In a highly competetive first call for FP7 within the Challenges 4.1 (Digital Libraries and Technology-Enhanced Learning), the proposal MATURE led by CIMNE (Administrative Coordinator) and FZI (Scientific Coordinator) has received a very good evaluation result (with 14.5 out 15 points) and is now in the middle of negotiations with the European Commission to prepare the grant agreement. The project is currently scheduled to start in March 2008.

After a successful first workshop at the last OTM 2006, this year the co-chairs Mustafa Jarrar, Andreas Schmidt, Claude Ostyn and Werner Ceuters are again organizing the OnToContent 2007 workshop. The workshop will take place at the OTM 2007 conferences at the Algarve in Portugal in the week of Nov 25-29, 2007.

Following a meeting at the OntoContent workshop at the OTM Federated Conferences in Montpellier, Christine Kunzmann and I were invited by Mustafa Jarrar to contribute to a roadmapping initiative on the application potential of ontologies and semantic technologies in the HR domain. This initiative is part of the Ontology Outreach Authority of which I have become a founding member. It is an interesting compilation of the state-of-the-art in the domain and identifies several open challenges.

The Ontology Outreach Advisory was officially founded today. It is non-profit organization with the purpose of fostering the application of ontologies in "the real world". It has grown out of the KnowledgeWeb Network of Excellence. The inaugural executive council consists of Robert Meersman, Theo Mensen and Mustafa Jarrar; first meeting will be in Innbruck beginning of June.

We as a founding member (represented by Andreas Schmidt) will contribute to the Human Resources Chapter.

The upcoming Professional Knowledge Management conference WM 2007 at Potsdam will provide the possibility to get a closer look at our ongoing research around the theme of knowledge maturing, which represents a macroscopical phase model for describing interindividual learning processes. The following three publication deal with the issue from different perspective

Learning support activities are increasingly recognizing the importance of competencies as abstractions of human capabilities and behavior. This covers traditional human resource development and training, vocational training and even school education, but also e-learning and competence management.

The conference took place October 1-4 near Heraklion (Crete) and was primarily organized by the PROLEARN Network of Excellence. The conference had about 200 participants and was just right in size to allow for efficient community fostering.

Knowledge work is one of the main drivers of productivity for the knowledge society. Knowledge work, on an abstract level, includes a wide variety of activities that are concerned with information processing, thinking, and decision-making. Activities such as structuring of information and knowledge, articulation of new thoughts, and sharing with colleagues create knowledge and value.