My colleague Sarah Holyfield has already flagged up today’s twitter discussion on advice for JISC bidders which was sparked by a tweet from Grainne Conole, however I can’t resist mentioning it again. The advice came from a wide range of twitterers including JISC Programme managers, JISC service staff and private consultants. The one thing all these people have in common is that they all mark JISC calls so potential bidders would do well to take note. Such was the frenzy of advice that at one point #jiscbids achieve twitter trend status, (so it must be important!)

Advice ranged from the obvious:

Make sure you read the call. sounds obvious, but you would be amazed at how many bidders don’t!

We’ve all done it – it’s simply not fun, and risky, sending proposal on deadline day. Get into mindset of deadline is week before.

Provide *all* info asked for – such a shame to mark down a bid because it didn’t include risk assessment for example

10 page limit means 10 page limit. Do not put your budget on page 11.

Read the circular. Then read it again. Then do what it asks.

To the astute:

Don’t underbid to be competitive if this means your project will run out of money before the end.

Your background/intro section is too long. Ditch half of it and write a really good use case scenario instead.

Make it clear what funding your proposal would do for the wider community.

To the obscure:

A project with an acronym that alludes to bodily functions or sexual practises will (almost) always remain an unfunded project.

To see all those tweets in their full glory go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23jiscbids

With thanks to @lastkaled, @morageyrie, @dkernohan, @Joe_Librarian, @hwillimason and many more.