1. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Project Scientist Report John Davies UK Royal Observatory Edinburgh

2. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. FP5 Project FP5 Contract finished 29 February 2004. Final reports accepted by EC Final Payment arrived at PPARC 2 weeks ago, but some issues with EC being resolved before distribution.

3. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Networking Summary. Going well, no budget anomalies and no major delays caused by late contract signature N1. Management team in place and working well UKATC bankrolling several networks Various PR activities (Pens, JENAM presentations, handouts, posters). Large GANTT Chart available on your memory sticks.

4. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N2. ENO Five Main Activities Local Directors Meetings LASER Traffic system Site charcterisation Solar Physics Information system Outreach

5. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N2 ENO Detailed report circulated by IAC. Spending behind schedule due to late contract signature preventing hardware purchases but expected to accelerate soon.

6. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N3.1- ELT Full time project scientist (Isobel Hook) recruited. 50% OPTICON 50% PPARC ELT meeting and presentations at Berlin ’04 meeting Glossy brochure written Florence meeting in November to produce written science case as input for design study.

7. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N3.2 NUVA Special issue of A & A being prepared Plan to advance conference 1 year after STIS failure and COS installation delay

8. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N3.3 HTRA. Joint meetings with JRA-3 N3.4 AVO. OPTICON support is planned to phase out by Mid 2005 as AVO obtains own funds. Design Study bid approved for VO-TECH. However, possible request for Euro 10, 000 extra in 2005-6 to support bids for funds for the Data Centre Alliance.

9. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N3.5 Key Technology Working Group CRC to report today Meeting here on Wednesday N3.6 Future Astronomy Software Environment. Operating in Twiki mode so far, face to face meeting planned Dec 04 at ESO

10. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N4. Space-Ground Synergy. Meetings planned but not yet implemented. N5. Interferometry Fully active. First exchange visits (5) have already been approved. Two working groups almost established. Leige meeting on Next Generation Interferometers held in August

11. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. N6 Telescope Network Tel-Dir forum meets next month to review ‘over- success’ of access programme. Office at IAC has produced several detailed reports and web pages NEON Like school held at ESO summer 04. New Marie Curie programme approved on 2nd try.

12. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. JRA Summary All activities are underway. Some work packages have remained on schedule by using institutional funds. Most are delayed by of order 6 months since it has not been possible to award subcontracts or hire staff until the EU funds were assured. Project office maintaining watching brief, but detailed scrutiny of all activities impossible.

13. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. JRA Leaders JRA 1 Adaptive Optics. – N.Hubin JRA 2 Fast Detectors for AO – P. Feautrier JRA 3 Optical Detectors for HTRA – S.Wagner JRA 4 Interferometry – A. Chelli JRA 5 Smart Focal Planes – C.Cunningham JRA 6 VPH Gratings – F. Zerbi

14. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Annual Report and Year 2 Budget 1 st Report due at EC by 15 Feb 2005, giving both progress to date and next 18 month plan. The next tranche of EU payments depends on this report being prepared to a tight schedule. Executive need to approve detailed plans at their January 05 meeting for inclusion in this document.

15. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. EU supplied draft template for annual report requires a level of detailed input comparable to the contract. Template supplied to all JRA &Network leaders for this meeting as prototype for this process, but few returned so far. JRA, Network and Access leaders must supply info to Project in timely manner and in the required formats

16. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Concerns Potential problem obtaining final budget statements from large multi-institute contractors on required schedule I3 leaders will try to clarify/modify/ simplify these requirements at workshop in Brussels to be held in November

17. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004.

18. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Travel to Board and executive meetings There is no specific budget to support travel to board meetings. We propose that since in most cases the costs of agency representatives attending board and executive meetings is less than 3% of the EU contribution through OPTICON, those agencies meet these costs from their overheads. Exceptions are contractors with only small (or zero) budgets. We propose The Lieden representative will be funded by NOVA The IAP representative will be funded by INSU The EAS representatives will be funded by the N1 network. The GCNA, SANW RDS and RA3 have been assigned budgetsfor board travel from the N1 network Network, Access and JRA representatives are funded from their activity budget.

19. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Access Programme Despite initial concerns about slow ramp-up this activity is significantly oversubscribed. Oversubscription of some facilities implies they will complete contract in 2-3 years. Executive wishes to smooth spending over longer period to ensure continuity across final years of programme and into FP7 Telescope Directors aware of these issues and are planning a detailed discussion leading to costed strategies at their November meeting

20. OPTICON Board Meeting, Grenoble 11-12 October 2004. Access Programme - Issues Many qualifying users have probably got own funds. Looks to some like business as usual Low take-up in year 1 by Central Europe- reasons for this are being investigated What are our socio-economics goals exactly?