These are some remarks on InfoComm coming from Fox's visit to ARL on 
December 4 1997. We identified 4 activity areas, which we briefly outline below:

1) Analysis of Web Access characteristics using a database to store access logs and 
building a suitable data-mining tool
2) Deployment of asynchronous and synchronous collaboration tools. This would 
involve deploy, train, test and support roles. There was no significant discussion as to 
the appropriate asynchronous tools but it was expected that several could be involved. 
We discussed 3 to 4 different areas for deployment. First appeared to be CCM where 
one would link to current activities involving RIB and ARL/ASC collaboration. The 
second was internal to ARL including links to off site people -- White Sands linkage 
was also discussed. The final area was generically CFD but this broke down into two 
subareas -- grid generation related activities and the CTA related activities 
coordinated by Jay Boris. This could involve remote support of deployed CFD 
software.
3) Linkage of Scientific visualization to collaboration. This was particularly important 
due to ARL's need to give the benefits of MSRC to off-site users. Thus interesting 
was both ImmersaDesk and lower end (workstation and PC) compatible systems. 
Linkage of the internal DICE system would be an essential component here.
4) Training at a distance. This also addresses need of ARL to support off site users who 
often do not have the travel budget to attend on site courses. A lengthy discussion 
with Cheryl Bielema, John Grosh, and Ginny To identified the possibility of setting 
up a distance offering of a staged set of eventually 4 introductory courses. 
Introduction to HPCC (Rice/ARL), Introduction to Web and other Commodity 
Technologies (NPAC), Introduction to Parallel Computing (NCSA), Introduction to 
Databases and their web Linkage (NPAC). These would be offered first to one other 
site (with first of these courses) -- White Sands. John and Ginny are to visit White 
Sands in december and will refine plan which could involve enhancing linkage with 
ISDN lines or equivalent. 
There was no expectation that near tem education (as opposed to training) would be 
of interest.

Random Comments
5) We discussed fraction of time (perhaps 50%) that Derek would be available for 
InfoComm tasks such as 1)
6) We discussed interest in metacomputing
7) Renee was also possibly available as a telecomputer.

Involvement of PET  Partners
1)NPAC
2)NCSA, ARL(Derek) and NPAC
3)NCSA(SciVis component), NPAC, ARL(Kelly Kirk)
4)NCSA(Training),NPAC, and various in curricula
Note that NCSA's involvement essentially depends on resources and funding outside the 
pure InfoComm area.

Some Near Term Issues and Actions
(a) Train Derek and Kirk in tango and other NPAC technologies
(b) Generate abstracts for four courses in 4) above
(c) Refine plans and infrastructure issues associated with White Sands
(d) Get Introduction to HPCC foils to gcf to evaluate suitability for distance use
(e) gcf should talk to Jay Boris
(f) Set up CCM Collaboration plan
(g) Define possible collaboration options with deployment and training plans
(h) Study various visualization options and what was involved in linking to Tango