Blog post written by Bente Maegaard
On 4 and 5 December 2018 a workshop for CLARIN Newcomers was held in Utrecht. By “newcomers” we understand persons who need an introduction to the basic information about CLARIN. The 11 participants had different backgrounds: some are from countries that are preparing to join, some from countries that recently joined, some from countries that only now can start working because of their funding situation, and finally there were two technical centre representatives who wanted to get information about setting up a centre.
The countries represented were: Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa and Switzerland. Cyprus, Slovakia and UK were also very interested in participating in the workshop but were unable to attend.
Presentations were given covering basic themes like how to set up a CLARIN consortium and a technical centre. The CLARIN agreement, personnel, costs, User Involvement and other relevant themes were also discussed. A very important aspect of the workshop is the discussion among the participants. The participants may be newcomers in some respect, but they come with a good deal of experience and the sharing of this experience is a strong element in this type of workshop.
The workshop was considered to be very successful, and an event along the same lines will be held in 2019.
