EIFFEL SUPPORT ACTION

The EIFFEL initiative is a Support Action (SA) proposed for the 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The EIFFEL SA is all about mobilizing European researchers to discuss and debate on the future of the Internet towards the development of the future networked society. For this purpose, the EIFFEL SA will setup of a pan-European discussion forum and technical think-tank on enabling conflict-free, talented and scientific-oriented discussions around the future of the Internet. It is a non-competitive forum oriented towards technology and interest on building the trajectories for the future network society. Its overall objective is to provide a place for discussing and exchanging ideas and research trajectories on the future of the Internet architecture and governance building as a foundation of the future networked society. 

Outline of EIFFEL Support Action

 The EIFFEL SA is intended

• to be scientific-oriented, driven by academic principles and open for debate. The partners setting up the EIFFEL SA are "caretakers" facilitating meetings and providing editorial service to collect ideas into roadmaps and "research manifestos" that can be openly disseminated and also provided to EU.
• to mobilize and offer platform for technically recognized experts to meet and discuss on relevant issues and necessary research actions freely. EIFFEL SA is NOT intended to compete with other conferences or IST/COST project meetings.

The EIFFEL SA objectives are

• following the so-called "Dagstuhl-model" well-known by Computer Scientists, to ask technical leaders, to propose technical "areas" of investigation and act as co-chairs. Meetings would be organized by invitation of experts in the field of the resp. technical areas in order to discuss current problems, roadblocks, and future needs. The discussions should be articulated at network and systems level, including issues such as technological and architectural challenges, regulation/governance, privacy issues, and many others (as felt relevant by the participants).
• to set up a structure for technically competent people to meet based on a scientific approach. For this purpose, twice a year, general technical meetings will be organized from which research manifestos and reports on the possible future architectures would emerge. All the major work would be performed during these meetings. These research retreats would be organized by inviting collaborative and clever people to pro-actively attend and collaborate (i.e. not based on some mandated seats by organizations/ affiliations). In addition to these area meetings, some smaller ad-hoc/interim meetings could be organized for discussing possibly emerging sub-topics. Note also that although EIFFEL SA is initially focusing on European research/ers, its intention is to reach also other continents to join discussions and debates. As such, invitation of non-European leading researchers to meetings is strongly encouraged.

In practice, the EIFFEL SA would be responsible for

• covering the general costs for meetings, research retreats and publishing results (e.g. by providing website and document server to help on keeping record on the progress)
• funding for meetings, (limited) travel grants for researchers, especially for academics, to participate in meetings and other administrative support

The EIFFEL SA is not interested in competing or replacing any existing national research structures, it is not an alternative for industry activities, it is not replacement for ETPs and it is not a forum for setting up new projects. It is a place for having a lively discussions and true debates, with the aim to publish collective results as research manifestos towards interested parties with rationale reports following those. For this purpose, EIFFEL is planning to liaise with appropriate organizations such as ISOC/IETF/IRTF, European projects (ETPs, NoEs, etc.), but also reach out international community such as NSF/GENI, FIND, etc. The exact form of this work would be decided by discussing with the community, and the future leaders and participants of EIFFEL meetings. 

The project partners that are willing to setup and run the project as a 30 months support action within the European Union funding structure include AUEB, Aachen University, Alcatel-Lucent, British Telecom, etc. Staffing members from these organizations were also participating pro bono to initial EIFFEL discussions in 2006. The project partners as caretakers of the EIFFEL missions will take care of the SA funding to be used in activities that will enable participation of all relevant academic and industrial experts in building the vision of the architecture and the environment of the Future Network Society (see white paper). 

PS: if you believe that this initiative would be useful and would helpprogress in this field, we would encourage your support. The kind of support we would welcome is a message (at the latest, by April 20th, 2007) stating that you are strongly convinced that there is a real opportunity behind the EIFFEL SA principles and goals as well as your possible non-binding) interest on joining in. Support letter/messages can be sent to the temporary secretariat of EIFFEL group to the fax number +49 2407 575 7050 (ref: EIFFEL-initiative/ Prof. Mähönen).

Template for Support Letter