On 14 January 2014, DG AGRI and the EIP-AGRI Service Point organised a workshop, which focussed on the practical aspects of the Horizon 2020 calls for multi-actor projects and thematic networks related to agriculture and forestry. The workshop was kicked off by DG AGRI director Jose Sousa Uva who gave a brief introduction, underlining the importance of connecting science and practice. The + 250 participants, who followed on- and offline, were then given a more in-depth presentation about the concepts behind the Horizon 2020 EIP by the Head of Unit of the new DG AGRI "Research and Innovation" unit, Rob Peters. Inge van Oost, also from DG AGRI, provided more details on the specific calls and the thinking behind the Multi Actor approach (MA) and the Thematic Networks (TN). She stressed that although the calls emphasise the need to involve all concerned actors, it is not about representation but about bringing in the people with the right kind of knowledge and demonstrate in the project proposal that different actors are involved all along the project period: from defining the questions, to planning and implementing research work, to experiments and possible demonstrations and dissemination. For the TNs, she pointed out that the calls do not define the themes and that applicants can propose themes bottom-up in areas where they see research results and best practices that are near to be put into practice, but not known or tested by practitioners at a wider scale.