Stephen Potter University of Edinburgh stephenp@inf.ed.ac.uk

1. Building Collaborative eResearch Environments Virtual Organisations andCollaborative Environments Stephen Potter University of Edinburgh stephenp@inf.ed.ac.uk

2. Outline • The Collaborative Grid • Tools for collaboration

3. Contemporary Grid Computing • Roots in high performance computing and specialised scientific problem-solving. • Grid computing is now emerging as a more powerful general purpose infrastructure to enable new research. • Its contemporary definition is coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations

4. Virtual Organisations • People coming together across geographical boundaries. • Significantly, also across disciplinary boundaries. • Dynamic formation according to problem. • Computer support for discovering people and mediating interaction. • Also bringing together data and computational resources. • We can distinguish three key aspects of a Grid: Compute, Data and Collaboration.

5. Access Grid • Room based videoconferencing with large format display • supports group-to-group interactions across the Grid. • supports interaction and visualisation. • nodes in 150 institutions worldwide. • routine use in UK e-Science programme. • Also available as single machine solution Personal Interface to the Grid (PIG). • Can also use Virtual Rooms VideoConferencing System (VRVS). • In fact collaboration can use any video- and teleconferencing facilities.

6. Access Grid node

7. Austin Tate Simon Buckingham Shum Marc Eisenstadt David DeRoure Nigel Shadbolt

8. CoAKTinG Background • “The CoAKTinG Project aims to support and enhance e-Science collaborations.” • Exploiting technologies, tools and methodologies where already available… • …and augment these with novel ones where necessary. • 2 year project - started June 2002: • Funded by UK e-Science Programme. • Involves a total of ~15 PIs, Researchers, Students.

9. …to Support and Enhance e-Science Collaborations awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’ virtual meetings mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking recovering information from meetings enacting decisions/coordinating activities synthesising artifacts

10. BuddySpace awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’ • Presence: “an aggregated view of an entity’s dynamically changing attributes”: • Availability (“I’m logged on for a videoconference”) • Preference (“Only my boss can interrupt me now”) • Capability (“My current device can accept video calls”) • Location (“I’m in Munich…urgent calls only”) • BuddySpace - enriched ‘instant messaging’ client: • Awareness of people…and other resources. • Editable maps for better visualisation of presence. • Advanced group chat facilities with voting, attention meters… • Provides lightweight communications channel (based on Jabber IM protocol).

11. BuddySpace awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

12. mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking Compendium • Tool for real-time capture and visualisation of argumentation (“collective sense-making and group memory”). • Based on gIBIS notions: issues (questions), answers, arguments (pros/cons), decisions, etc. • Connecting ideas: visually, by sets, metadata and hypertext links. • Free-form and template-driven discussions. • Underlying XML representations: interoperable with other tools via Jabber.

13. mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking Compendium: mapping arguments and decision rationale

14. mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking Compendium: meeting template

15. enacting decisions/coordinating activities I-X synthesising artifacts • I-X technology provides an environment for handling issues, performing activities, placing constraints, etc. • Founded on generic <I-N-C-A> activity ontology. • CoAKTinG roles: • Support meeting environment set-up activities; • Support ‘meeting process’ activities; • Networked ‘To-Do’ lists for issue-handling and activity tracking.

16. enacting decisions/coordinating activities I-X synthesising artifacts Process Panel (I-P2) Activity Editor Domain Editor (I-DE) Messenger I-Space

17. Record and Replay recovering information from meetings • Capturing meetings, experiments, visualisations… • Many potential information streams: video, audio, Powerpoint, Jabber, Compendium… • …for context-rich playback. • Ontology-based approach - annotation of streams allows synchronised playback, ‘smart’ navigation, etc… • Interlinks information using Semantic Web technologies.

18. Meeting replay by time, speaker, contribution to discussion, and decision

19. Compendium Replay …to Support and Enhance e-Science Collaborations awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’ BuddySpace Access Grid Node virtual meetings mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking NetMeeting recovering information from meetings enacting decisions/coordinating activities synthesising artifacts I-X Tools

20. Summary • Contemporary Grid computing is about virtual organisations. • Virtual organisations bring expertise and resource together dynamically to enable new research. • Tools include: • Access Grid. • Instant messaging with presence. • Mapping meetings. • Process support. • Capture and replay.

21. CoAKTinG Links • CoAKTinG Project: • www.aktors.org/coakting • BuddySpace: • kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/buddyspace • Compendium: • kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendium • I-X: • i-x.info • Replay: • www.iam.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/hystream