NGI International Liaison

Introduction

EGI members (NGIs and EIROs) as well as EGI partner states/regions delegate International Liaisons to EGI. These International Laisions (NILs) have a key networking role in the EGI community. NILs work together with the EGI Foundation and with each other to link non-operational activities from their own country/institute/region with the rest of the EGI community. One of the most important of these non-operational activities is Engagement with new communities. With the NIL acting as a spearhead, each country (or EIRO or region) is able to connect its non-operational activities to the European landscape, and receive information on how the European landscape evolves. NILs demonstrate the added value of the country to new communities and to other NGIs. NILs connect the following activities from the national level to the European level (NILs don't necessarily perform these activities, but are connected to the people who do within the local NGI):

• Proactive outreach to new communities
• Promotion and communication of NGI services, EGI services
• Training, workshops
• Support for new users/communities

EGI defines and implements its Engagement Plan with the help of the NILs.

The NIL role and about their coordination within EGI

• The NILs are subscribed to the <ngi-international-liaisons@mailman.egi.eu> email list which is used for coordination and discussion of activities. List archive is available at https://mailman.egi.eu/mailman/private/ngi-international-liaisons/.
• The NILs are involved in the development and implementation of EGI's Engagement Strategy (http://go.egi.eu/engagementstrategy), ie. reaching out to new communities, collecting and analysing their requirements, setting up support for them.
  • Abstract of the EGI Engagement Strategy document: EGI Engagement reaches out to scientific communities, to national initiatives, to the long tail of science as well as to SMEs and industry and supports them in tackling scientific challenges using reliable and innovative ICT services and solutions. The Engagement Strategy coordinates EGI members’ activities to accomplish this complex mission, ultimately contributing to the European effort of building a sustainable digital e-infrastructure ecosystem for research. The Engagement Strategy document describes the specific goals of the EGI engagement activity, details the various tasks that this activity involves, provides information about the human networks and online resources and tools that help the community implement this strategy, as well as provides an action plan for the upcoming months.

• Regular teleconferences are organised for the NILs - Currently with a bi-monthly freqency. Future and past events are available at https://indico.egi.eu/indico/categoryDisplay.py?categId=36. The meetings provide an important forum to update each other about recent development and future plans concerning national and European-level community outreach and engagement activities. (A 5 min. slot is offered for every NIL to report at these meetings)
• Face-to-face meetings are organised twice per year for the NILs. These meetings are co-located with the main EGI Forums/Conferences (one in the spring and one in the autumn).
• Newsletter emails are sent to the NILs' email list (~every 2/3 weeks) by Gergely Sipos to inform the NILs about the latest news from the EGI engagement and user support area.
• The NIL activity is coordinated by the Customer and Technical Outreach Manager of EGI.eu, Gergely Sipos (gergely.sipos@egi.eu).

Resources for the NILs - To be successful in reaching out and supporting new communities

• EGI Engagement plan: http://go.egi.eu/engagementplan
• EGI Service Catalogue: https://www.egi.eu/services/
• Communication and dissemination materials: http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/publications/
• Recent posters:
  • EGI Cloud (2017-Dec, DI4R): https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3455/contribution/31
  • EGI Marketplace (2017-Dec, DI4R): https://indico.egi.eu/indico/event/3455/contribution/97
• EGI presentations (reusable examples):
  • Overview of EGI operational activities (presentation by Matthew Viljoen, April 2018): https://www.slideshare.net/TheEOSChubproject/overview-of-infrastructure-and-operations-plans-matthew-viljoen
  • Overview of EGI community engagement and support activities (presentation by Gergely Sipos, April 2018): https://www.slideshare.net/TheEOSChubproject/egi-engagement-plan-gergely-sipos
  • Overview of the EOSC-hub project and its services (2018-Mar, ISGC): http://indico4.twgrid.org/indico/event/4/session/8/contribution/177
  • EGI overview for a new community (presentation that was delivered by Gergely Sipos in May 2017): https://documents.egi.eu/document/3119
  • European Community Engagement within EGI (presentation delivered at NeIC2017 by Gergely Sipos): https://documents.egi.eu/document/3126
• Find relevant EGI-NGI presentations under the 'User engagement and support' topic in the EGI Document Database: https://documents.egi.eu/public/ListBy?topicid=65
• Forms and templates to capture requirements from users/communities: http://go.egi.eu/requirements
• Registry of upcoming EGI events: https://www.egi.eu/category/events/
• Community-curated list of external events that can be relevant for EGI members to attend and promote EGI to new user communities: https://wiki.eosc-hub.eu/display/EOSC/Events
• Email lists:
  • NILs: ngi-international-liaisons@mailman.egi.eu
  • User Community Board (representatives of largest VO communities): UCB-discuss@mailman.egi.eu

List of NILs

Name, Country, Institute:

From EGI member countries and EIROs:

• CERN:
  • Bob Jones
• Belgium:
  • Stephane Gerard, VUB
  • Olivier Devroede, VUB
• Bulgaria:
  • Todor Gurov, IICT-BAS
  • Aneta Karaivanova, IICT-BAS
• Croatia:
  • Dobriša Dobrenić, SRCE
  • Emir Imamagic, SRCE
• Czech Republic:
  • Ivana Křenková, CESNET
  • Luděk Matyska, CESNET
• France
  • Genevieve Romier, CNRS
• Republic of North Macedonia
  • Boro Jakimovski, UKIM
• Greece
  • Kostas Koumantaros, GRNET
• Italy
  • Luciano Gaido, INFN
  • Laura Perini, INFN
  • Davide Salomoni, INFN
• Poland
  • Tomasz Piontek, ICBP
  • Mariusz Sterzel, CYFRONET
• Portugal
  • João António Tomásio Pina, LIP
• Romania
  • Mihnea Dulea, Horia Hulubei National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering
• Slovakia
  • Ladislav Hluchý, IISAS
• Slovenia
  • Jan Jona Javorsek, JSI
• Spain
  • Isabel Campos Plasencia, CSIC
• Switzerland
  • Alex Upton Switzerland ETHZ
  • Dean Flanders, SwiNG
• Turkey
  • Hakan Bayındır, TUBITAK
  • Feyza Eryol, TUBITAK
  • Onur Temizsoylu, TUBITAK
• United Kingdom
  • Ian Collier, STFC

EGI members without a NIL:

• Estonia
• Finland
• Netherlands
• Sweden

EGI partner countries with International Liaisons:

• Armenia:
  • Hrachya Astsatryan, IIAP NAS RA
• Cyprus
  • Marios Dikaiakos, UCY
• Georgia
  • Nugzar Gamtsemlidze, GRENA
  • Ramaz Kvatadze, GRENA
• Moldova
  • Petru Bogatencov, RENAM
  • Nicolai Iliuha, RENAM
• Republic of Serbia
  • Antun Balaz, IPB
• South Korea
  • Soonwook Hwang, KISTI
  • Jik-Soo Kim, KISTI
• Taiwan
  • Vicky Huang, ASGC
• Ukraine
  • Andrii Golovynskyi, V. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics NAS of Ukraine

• Simon C. Lin Taiwan AS simon.lin@twgrid.org
• Robert Lovas Hungary MTA SZTAKI robert.lovas@sztaki.mta.hu
• Dana Ludviga Latvia IMCS-UL dana.ludviga@sigmanet.lv
• Steven Newhouse (EMBL-EBI) EMBL steven.newhouse@ebi.ac.uk

• Maria Poveda Cyprus UCY mpoveda@cs.ucy.ac.cy
• Serge A. Salamanka Belorus UIIP NASB salamanka@newman.bas-net.by

• Jelena Tamuliene Lithuania VU jelena.tamuliene@tfai.vu.lt
• Leo Trukšāns Latvia IMCS-UL leot@linux.edu.lv
• Martin Laimonis Veicherts Denmark UCPH mave@nbi.ku.dk
• Ilyin Viacheslav Russia E-ARENA ilyin@e-arena.ru
• Ilyin Viacheslav Russia SINP MSU ilyin@sinp.msu.ru
• Korenkov Vladimir Russia JINR korenkov@cv.jinr.ru
• Dusan Vudragovic Republic of Serbia IPB dusan@ipb.ac.rs
• Anders Waananen Denmark UCPH waananen@nbi.dk
• Zivan Yoash Israel IUCC zivany@mail.iucc.ac.il

Confirmed contacts to handle EGI Service Orders

• France: NIL (see above)
• Turkey: grid-teknik@ulakbim.gov.tr (This includes also the NILs)
• Italy: Luciano Gaido, Davide Salomoni and Laura Perini (see above)
• Belgium: Stephane GERARD and Olivier Devroede (see above)