It had already been decided that work on ORION would not stop once the Final Report was submitted, but would continue until the Final Report was accepted, which might take up to 6 months, if past experience was anything to go by. This decision implied that some kind of funding needed to be made available.

Dr Papathanassiou offered to make funds available for one person to continue for at least 6 months. Further than that, he outlined a procedure whereby the HCMR could be approached for a loan for development purposes.

It was also agreed that the present Coordinator, Mrs Eleftheriou, should continue to be responsible for supervising the tasks outlined below.

• Development of a plan for future development of ORION, containing a strategy that covers the questions above (M.Eleftheriou)
• Completion of website
  • Website programming must be completely finished, so that site and tool are completely professional (G.Haronitakis)
  • Issues concerning multi-users are addressed (C.Hapsiades)
    • User groups issues: password, course lists, etc.
    • Partners must be notified when this is completed)
  • Use of 1-2 tests cases (user groups) for validating website
    • European Masters of Aquaculture (M.T.Dinis)
    • Institute of Oceanography courses (E.Papathanassiou)
    • UCC courses (G.Mousakitis)
• SWOT Analysis of entire ORION package and each part (M.Eleftheriou)
  • Strengths
    • What are the strongest points for each user type?
  • Weaknesses
    • What are the weak points - where should future development be focused?
  • Opportunities
    • Major one: The EU-funded ORION project has allowed the development of the ORION website tools.
    • What are the other opportunities?
    • Where should we push ORION?
    • Asian markets? Where, how, etc.(A.Eleftheriou)
  • Threats
    • Who are the ORION competitors? (E.McVeigh)
    • Why are they better than ORION?
    • What is their advantage?
• Possible Ways of Recovering Costs -
  • Non-profit Model Regardless of how it is developed, ORION will require a source of funding: personnel, maintenance of website, server space, etc. etc.

Below are listed several potential ways we can charge users.

• Charge for use of ORION - course tools, per annum charge We charge each use group for setting up the user group (passwords, etc.), for annual maintenance, and server space.
• Charge for storage on server.
• Charge for use of glossary
• Charge for development of new glossary - or use of different glossary

Conclusions and Recommendations

The Management Meeting ended on a note of optimism, with all partners agreeing that a Partner meeting should be held in June to discuss all the options and to decide on a definitive plan for future action. This plan would depend on the outcome of the Final Report Evaluation, the quality of the finished ORION tools and website, the development of a fully professional educational course portal, a positive SWOT analysis and a good business plan.

Margaret Eleftheriou
30th November 2004.