| Project Description: |
[[[ This proposal should be considered as a placeholder, or a very
rough draft which will be refined in conjunction with the
Collaboration Whitepaper according to the following basic ground
rules:
a) We will participate in establishing 2 testbeds
1) Access Grid or equivalent High End
2) Real Networks or equivalent desktop
b) We have a general approach "Collaborative Portals" which is
particularly close to Gateway but builds on TangoInteractive
lessons. We want to understand what tools to integrate into this as we
and all other extensive projects we are aware have found some
reluctance to adopt collaborative tools.
c) We have some high level agreed goals: enable distance working
together on: Administrative requirements for Staff meetings, Standing
Committees, Focused meetings such as for Finance, Personnel,
Operations, Training, etc. and Technical requirements: Computational
requirements, Visualization requirements, Peer collaborations, etc.
d) We don't know how to implement these desires -- what type of
testbed, what type of tools, synchronous or asynchronous. So we need
a set of well defined experiments on test beds.
e) Integration of databases into collaborative portals figures
prominently in Administrative Collaboration. Also relevant to
other CTAs
f) Technical collaboration ought to include Collaborative visualization
using DICE
]]]
Advances in networking and computing have in recent years opened up
new possibilities for computer-based collaboration over long
distances. The PET program has worked extensively demonstrate the use
of synchronous collaboration frameworks (specifically Tango
Interactive) in distance education and training activities. In this
highly structured environment, which provides a comfortable analogy to
the traditional face-to-face lecture experience, deployment and use of
computer-based collaboration tools has been quite successful.
At the other end of the spectrum is the concept of general technical
collaboration. In this case, the environment has very little
structure -- does the collaboration take place dekstop-to-desktop or
in special rooms (i.e. specially equipped conference rooms)? Which
collaboration tools are useful and even how they might be used depends
strongly on the people and the project; it is easy to envision many
"specialty" tools being useful depending on the scientific domain or
other aspects of the work. In addition, while it is not hard to find
computer-based equivalents for most of the tools used in face-to-face
technical collaboration, users often face problems related to
installation, learning curves, and fundamental limitations in
comparison to the real-world tools they're accustomed to. (It is rare
to find a conference room that is not equipped with a whiteboard and
people unfamiliar with its use; while in comparision imagine everyone
in the group might have to download and install a computer whiteboard
package, figure out how to use its cryptic interface, and then try to
draw something using the clumsy computer mouse.)
In this project, we attempt to look at general technical collaboration
in a way that will directly address the obstacles cited above. We
will deploy a testbed environment, which will provide a focused set of
"core" tools, which will be chosen to provide as much similarity to
familiar real-world tools as possible. The tools will be presented as
individual components which can be accepted or rejected by users
separately, rather than the take-it-or-leave-it approach when
monolithic collaboration frameworks are used. This also facilitates
taking advantage of the rapid pace of advance of commercial tools in
this area.
To provide a certain amount of structure to the collaboration, we
recommend building the testbed around the Access Grid nodes which have
been discussed for ARL and Adelphi and will also be available at FSU
and NCSA, for example. These sites provide equipment suitable for
high-quality audio/video conferencing, and sufficient display and
computer capability to handle most collaboration tools. Working at
the AG locations also limits the number and variety of computer
systems on which which have to be installed and supported. We will
also make limited use of more general desktop-to-desktop environments,
focusing primarily on ARL-FSU and ARL-ASC collaborative interactions.
Experiments in collaboration will be carried out using a mixture of
computer-based and traditional techniques. We will focus our
attention on existing collaborations which already work effectively in
a distributed fashion in order to better understand how computer-based
tools can effectively be incorporated into their environment and which
tools and features are or are not important. We plan to work
primarily with the distributed Gateway project, involving ARL, ASC,
FSU, NCSA, and OSC. The core of this group (ASC, FSU, OSC) has
already been working together on this project for more than a year.
Technical collaboration, as with any other, can be divided into
synchronous and asynchronous interactions. In a separate
"administrative collaboration" proposal, we emphasize asynchronous
tools which, in large part, can also be used for technical
collaboration. For example, many groups make use of mailing lists to
communicate quickly and easily; a searchable mailing list archive can
be a convenient tool to capture these exchanges and make them easier
to refer to in the future. A document repository can be used to
collect and share software documentation, presentations, reports, and
other documents among the group. Because these types of tools, which
will be piloted in the administrative collaboration proposal, will be
easily deployable to the technical collaboration community, this
project will focus primarily on synchronous collaboration tools (many
of which are also relevant to "administrative" events like meetings
and briefings).
o Audio/video conferencing is an important tools. The Access Grid
equipment provides an excellent environment for high-quality a/v
conferencing. Various commercial tools for a/v conferencing will be
tracked and tested as part of our I/C Core Support effort, and we
expect to deploy tools for this testbed (i.e. those from
RealNetworks) based on the results of those investigations.
o A shared web browser is, these days, such a basic tool for sharing
web-based documents and making technical presentations that it has
been included explicitly both in this project and in administrative
computing.
o A whiteboard is an important general tool for technical discussions
and brainstorming. Strictly computer-based whiteboard tools are
available which may be used effectively in conjunction with tablets
now available in various sizes as an alternative to the mouse, which
is quite clumsy for drawing. In addition, real whiteboards can be
interfaced to computers, which can then capture and transmit the
whiteboard contents. Many such whiteboards are rather expensive
(thousands of dollars), however InFocus's Mimo (www.mimio.com) is a
small, inexpensive ($500) and portable attachment for any existing
whiteboard that allows it to capture whiteboard contents on a
computer. Because the real whiteboard is so simple to use, the
computer equivalent must also be as easy and as similar as possible.
For this reasons, we plan to evaluate both software whiteboards
together with tablet input devices, and the Mimio product in order
to understand user preferences.
o Display sharing systems such as NetMeeting, VNC, and others provide
a general means to share a wide range of other tools, documents,
etc. We will deploy and evaluate selected tools in this area.
Though we are primarily talking these tools as standalone components
at present, it is also important to look forward to how they would be
integrated into an information or computing portal to provide
collaborative capablilities there. In this context, we will use these
tools to refine the definitions of "portalML" and "resourceML" which
are being developed as part of Yr 5 portal efforts sponsored by ERDC
and ASC MSRC PET programs. PortalML is used to define and customize
the user's interface to a portal, while resourceML is used to define
the back-end resources which are accessible via the portal. This work
will help set the stage for future testbed deployment of collaboration
tools integrated into information or computational portals as a
natural evolution and merger of concepts from collaboration and portal
technology.
The idea of computing portals is closely related to one further
important element of general technical collaboration: shared
visualization tools. These tools, which may be general or specialized
to specific domains or problems, can be extremely useful when
collaborators need to analyze or discuss data in a graphical form.
While they can be thought of as an extension of the "shared display"
capabilities mentioned above, visualization tools are often far more
complex and resource-intensive than a tool like VNC. Though
collaborative visualization tools are, in and of themselves, outside
the scope of this proposal, we plan to work with the SV team in order
to incorporate shared visualization tools and technologies into our
technical collaboration testbed. Note that the focus on using Access
Grid nodes will also provide a good environment for visualization
tools.
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| Deliverables: |
* Technical collaboration testbed utilizing Access Grid nodes at ARL,
Adelphi, FSU and other sites. Providing audio/video conferencing,
shared web broswer, whiteboard, and shared display capabilities.
Other capabilities, such as shared visualization will be
incorporated as appropriate.
* Appropriate training and support for participants in collaboration
experiments, to be provided jointly by FSU staff and the I/C on-site
lead.
* A series of experiments, developed jointly with PET management,
designed to "exercise" various aspects of the testbed and generate
user feedback.
* A technical report analyzing the experience with the testbed tools
and making recommendations with respect to the tools themselves,
more general deployment, and drawing general conclusions with
respect to computer-based technical collaboration in the HPCMP.
* A technical report on "collaborative portals"
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