Angele Giuliano
AcrossLimits Ltd
16 Bwieraq Street

Birkirkara - Malta

http://www.acrosslimits.com
(mobile) +356 99447060
(tel) +356 21 496376 (fax) +356 21 486008

angele@acrosslimits.com  

James Azzopardi

james@acrosslimits.com

Company Profile - AcrossLimits Ltd (MALTA)

AcrossLimits is a dynamic SME and creative e-Business, Internet and Knowledge Management solutions provider based in Malta. It provides various services relating to

Information Technology focusing mostly on creating e-commerce and e-business solutions from the small and medium enterprises. It is also actively involved in the research and creation of innovative solutions for e-learning and teleworking, as well as being experts in the configuration and programming of cross-platform systems.

AcrossLimits is also very active on the European programmes front. It is currently participating in an IST 5th Framework programme focusing on technology foresight in candidate countries and has been entrusted with the creation of a knowledge management system to help this project. It is also active in Socrates programmes - mainly in Lingua and Grundtvig projects since two of the directors of the company lecture at the University of Malta and their research interests vary from electronic publishing to using ICT in education.

The sister company of AcrossLimits - Repro House Limited, has been established in the design and print industry for more than 15 years. By combining its expertise with IT and Internet, AcrossLimits is able to offer the best of both worlds and help companies and  organisation leapfrog in the new economy.

AcrossLimits was established in June 2001 as a limited liability company, though its members already worked together prior to that date under a partnership agreement and in fact have been developing IT related systems since 1996. AcrossLimits services a range of International clients from a Maltese base in a variety of areas including:

§         Business performance improvement through New Media

§         Database design and maintenance – online and offline

§         Knowledge management and collaboration groupware

§         Website publishing and design including e-business solutions

§         Online multimedia and electronic content

§         Consultancy on managing transitions from traditional to virtual organisations

AcrossLimits experience and track record in Internet and New Media development has been achieved with a range of clients across a wide variety of applications and industry sectors. Our team members have been working in the Internet field for over 7 years now and throughout this time they have created, maintained and  programmed several high quality websites.

Contribution to PatiMon will be in the following areas:

A1: Communication patient - physician.

We aim to keep advancing our Internet information management system combined with push technology to keep this communication between patients and physicians alive. In fact we hope to be able to develop some intuitive systems for instant messaging between physicians and patients, giving the patients warnings and reminders when it’s time for some medication.

A2: Communication physician - physician / student: Web based and distance learning, psychology, sociology, sustainable technology, and knowledge transfer.

In this area we are interested most in the e-learning elements to be developed and kept for the system. We believe that it is only through knowledge transfer that all the experience gained by seasoned physicians will not be put to waste. Our aim in this area is to help develop the solutions, test and monitor their effectiveness throughout the whole duration of the project

S2: Knowledge Management and Data Base System.

Thanks to our experience with knowledge management platforms in FP5 projects, we hope to give direction and inspiration to the development of a great KM and database system. We want to promote a better distributed database split into various inter-connecting modules that interact with one another seamlessly.

M2: Network of Excellence Electronic Repository

We will lead this area and ensure the smooth running of the NoE Electronic Repository. Our objectives for this area are:

§               Allow all the partners to participate together in a virtual community thus collaborating together and increasing the effectiveness of the networking element

§               Trans-national information source that could be used to disseminate information on eHealth system around Europe

§               Sharing and harnessing collective knowledge in a knowledge management framework

§               Simple and user-friendly interface that allows for the complete features normally associated with high-end distributed database systems such as complex search features, archiving of data and accessing the data cube from anyplace anytime

§               Automated backups of data

§               Innovative indexing  technology that learns by itself which documents are being requested mostly by people and makes them more visible in the system

Relevant Experience and Projects

The following projects which have been developed by AcrossLimits demonstrate a range of technical expertise which is directly relevant to undertaking the work for the current project.

Virtual Emigration Museum (November 2000 to date) www.maltamigration.com

This project entailed the creation of an online repository of information which had to be harvested from various sources, including old and delicate documents. The data was then organized systematically into a database and placed online in a searchable format. The main challenge of this project was to harmonise irregular data, and to create a fast, user-friendly website for the use of researchers of migration studies.

TourismNews (November 1999 – March 2001)

An extensive spidering and data sniffing project undertaken in order to build an automatically changing information resource on global tourism trends, this online project was a case study of how to incorporate diverse data extracted from worldwide databases into a one-stop website. The system was completely built in-house using modular programming methods and was extremely scaleable, catering for large and heavy traffic inputs. An archiving system was also included in this project, allowing for snapshots of spidered information from several points in time.

National R&D Audit Database (November 2001 – ongoing) dataserver.mcst.org.mt

This project entails the creation of a unified database split into various microentities which will encapsulate all the information on Maltese researchers in various fields of study. The project is carried out in collaboration with the Malta Council for Science and Technology. Used currently for disseminating information on the FP6 Research Programme of the European Commission and has a strong knowledge management platform.

eFORESEE (December 2001 – ongoing) www.eforesee.info

This project is funded by the Fifth Framework Programme of DG Research of the European Union and includes partners from Malta, Belgium, Cyprus and Estonia. It aims to explore the use of foresight as an integral part of the tools used by policy makers in EU and accession countries. AcrossLimits has been subcontracted the creation of the knowledge management and groupware tools for collaboration between the partners and also the creation of the central databases and website.

Socrates EU Language Project (Jan 2002 – ongoing)

Aiming to research into the usage of the EU official languages, this project will try to find out what are the patterns that can be found in employees in Brussels. AcrossLimits has been entrusted with the creation of the online questionnaire and the collation of data through electronic means.

LifeForce (Jan 2002 – ongoing)

Based in the UK, this company focuses on consulting large organisations on managerial motivation through mentoring. AcrossLimits is helping in refining the data collection and analysis procedures through Internet technologies.

CVs of participating personnel

Ms Angèle Giuliano

Specialising in Internet marketing techniques and innovative business management methodologies, Angèle has been working in the e-business field for the last 7 years. Heading major projects such as the creation of Smart Online Shopping, she developed a strong background in high-traffic websites. She also led a 15-strong team to win the coveted Euro-Med Multimedia Award in 1998. Angèle lectures at the Computer Information Systems Department at the University of Malta. She has been involved as consultant on e-commerce technologies with the Maltese Ministry of Economic affairs.

Ms Giuliano is involved in several NGOs; most notably as the President of the Foundation for Women Entrepreneurs (Malta) which serves as a networking facilitator for Maltese Businesswomen and promotes entrepreneurial skills (www.women.org.mt). She is also a founding member of the HubMed foundation which is an incubator for initiatives that promote the adoption of Malta as a hub in the middle of the Mediterranean for ICT, Financial Services, Maritime and Aviation sectors and Education (www.maltahubmed.com).

The European Commission under the IST programme of the Fifth Framework programme, has appointed her as an expert evaluator of IST Research and Development projects. Thus she frequently attends evaluation sessions for specific Key Actions. Angele speaks native English and Italian and has an intermediate level in German (Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache).

Mr James Azzopardi

Focusing on the technical and programming aspects of e-commerce, distributed databases and web server configurations, James has been active online since 1995. As the webmaster and Internet co-ordinator of the Malta Tourism Authority (formerly NTOM) for 3 years, he has skyrocketed the statistics of its main website www.visitmalta.com to over 2 million page views annually. He has also created intelligent e-commerce solutions for local exporting companies and lectures at the Centre for Communications Technology at the University of Malta.

In 1998-99 James was the president of the Malta Internet Society, the local chapter of the International Internet Society whose aims are to promote Internet usage and lifelong learning and development through Internet methodologies (www.isoc.org). James speaks native English and is fluent in Italian.

Dr Marco Bergometti

Marco Bergometti  was born in Lecco (Italy) the 22^nd March 1947, he's married and has three children. Graduated in Political Sciences and Sociology in 1971 at Università degli Studi di Milano started his job career in 1973 as Pricing Manager for Rank Xerox Italy. In 1987 moved to Honeywell Information Systems Italy as Direct Marketing Manager. From 1987 to 1992 has been Marketing Communication Manager for Commodore Italy, then from July 1992 to May 2001 Marketing & EU Projects Director for Giunti Multimedia, the most important and active Italian digital publisher.

He has been until November 2001 the EU Marketing Director for Reggiani S.p.A. eDivision, responsible for the marketing strategies of the eDivision.

Frequent flyer is used to attend workshops , seminars and conferences as guest or as speaker.

Presently he is an independent financial consultant, expert in the exploitation of the opportunities of fundings and co-fundings provided by the Programmes of the Commission of the European Communities, the European Parliament, the European Investments Bank and by the Italian Public Bodies such as Ministries, Universities and Research Institutions.

He is also under contract with the Commission of the European Communities as evaluator and reviewer of the projects co-funded by the Information Society Technology Programme and the former INFO2000 Programme.

Ing. Frank Galea

With more than 30 years experience in the business world, Frank has a deep commitment to the new innovative way of doing business. An engineer by profession, he is part of the executive of the local Chamber of Commerce. He worked for several years in Germany and is a devoted to quality control.

Mr Ron Mifsud

Born and raised in Canada, with a diploma in Commercial Art, Ron is the motor that keeps the team together. He had worked at managerial level in local print companies, when he decided to form Repro House Limited in 1984.

He furthered his studies in management and computing, and is totally committed to achieve brilliant results and great customer satisfaction with AcrossLimits as he did with Repro.