The VAX-TRUST project has been running from the beginning of March 2021 and, due to travel restrictions and the ongoing changing circumstances, all the meetings have had to be held virtually – up until now. After a lot of planning and preparations, we finally had the opportunity to meet in person between the 29^th of November and the 1^st of December. The meeting was held in Tampere, Finland, the home city of the project Coordinator Tampere University. A total of 18 members from eight out of ten partner organisations were able to travel on-site, and the partner representatives that were not able to travel to Tampere participated in the meeting remotely.

The two and a half working days were extremely fruitful from both the research and team building perspectives. The days included, for example, presentations from Work Package leaders, discussions on research implementation, as well as planning for future work and meetings. In addition to going through the official topics set in the meeting agenda, the days were perfect for going through greetings from each team, discussing the management customs of the project, as well as more unofficial ‘corridor conversations’ that we had been missing for so long. At the end of the meeting, we also had a tour de table session where all members had the opportunity to share their thoughts regarding the project.

Even though the prevailing circumstances posed some challenges for our in-person meeting, in the end all worked out very well. Being able to focus on the project without interruptions for two and a half days with the VAX-TRUST members (whether in person or online) was an extremely valuable experience that gave us the possibility to get to know each other on a more personal level and strengthen our project plans to make our research even better.

Text by TAU team, photos by Jonne Renvall (TAU)