback

34. Partnerships • keep consortium manageable • compact consortia (8.5 on average in Call 1): • IPs 7-12 partners • STRs4-8 partners • NoEs 3-4 “core” partners • select competent, committed & reliable partners; geography not an issue! • industry, SME, academia … participation as dictated by project needs • “launching user” organisations to provide a demanding problem & application/validationcontext

35. Reasons for failure • RTD content • narrow scope, little or no EU dimension • lack of focus, aims too general • lack of innovation, current state of art missing • planning • links missing between objectives & work plan • milestones missing or too general • risk factors not addressed, no contingency plans • no monitorable indicators, no metrics • management • consortium not balanced, gaps in the skills mix • lack of integration between partners • vague management structure • weak or narrow dissemination plans • ill-defined exploitation prospects

36. Success factors .1 • Quality • Impact • Effectiveness but also • Relevance wrt. WP (remember: 150 to 200 proposals!) • Credibility Contrary to earlier calls, evaluators will have access to Web sources: previous projects, teams & skills, background & reference documents …

37. Success factors .2 It’s a project, not a dissertation: • problem? • user? • data? • outputs (incl. public ones)? • metrics? • impact? • exploitation channels?

38. Success factors .3 • preserve your credibility: select one proposal & make it win • ensure that the proposal brings out both innovation & exploitation potential • full depth of participation rather than long list of organisations • key individuals, expertise & achievements rather than long list of projects

39. Further info INFSO.E2 – Content & Knowledge cordis.europa.eu/ist/kct/fp7_call_3.htm mailto: infso-e2@ec.europa.eu Thank you!