General: The INFOWIN project started at the beginning of 1996 and was scheduled for three years, finally lasting until March 1999 after a three months extension.
The objective of INFOWIN was to provide the ACTS Information Window, which is still available at
http://www.infowin.org . This window provides for information flowing from ACTS projects to the outside world, thus ensuring visibility of the work carried out within ACTS, and simultaneously helps ACTS participants keep an up-to-date view of the development of the market and its needs. In addition it provides support for the internal communication of the ACTS programme, both within the projects and between projects and the Commission.
In order to cover the whole of Europe, and to bring a service close to the people who need it, Western Europe was divided into 9 regions (Austria/Germany, Benelux, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland/UK, Nordic Countries, Spain/Portugal, Switzerland), each assigned one or more regional representatives responsible for promoting the activities of ACTS and for gathering information on relevant results and activities in the area.
Regional INFOWIN representatives represent the main front-end of INFOWIN towards the ACTS community and the outside world. Their main tasks are, on the one hand, information gathering and information production, and, on the other, marketing and information dissemination. Their main activity is promoting ACTS and INFOWIN through personal visits, workshops and attending conferences and other events. They get feedback on the INFOWIN publications through market analysis. In parallel, they handle requests for information gathering and production for the Multimedia INFOWIN publications.
Activities: The activities of the Swiss regional representatives of INFOWIN have mainly focused on the production of NewsClips and the distribution of documentation to interested projects and selected professionals.
ACTS NewsClips are bi-weekly news from the ACTS programme, informing about ACTS projects as well as new items of importance in advanced communications technologies. The short articles are edited by the INFOWIN representatives in each region and published and distributed via e-mail and web twice a month.
The most important pieces of news in the Swiss communications industry have been captured in corresponding newsclips describing them briefly, yet thoroughly. Between 3 and 4 newsclips per month have been normally produced, a high rate compared to other partners.
The distribution of documentation relied on the other INFOWIN publications: INFOWIN produced regularly the so-called thematic issues, quarterly publications providing in-depth coverage of special research topics of ACTS or other topics of current interest. These thematic issues include, e.g.:
· ATM in Europe (first edition 1997, second edition Sep. 1998): overview of European R&D in the ATM area, focusing on the activities, trials and results of the ACTS programme.
· Multimedia broadcast (1997): overview of European R&D in the field of interactive multimedia broadcast services and applications.
· Mobile communications (1998): snapshot of developments and the evolution towards future generations of mobile communications systems.
· Photonic technologies in Europe (Sep. 1998, jointly published with ACTS project HORIZON): roadmap for the European R&D in the photonic technologies area of the ACTS programme.
INFOWIN also produced the InfoWin Bulletin, a quarterly in-house journal of ACTS.
Those publications have been distributed to all representatives in Switzerland of projects with participation of Swiss companies. Although explicit feedback was scarce, the projects actually responding (e.g. ACTSLINE) greatly appreciated the information received from INFOWIN.
Apart from these two main activities, INFOWIN representatives have as well:
· made advertising of the project in the Swiss media (articles published in the ProTelecom-Bulletin, ProTelecom intern and Comtec),
· created material for other INFOWIN publications, e.g. :
- taking active part in thematic issues by contributing to some of them, or
- supporting the creation of a film about the ACTS project AMUSE in Switzerland for including it in the project's CD-ROM, and possibly making it available on the INFOWIN web server,
· assisted to technical conferences as representatives of infowin to distribute publications and information and to write reports.
