Registering free of charge as a member of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN brings you the benefits of the tools and facilities listed below. The registration process is straightforward. All you need do is fill in the online registration form, taking care to complete all of the compulsory fields. Aside from any member profile you may make available to other members if you wish to, we will not disclose any member registration information to any third party.
Shortly after submitting the form, you will receive a welcome email. As soon as you receive this email, you have access to full-text Technology Watch reviews, e-alerts and member networking.
Once we have checked your registration details – within a week of registration – you obtain access as a full member of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN to tools on the central KTN portal. There are tools for setting up and participating in online meetings, online collaboration spaces and online discussions for special interest groups. From this point on, your Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN password will be valid on the website of all other knowledge-transfer networks in to the broader KTN network of networks.
Technology Watch access
Unregistered visitors to our website can browse the titles and abstracts of all technology and business reviews in our Technology Watch library, including our archive of Globalwatch mission reports. Registration gives you the added benefit of immediate access to the full text of these reviews. They address the state of the art in specific technologies, as well as industrial, business, market and legal issues. They are intended to be useful to non-specialists, not just experts in the subjects addressed.
We have divided the reviews into three categories – technology reviews, business reviews and sector profiles. The categories are porous, however. A technology review, for example, normally touches on market and business issues associated with the technology in question. In addition to our own reviews, registration also brings immediate access to the full text of the reviews prepared by the international Globalwatch missions.
The length of a typical review is around 20 pages, but review length ranges from five pages for a few of our shorter reviews to more than 50 pages for a handful of the more comprehensive reviews and sector profiles. To see the range of topics covered, have a look at our Technology Watch index page.
Networking with fellow Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN members
When you fill in the online registration form, you have the opportunity to post a profile describing your business or research interests. By ticking the appropriate box on the form, you can also open this profile together with your contact details to other registered members of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN. All members of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN are able to search through the open profiles and contact details in our member database by keyword. In this way, registration puts you in touch with the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN community.
E-alerts
When you fill in the online registration form, you have the opportunity to select areas of interest among our activities that you would like to be kept informed about – for example new Technology Watch reviews, forthcoming online Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN seminars, funding calls, opportunities for collaboration, technology roadmapping workshops, job vacancies. You will receive a text-only e-alert when we have an announcement to make in any of the areas you select.
Online meetings
The central KTN portal allows full members of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN to set up and participate in online voice-over-IP meetings free of charge. Together with audio, all participants in online meetings share an interactive whiteboard for presentations, the ability to display websites on the whiteboard and the option of application sharing, by which a presenter in a meeting can permit another particpant to remotely control an application running on his or her PC. For more information about online meetings, see our online-meetings page.
Online collaboration space
Full members of the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN are also entitled to set up and participate in online collaborations. Online collaboration spaces are there to help partners manage projects involving multiple partners. They are especially suited to projects whose partners are geographically scattered. A collaboration space is like a central online filing cabinet, where project documents of all kinds can be stored. It has the added benefit of built-in document-management functions, enabling participants, for example, to keep on top of the different versions of a multi-author document – a project proposal, perhaps – as it develops. For more details, see our IPMKTN collaborations page.
A way in to the broader KTN network
As soon as the Integrated Products Manufacturing KTN confirms your registration, your IPMKTN username (i.e. your email address) and your password are recognized by all other knowledge-transfer networks in the broader KTN network of networks. At the time of writing, there are more than 20 other KTNs covering a wide range of technological specialisms.