For the past few weeks Dave Roberts and I have been beavering away on a major EU FP7 grant. The abbreviated name for our application is ViBRANT which is the catchier name for "Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy". The competitive nature of this call makes it difficult for me to say much about what we are planning or who is involved, suffice to say that the project is to extend and distribute the Scratchpads and integrate the activities of various other major European work programs including GBIF, PESI and the publisher of the journal Zookeys. The deadline for out grant application is Nov 24, and at that point I'll be at liberty to say a little more about what we are planning and who is involved. EU grants are formidable because of their administrative complexity and the need to share a common vision amongst the numerous European partners in pursuit of a common goal. The latter in particular is especially difficult since EU grants also require a certain political savvy that is absent from the supposed meritocracy of UK research council grants. That said the EU, unlike the UK research councils, are in a better position to understand infrastructural needs required collaborative multinational research capacity. Indeed I have increasing argued that both taxonomic research and the underlying technical requirements of the discipline are all infrastructural problems. This perhaps explains why UK research councils, geared toward funding cutting edge science, have found it so difficult to support taxonomy over the past few years. Anyway, I hope to say more about VIBRANT after the grant deadline has passed.