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Stephen Potter

University of Edinburghstephenp@inf.ed.ac.uk

Building Collaborative eResearch Environments

Virtual Organisations andCollaborative Environments

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OutlineOutline

The Collaborative Grid Tools for collaboration

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Contemporary Grid Contemporary Grid ComputingComputing

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

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Virtual OrganisationsVirtual 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.

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Access GridAccess 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.

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Access Grid nodeAccess Grid node

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David DeRoure

Nigel Shadbolt

Simon Buckingham Shum

Marc Eisenstadt

Austin Tate

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CoAKTinG BackgroundCoAKTinG 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.

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……to Support and Enhance e-Science to Support and Enhance e-Science CollaborationsCollaborations

mapping real time discussions/group

sensemaking

enacting decisions/coordinating activities

synthesising artifacts

recovering information from meetings

awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

virtual meetings

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BuddySpaceBuddySpace

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).

awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

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BuddySpaceBuddySpaceawareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

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CompendiumCompendium

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.

mapping real time discussions/group

sensemaking

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Compendium: Compendium: mapping arguments mapping arguments

and decision rationaleand decision rationale

mapping real time discussions/group

sensemaking

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Compendium: Compendium: meeting templatemeeting template

mapping real time discussions/group

sensemaking

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I-X I-X

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.

enacting decisions/coordinating activities

synthesising artifacts

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Process Panel (I-P2)

Domain Editor (I-DE)

Activity Editor

Messenger

I-Space

enacting decisions/coordinating activities

synthesising artifacts

I-X I-X

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Record and Record and ReplayReplay

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.

recovering information from meetings

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Meeting replay by time, speaker, contribution to discussion, and

decision

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……to Support and Enhance e-Science to Support and Enhance e-Science CollaborationsCollaborations

mapping real time discussions/group

sensemaking

enacting decisions/coordinating activities

synthesising artifacts

recovering information from meetings

awareness ofcolleagues’ ‘presence’

virtual meetings

BuddySpace

NetMeeting

Access Grid Node

Compendium

Replay

I-X Tools

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SummarySummary

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.

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CoAKTinG LinksCoAKTinG 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