Simon Buckingham Shum David De Roure Marc Eisenstadt Nigel Shadbolt Austin Tate

1. Simon Buckingham Shum David De Roure Marc Eisenstadt Nigel Shadbolt Austin Tate

2. CoAKTinG partners BT Exact Napp Pharmaceuticals Comb-e-Chem NASA

3. Overview • Component approaches • Integration • Current work on application of tools • Future work (but needs funding!)

4. 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.

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.

7. …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

8. awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’ BuddySpace • 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).

9. BuddySpace awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

10. 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.

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

12. 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.

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

14. recovering information from meetings Record andReplay • 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.

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

16. 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

17. Interim ResultsSeptember 2003

18. Integration work • Key Contributions • Support variable levels of formality in communication • Real time semantic annotation of discussions • Events ontology for e-Science collaboration • Context-driven collaboration tools • Conceptual • Extending the AKT Reference Ontology • Mapping and cross-fertilisation between two issue-management ontologies • Technical • Off-the-shelf Jabber-based integration • 3 tools freely available for download • Intelligent team rosta management • Integration between Compendium, I-X, BuddySpace, Meeting replay tool

19. Conceptual integration:Extending the Reference Ontology • Extensions to support: • generation of multimedia presentations (e.g. millisecond representations of time) • meetings distributed across several (physical and virtual) locations • exhibition of information objects as events (e.g. slides; videos; documents) • meeting-specific (compound) information bearing objects (versions of resources used in meetings) • annotation events (e.g. verbal comments, creation of Compendium nodes)

21. BuddySpace BuddySpace Meeting Replay Jabber Server Compendium Compendium I-X Process panels I-X Process panels Technical integration: Jabber interoperability

22. Current ActivitiesApril 2004

23. NASA Scenario 1. Astronauts debrief on EVA Compendium maps from trained compendium astronaut Remote Science Team (RST) on earth e.g. geologists Mars Video and Science Data Plan for next Day’s EVA 2. Virtual meeting of RST using CoAKTinG tools

24. Image from NASA

25. NASA Press Release Collaborative and Assistant Systems Research Area Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group MOBILE AGENTS PROJECT COMPLETES OPERATIONAL READINESS TEST AT AMES "MARSCAPE“ … In addition, the Mobile Agents work involves a collaboration with the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) of the Open University and the Intelligence, Agents and Multimedia group (IAM) of the University of Southampton in the UK, led by Dr. Simon Buckingham-Shum from KMi and Dr. Danius Michaelides from IAM. The collaboration also includes the ScienceOrganizer team from Code IC, led by Dr. Dan Berrios. The collaboration with these three teams evolves around the development of tools for science collaboration between a Mars Crew and a distributed Earth-based Remote Science Team. The Earth-based Remote Science Team is led by Shannon Rupert of the Mars Society.

26. Comb-e-Chem • Shallow integration • Deployment of generic tools • Deep integration • Buddyspace shows status of equipment and results • Process panels for experimental processes in the lab • Record and replay can be applied to lab experiments • Compendium to support scientific discourse • All interaction is recorded and interlinked

27. Comb-e-Chem

28. www.smarttea.org

29. Scenarios – eResponse • Storyboard / talk-piece • Facilitate a team of experts to coordinate a response to a disaster • An oil spill in the Solent • I-X Process Panels • Coordinate activities via SOPs • Buddyspace • Access to online scientists • Compendium • Record argumentation • Meeting Replay

30. Future work • Deploy these tools as part of the collaborative e-Research environment • Customise tools to particular applications • Perform user evaluation • Additional tools • Fully integrate with e.g. Comb-e-Chem research agenda • “Chain ReAKTinG” – ready to go • Many important Semantic Web challenges • Coupling with pervasive devices • Apply in new areas such as performing arts • Apply to other collaboration technologies

31. 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

32. www.aktors.org/coakting