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

BT Exact
Napp Pharmaceuticals
Comb-e-Chem
NASA

 Component approaches
 Integration
 Current work on application of tools
 Future work (but needs funding!)

 “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.

 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 videoand teleconferencing facilities.

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

awareness of colleagues’ ‘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).

awareness of colleagues’ ‘presence’

mapping real time discussions/group sensemaking
 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
mapping arguments and decision rationale

enacting decisions/ coordinating activities
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.

enacting decisions/ coordinating activities synthesising artifacts
Activity Editor
Process Panel (I-P 2 )
Messenger
Domain Editor (I-DE)
I-Space

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.

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

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

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 issuemanagement 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

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)

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

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

Image from NASA

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.

 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

www.smarttea.org

 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

 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

 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