Parallel Session 9: Communicating Distributed Infrastructure
Wednesday 10 April 14:15 - 16:00
Distributed European Research Infrastructures (ERI) usually consist of a number of research centers and institutes in several European countries, originally built up on the national level. If they combine their forces to offer their scientific equipment, resources and expertise jointly to the scientific community, they may gain a pan-European and even world-wide relevance. The most important of them are ranked as `landmarks´ by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructrures (ESFRI).
As an ESFRI landmark in the area of Health & Food, INFRAFRONTIER today has 29 members in 15 countries – two of them Israel and Canada. None of these members is a big, spectacular research unit of its own – and each one has its very specific scientific strengths and competences. It´s the combination of these capacities, coordinated under one roof and bundled in a huge common repository of thousands of mouse strains called EMMA that makes INFRAFRONTIER a highly relevant infrastructure partner for hundreds of biomedical researchers teams and institutions – in Europe as well as on a world-wide level.
The widely distributed location of the members and the concentration on a very specific, but globally scattered scientific target / user group are the decisive elements of our RI´s communication strategy.
The main communication challenges for the coordinating unit are:
- to define (and continually re-define) a clear common products and services strategy among a very heterogenous group of high-level biomedical research units in 29 locations and 15 countries
- to find (and continually re-invent) the right way to offer the common core business – the mouse repository EMMA (European Mouse Mutant Archive) and its huge databases – to the worldwide community of scientific users, experienced potential ones alike
- to be aware constantly of the very different situation of the single member centers concerning individual
- to support the members in disseminating their specific service offers via internationally effective communication channels only the RI´s coordinating unit has the resources to maintain
The main tools we use to reach these goals in our specific situation as a distributed European RI are:
- a central, consistent website - containing all `business offers´ to the scientifc community in Europe and abroad in an easy-to-use way transaction mode on the one side (EMMA repository, trans-national access calls, international meetings, others) – and comprehensive information about the RI and its members on the other (www.infrafrontier.eu)
- social media channels that are suitable to communicate the specific transaction services the RI has to offer – like Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, others; some of them in cooperation with international partners like the IMPC
- common outreach tools every partner in the RI network can use as soon as he wants to: printed fact sheets and brochures, conference booths, others
- a constantly used system for `keeping valuable scientific contents alive´ which we call `scientific content marketing´
- and last not least: an active, transparent and very cooperatively managed communications working group in which all members constantly re-discuss all these tools, create proposals for new messages and channels and bring in their specific communication needs
