Building Collaborative eResearch Environments
Virtual Organisations and
Collaborative Environments
Stephen Potter
University of Edinburgh
stephenp@inf.ed.ac.uk
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Outline
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The Collaborative Grid
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Tools for collaboration
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Contemporary Grid
Computing
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Roots in high performance computing and
specialised scientific problem-solving.
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Grid computing is now emerging as a more
powerful general purpose infrastructure to
enable new research.
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Its contemporary definition is
coordinated resource sharing and problem
solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual
organizations
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Virtual Organisations
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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 Grid
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Room based videoconferencing with large format
display
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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 node
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Austin Tate
Simon Buckingham Shum
Marc Eisenstadt
David DeRoure
Nigel Shadbolt
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CoAKTinG Background
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“The CoAKTinG Project aims to support
and enhance e-Science collaborations.”
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Exploiting technologies, tools and
methodologies where already available…
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…and augment these with novel ones
where necessary.
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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
Collaborations
awareness of
colleagues’ ‘presence’
virtual meetings
recovering information
from meetings
mapping real time
discussions/group
sensemaking
enacting decisions/
coordinating activities
synthesising artifacts
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awareness of
colleagues’ ‘presence’
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Presence: “an aggregated view of an entity’s
dynamically changing attributes”:
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BuddySpace
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).
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awareness of
colleagues’ ‘presence’
BuddySpace
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mapping real time
discussions/group
sensemaking
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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.
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Connecting ideas: visually, by sets, metadata
and hypertext links.
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Free-form and template-driven discussions.
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Underlying XML representations:
interoperable with other tools via Jabber.
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mapping real time
discussions/group
sensemaking
Compendium:
mapping arguments
and decision rationale
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mapping real time
discussions/group
sensemaking
Compendium:
meeting template
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enacting decisions/
coordinating activities
I-X
synthesising artifacts
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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.
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enacting decisions/
coordinating activities
I-X
synthesising artifacts
Process Panel (I-P2)
Activity Editor
Domain Editor (I-DE)
Messenger
I-Space
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recovering information
from meetings
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Record and
Replay
Capturing meetings, experiments,
visualisations…
– Many potential information streams: video, audio,
Powerpoint, Jabber, Compendium…
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…for context-rich playback.
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Ontology-based approach - annotation of
streams allows synchronised playback,
‘smart’ navigation, etc…
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Interlinks information using Semantic Web
technologies.
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Meeting replay by
time, speaker,
contribution to
discussion, and
decision
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…to Support and Enhance e-Science
Collaborations
BuddySpace
Access Grid
Node
NetMeeting
awareness of
colleagues’ ‘presence’
virtual meetings
recovering information
from meetings
Replay
mapping real time
discussions/group
sensemaking
Compendium
enacting decisions/
coordinating activities
synthesising artifacts
I-X Tools
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Summary
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Contemporary Grid computing is about virtual
organisations.
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Virtual organisations bring expertise and
resource together dynamically to enable new
research.
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Tools include:
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Access Grid.
Instant messaging with presence.
Mapping meetings.
Process support.
Capture and replay.
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CoAKTinG Links
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CoAKTinG Project:
– www.aktors.org/coakting
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BuddySpace:
– kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/buddyspace
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Compendium:
– kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendium
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I-X:
– i-x.info
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Replay:
– www.iam.ecs.soton.ac.uk/projects/hystream
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