Block number three of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) is one of two-dozen nondescript socialist blocks, just off from Tsarigradsko Chaussee. On an early morning in June, the empty, endless greens between the blocks breathe sleepiness.

Not exactly the place one would expect someone with the drive of Nikolay Miloshev, director of the Geophysical Institute and also deputy chairperson of the general assembly of BAS.

"It gets busier later in the day," he says, while he turns away from his office window, just over the entrance of block number three.
"Many people say BAS is a mastodon, and that is true. But it is there as a structure and it does have potential. Unused potential, I do agree with that," Miloshev says.

He has set himself the task of showing that his Institute and – with a bit more work – all of BAS,  is actually useful to society.

From his first words, Miloshev makes it clear that the problem of BAS is that of a mentality stuck in the so-called golden years – the 1960s – when fundamental research, funded by the socialist system, was king.

"At the moment we are stuck with a structure that is a legacy from a time when we did fundamental research, and this hinders us. I say this, both as a director of this institute and as a deputy-chair of the board of BAS," he says.

"Look," says Miloshev, "BAS first has to take several serious steps if it wants to survive".

Currently, BAS consists of 69 institutes. If it was up to Miloshev, only 30 or so larger ones would remain. But that process is not easy. "At the moment, we are trying to merge three institutions, but one of them is reluctant. Some institutions just don’t have a critical mass; they are too small," he says.

One of the next steps, according to Miloshev, would be to think about setting up a structure of communication departments within each institute. "We have to, one way or another, justify the money that society puts into this institution," he says later.

Beta
In the weeks before our interview with Miloshev, several local media spotted a new website (http://ndc.geophys.bas.bg/) that had appeared on the servers of the Geophysical Institute, but that was not yet linked to the institute’s main website.

"This is a new site and is still under development," Miloshev says.
The site can best be described as a mashup, the kind that one has come to expect in a web 2.0 environment, hardly a place where one is used to seeing an organisation like BAS.

The website combines the institute’s own database of earthquake data with a Google map to allow users to visualise the location, incidence and frequency of earthquakes in the Balkans.

For the time being, the site is still under beta-testing. "Data is entered automatically and could contain an error," Miloshev says.
There is, of course, a difference between errors and errors. A wrong weather forecast is unlikely to have serious consequences; earthquakes, on the other hand, are scary.
"This is why we have staff on duty 24-hours to double check the automated data. These tests have now been running two or three months, so we expect to be ready with the site within the next couple of weeks," Miloshev says.

The current version of the site does provide an option to select between automatic and manual control,  the latter only showing data for earthquakes that has been checked by a seismologist. The final site will only have this manual option, Miloshev says, in order to minimise the risk of mistakes.