Paris, 18 February 2008


EFITA newsletter / 349/ European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


Q.: I would like to give information to the EFITA mailing list / Newsletter. Do I have to send the information to you or should I directly use the mailing list?
Contact: Arno RUCKELSHAUSEN
E-mail: ruckelshausen.os(a)t-online.de

A.: The list is a moderated one. You can send your information to the list or to me (I am the moderator).


Q.: What is the geographic coverage for these >3500 subscribers?
Contact: Nimit Leelasorn
E-mail: galexo(a)pacplan.com

Agriculture and Geo-Information conference
8-9 April 2008 - DUBLIN, Ireland
The third Conference on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo Information (CAPIGI) will be held on 8 and 9 April 2008 in the Ballsbridge Court Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. The conference brings together government, industry and research to discuss the use of geo-information in farming, policy implementation and communications between stakeholders in the sector. Key-notes this year come from Jacques Wolfert (EFITA President), Alexander Sassenberg (John Deere AMS Europe) and a speaker from our host the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Topics:
Precision farming, remote sensing, Land Parcel Information Systems, veterinary use of GI etc.
See: http://capigi.portolis.nl
Contact: Tamme van der Wal
E-mail: tamme.vanderwal(a)portolis.nl


XIV European conference Information systems in agriculture and forestry (ISAF): European data, information and knowledge exchange
13 - 14 May 2008 - PRAGUE
> Conference topics
- scientific opportunities and directions in the European Union
- information and communication technologies for rural areas
- applications for agriculture and forestry
- eLearning for rural areas
- human aspect of information society development
- food safety and traceability
- GMES

> Supporting program
- Agriculture Data Exchange (Prague, 12th and 13th May 2008)
- eLearning workshop (Prague, 14th May 2008)
- GMES workshop (Prague, 14th May 2008)
- eCollaboration workshop (Prague, 14th May 2008)
See http://www.isaf.cz/

> Rural Living Lab Award 2008
Challenge of the Award: Selection of the best RLL solution supporting an ICT-based collaborative principle with respect to sustainable regional development and rural Knowledge Society building.

The overall objective of the RLL Award Competition, established in the context of the e-rural development, is to select the best one from among good practices in applied Living Lab models, with emphasis on handicapped rural and suburb areas and their population.
The specific aims of the competition include:
- to promote existing, practically working, accessible and intelligent solutions supporting e-rural development, based on open technologies and standards;
- to minimise the negative impacts of e-exclusion in the society;
- to improve the overall knowledge of the applied economical, social and environmental sciences;
- to support affordable collaborative applications and services.
By implementing the RLL Award Competition, the Organizers wish to promote existing collaborative and knowledge tools that support rural and regional development, and to highlight on-going live projects that serve more efficient territorial management, nature conservation, and education. They wish to contribute to better understanding of the top-down and bottom-up processes that take place in rural communities while implementing ITC and knowledge-based solutions, of the position and roles of LL participants, and of problems that are encountered most often during the implementation. They aim at identification of best practices that guarantee the sustainability of RLLs and continuous development of e-rural economy.
It must be underlined that the aforementioned sustainability principles refer to the environmental, economic and socio-cultural aspects of applied ICT, and a recognisable balance must be established between these three dimensions to guarantee the desired longevity of the overall growth of the rural economies and societies.
Thus, sustainable ICT solutions should:
- make optimal use of collaborative and knowledge management principles to ensure economic development, to preserve essential social and ecological processes, and to help to conserve biodiversity and natural resources;
- respect the socio-cultural authenticity, conserve and promote the immovable and live cultural heritage and traditional values, to support multilingualism, and stimulate inter-cultural understanding and tolerance;
- highlight and advertise the long-term socio-economic benefits (including stable employment and income-earning opportunities as well as social services) of geographic dislocation of economy, and of distribution of facilities and networks.
These definitions and principles are the points of departure for the Award’s scheme.
The Organizers of the RLL Award Competition thus invite all interested parties to submit their applications for best Rural Living Lab implementation.
See: http://www.isaf.cz/index_en.php?iMenu=100

> NaturNet-Redime Portal Uniform Resource Management (URM) portal
The NaturNet-Redime Portal for awareness, training, presentation and sharing of knowledge and tools about European sustainability was developed as part of NaturNet-Redime project no. 004074 which co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006). It is built as an interoperable network, with effective exchange of information, knowledge, services, etc. dealing with sustainability aspect and environmental protection. The portal is implemented using AJAX technology (WEB 2) and supports on the one hand easy management of information inside of portal and on the other hand easy context awareness knowledge discovery using new concept of Uniform Resource Management (URM). This URM concept is one from research results introduced by NaturNet-Redime project and support sharing of knowledge inside of community using metadata and catalogue standards for their description and discovery. Important part of the portal is also system for authorisation support unique login for all components.
See: http://portal.naturnet.org/index.php

Contact: Karel CHARVAT
E-mail: ccss(a)ccss.cz


Old joke!
On a beautiful deserted island in the middle of nowhere, the following people are stranded:
- 2 Italian men and 1 Italian woman
- 2 French men and 1 French woman
- 2 German men and 1 German woman
- 2 Greek men and 1 Greek woman
- 2 English men and 1 English woman
- 2 Khazak men and 1 Khazak woman
- 2 Japanese men and 1 Japanese woman
- 2 American men and 1 American woman
- 2 Australian men and 1 Australian woman
- 2 New Zealand (Welsh) men and 1 New Zealand (Welsh) woman
- 2 Irish men and 1 Irish woman.
- 2 Israeli men and I Israeli woman
- 2 Chinese men and 1 Chinese woman

One month later, the following things have occurred:
- One Italian man brained the other Italian man with a coconut for the Italian woman.
- The two French men and the French woman are living happily together having loads of sex.
- The two German men have a strict weekly schedule of when they alternate with the German woman.
- The two Greek men are sleeping with each other and the Greek woman is cleaning and cooking for them.
- The two English men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the English woman.
- The Kazakhstan men took a long look at the endless ocean and one look at the Khazak woman and they started swimming.
- The two American men are contemplating the virtues of suicide, while the American woman keeps on bitching about her body being her own, the true nature of feminism, how she can do everything that they can do, about the necessity of fulfillment, the equal division of household chores, how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her much nicer and how her relationship with her mother is improving. But at least the taxes are low and it is not raining.
- The two Japanese men have faxed Tokyo and are waiting for further instructions.
- The two Australian men beat each other senseless for the Australian woman, who sparked that off by calling them both "bloody wankers."
- Both New Zealand (Welsh) men are searching the island for sheep.
- The Irish began by dividing the island into North and South and by setting up a distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture because it gets sort of foggy after the first few litters of coconut whisky, but they are satisfied that at least the English are not getting any.
- The Israeli men let the woman decide
- The Chinese men tossed a coin to see who got the woman

Contact: I. KITRON
E-mail: kitron1(a)terra.com.br


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