Hi everyone, NLnet created this mailing list so I am testing it with you tonight. You should all get this email, hopefully. It is a mailing list, so don't reply to it unless you want everyone to receive your message. the news are - the website is up and running, with a press release. https://elfaconsortium.eu - the mastodon and bluesky accounts are up and running. We got some attention in the last 24h. More on Mastodon than on Bluesky, with 220 followers, 200 boosts, 150 likes, and 16 comments, all of them very positive, with some interesting questions. - you all signed the Declaration of Honor and have setup your signing capacity, except Nico and Dani because we are waiting for their company to be incorporated. - the starting date of the project: there was no objection to start 1st of June, but half of you expressed a desire to start earlier. I am still considering if the consortium could start on 1st of May and IronCalc would have their Gantt shifted one month ahead, so they would start 1st June, while the rest would start 1st of May. I am still considering that. What we would like is the first NLnet subgranting call to be opened on the 1st of June, reamining open until 1st of August, this seems the best, as we will have big events in July (DWeb camp followed by Local First Conf in Berlin were we definitively want to advertise the FSTP/subgranting program). - About travel costs for 2 or 3 in-person meetings of the consortium, we had the idea with Jean Luc and Michiel, that the consortium would meet every year at FOSDEM, maybe for 2 days, before the FOSDEM weekend, in order to work together. The cost of transportation and maybe hotel too, could be covered by the grant. What I originally thought was that it was easier to just pay everyone a good salary, and not to worry about those details, because it is more paperwork as you need to keep all the proofs of travel. Also if we allocate a budget for travel costs, and if you don't spend the money, it is lost. But then they told me that it would be inefficient to be taxed on those travel costs (revenue tax and social security). So now is the time to think about that. The amount allocated to your company is not changing, from the one you see in the proposal. But a fraction of it can be reserved for "Travel costs". It is up to you to opt for it or not. We could imagine 2 or 3 FOSDEM meetings (or maybe 2 FOSDEM and one other location). The number of persons that can travel has to correspond to the number of fulltime employees you have on your payroll I guess. So it is : 2 for NextGraph, 2 for IronCalc, 2 for BlockNote, 2 for CryptPad, 1 each for Joep, Jeremiah, Trey, Elio, Leon and Markus. Markus and myself might have more travels connected to the IETF proceedings, we are sorting this out next week with a call with Tolerant Networks. The distance has to be taken into account. For those who are on the common rate of 7 095 euros by month + 25% flat rate (everybody except CryptPad), I advise you to count your travel costs in increments of 430, so it will be easier to calculate your salaries later on. So 430 euros + 1.25% that you get for free, gives you 537.5 euros. For those living close to Brussels, it could be a good amount. Everyone checks for himself. There are rules for how much the EC can refund, according to the distance, but I don't have them with me at the moment. Try to be closest to real cost estimate. I will also take this opportunity to allocate some tiny budget for the hosting of our servers, probably 860 euros for the whole 3 years. Please send me the travel costs amount that you would like to remove from salaries, please give me the number before the flat rate of +25%. - About the changes to bring to the Grant Agreement, from the Proposal, Trey is working on minor clarifications about his tasks (Trey I will need that beginning of next week), and we should also collectively address better the "sustainability after the 3 years" question, in the words of the evaluator "The proposal outlines a credible, and forward-looking exploitation strategy, demonstrating strong commitment to sustaining collaboration beyond the project’s duration, as well as a realistic business model of infrastructure paid services. *However, as a shortcoming, limited information is provided with the main paths to exploitation being defined after the start of the project*.". This is because we wrote there that common exploitation of the results would be decided within 6 months of the start of the project, when writing the "plan for dissemination and exploitation including communication" which is a deliverable D2.2 for month 6. I don't know why then, the reviewer wanted to know already how we will exploit the results. But Jean-Luc Dorel mentioned that, so I need to address it. I am looking forward to your contributions by email or on https://team.elfaconsortium.eu/doc/impact-If6RuAaw0D#h-22-measures-to-maximi... That's all for today. Please keep in mind that I need to have all of that closed by the 21 of February. Cheers, Niko