It’s about time for the closing of first ICT Call of FP7. In Turkish ICT Sector there is a move. Companies are coming together in order to discuss how to cooperate, how to use each other’s resources in the aim to write a successful proposal. In the framework of EASIER project a close relationship between TAGES and nearly 40 Turkish ICT SMEs has been created, TAGES gives one to one consulting to the SMEs to increase their participation in FP7 projects.
It’s about time for the closing of first ICT Call of FP7. In Turkish ICT Sector there is a move. Companies are coming together in order to discuss how to cooperate, how to use each other’s resources in the aim to write a successful proposal. We can witness this process very closely due to the EU funded FP6 EASIER project. The aim of EASIER project is to urge European ICT SMEs for their participation in European R&D projects. As the deadline of first ICT Call under the 7th Framework Programme is May 8th 2007 the focus of SMEs is to submit a project for this call or to be part of a project proposal prepared by another institution.
If we try to draw a picture of Turkish ICT sector before the closing of the call it is evident that companies are more aware about the funding opportunities of European Commission and they know better how to apply to FP7 than FP6. This is the result of the number of info day, conferences and running projects aiming to familiarize Turkish ICT sector with Framework Programmes. One of these awareness raising projects is EASIER project where TAGES, TÜBİTAK and TBV are partners from Turkey. EASIER project organized a big conference at the end of January with the participation of nearly 350 organizations from the whole world and Turkey. In this conference 14 Networking Sessions were realized in the aim of bringing together project idea owners and other parties for a good collaboration.
Now after 2 months from the conference we can evaluate the success rate of this collaboration. At the moment there are nearly 10 SMEs from Turkey writing a project proposal. In most of the projects they do not have a coordinator role but they created the consortium and they found a relevant coordinator for the project management. On the other side it is not easy to give an exact number but, approximately 20 companies are participating in the consortiums as project partners.
Presently there are experienced companies in Turkey from FP6 in proposal writing and in participation in the European projects. There are also active for participation in FP7 and due to their past experiences and connections, they will be more successful than FP6. Companies preparing to participate for the first time in Framework Programmes are supported by EASIER project. In the framework of EASIER project, various services are offered to the SMEs as finding project proposal to take part in, finding project partners and giving advices on project proposal writing, IPR issues, consortium building and project modeling. In the framework of EASIER project a close relationship between TAGES and nearly 40 Turkish ICT SMEs has been created, TAGES gives one to one consulting to the SMEs to increase their participation in FP7 projects.
As a conclusion we can say that the consistency and workload will continue until the closing of the call. In this way Turkish ICT sector has been familiarized with FP7 and starts to orientate its plans and strategies towards R&D in European projects and multi-national and multi-disciplinary collaboration.
