Interviewing the Urban Algae Project (2): Experiences with international collaborations of ECRs

The Urban Algae PI Team: Susanne Stephan, Cleo N. Stratmann, Sonia Herrero Ortega and Mandy Velthuis (in the tablet)

What have you learned so far from collaboration and how has the networking helped you?

What setbacks have you encountered and how did you/are you planning to get over them?

Over the course of the project, we have encountered only a few setbacks. Working in such a big consortium can be a challenge and communication is very important. Finding a common medium for communication and working was the first obstacle and in the end we have found a way, by asking the members, trying things and improving them continuously. We can say that the time delay for the release of the citizen survey was a major set back. We underestimated the time needed to build the question structure and determine the right questions, to get answers that can be used scientifically. Again, working in a virtual workspace and with many different people is an aspect that needs to be considered for the timing. At some point, we decided with the team that we will not set a tight deadline anymore, but that we work to get it done as fast as possible with a more realistic time goal in mind. In the end, this strategy worked out well.

What has this experience taught you about international collaboration? What is/gets easier/ what is difficult?

Let’s start with good things and what is or is getting easier with time. With shared expertise and having such a diverse team, we were able to obtain high quality work. We share tasks, which helps to get a lot of work done and keeps up the motivation. Working in working groups is very efficient and makes a lot of things easier. Working in google drive as a shared workspace is very handy, too.

Time planning gets easier and you stop making “hard” deadlines, when you know it is almost impossible. Also, the insights and respect towards other people's agendas create better understanding for an efficient and “positive” time planning (where it is actually possible to meet the deadline, so you feel good about it). A bit more difficult at the beginning is, of course, the time planning: Everything takes longer than you think. Urgent topics are harder to solve when more people are involved, because of the communication structure. It is definitely a convenience if you have a smaller project team and work at the same location, so you can have personal meetings.

For us coordinators, but surely also valid for the other consortium members, finding the right balance between the project, work and private time gets easier with time and good organization - you definitely learn to prioritize. However, especially in hot phases with a lot of work, a project such as Urban Algae can be demanding and it may be hard to balance. With the four of us working together, we are able to allow each other times of lower involvement, which is great.

Keeping track of how involved people are in working groups is also not that easy. Although we have an `activity-log´ it is not possible to assess who did more or less - and frankly, that is not the aim. But when it comes to publications, order counts (unfortunately, the place of your name in the authors' lists is what you get mainly evaluated on in science).

When decisions are needed, leading qualities are needed. Sometimes, it is a challenge to determine who can and should make which decisions. We have found some situations, where we should have been clearer in giving responsibilities to other people and we learned from those.

Managing all the people: In general, and regarding the two points above, it is not easy to manage such a big team distributed widely over Europe.

Communication is always difficult and includes the use of media as well as the personalities of people. It is important to make sure everybody has access to the communication tools and to assess whether it works appropriate (sometimes this means just trying to find if it works or not). We often use skype or zoom and they are both good tools, but if not using premium version they have limitations (such as limited time for conference calls).

Writing emails with so many participants can bring some problem when it comes to keeping the email list updated (if people change their institutions for example).

What keeps you going through the difficulties?

We would say that there are three main ankers for us: One is the great team atmosphere among the coordinators. We have worked together and know each other personally. We are all four very different personality types and complement each other well. Second, the responsibility towards our consortium. All people participating in Urban Algae have provided lots of their time and effort into the successful implementation of this project. Third, our passion for freshwater research and our curiosity. We want to find out if our hypotheses are right. Also, we are driven by the wish to contribute to scientific knowledge, that hopefully helps to improve the conditions for ecosystems and the peaceful co-existence of nature and humans.