[CCGT] On your GGF14 workshop application

Fri Apr 8 00:51:50 CDT 2005

Thilo,

Thanks for yoru workshop proposal for the workshop proposal 
"Grid Applications: from Early Adopters to Mainstream Users". 

I am sending this email as the current GROC co-chair and also on behalf
of the newly proposed community council.

As a part of transitional activity of GGF governance to strengthen the
community activities, the GFSG and the proposed community council
therein will be taking active responsibility in workshop oversight. In
the light of this we have decided to provide active dialogs to the
workshop organizers to help strengthen the organizational process as
well as its exterior outreach.

Please re-distribute this email to other organizers as well as anybody
else involved in your workshop organization. 

Since time is short till GGF14, I am accelerating the process by sending
you comment(s) already made. As you see, although you have solid
backings, and the workshop is accepted in principle, nevertheless as you
see the comments below indicate that there is room for improvement in
the proposal. I hope you could make the initial revisions by reflect the
comments as you see fit, and send to the (proposed) community council
the revised version in about a week's time (around April 15th). In the
meantime as additional comments come along, which will be forwarded to
you if deemed helpful in the improvement, and if you make improvements
as well, please let us know where you would like to do so.

Also please note that the primary intention for this is that we will
want to allow some of the workshop to be a
academically viable and recognizable activity from not only within the
Grid community but from other CS communities. Thus, we would like
to push on external communication of the workshop, both in terms of
the content as well as the viability of its organizational manners. It
is NOT intended to increase bureacratic stronghold of GFSG and the
community council therein over the research groups.

To quote one community council member: "I am passionate about the high
value of good workshops: they stimulate, they inform, they build
communities, they cross-fertilise and they recognise the need for new
lines of work.  Without workshops I think GGF would drift towards narrow
technical nit-picking standards. The value of workshops is much
diminished if the only effects are on those at the workshop.  Hence the
demand for publication and publicity."

I hope the new (proposed) community council can fruitfully work with the
workshop organizers to fulfill such desires, to have you host a high-quality
and a productive workshop. Looking forward to the
revised proposal as well as the workshop itself. Thanks.

					Best Regards,
					Satoshi Matsuoka

Comment 1:
===
The APPS-WG has run excellent workshops at past GGF.  (However, in
comparison) this one does not
seem to be clearly described - it has a reasonable planned content I
think, but it isn't easy to read and understand - and the breadth of its
organiser / acceptance panel is not yet defined.  I would back them on
their track record, but push them to edit and update the proposal.
===

Comment 2:
===
The report from the last workshop held at GGF12, GGF13 etc. should be in
the works. At least there should be some "evidence" that such are being
worked upon.
===

Comment 3 (general):
===
I think we might encourage more substantial publication such as journal
special issues so as to give greater credit to (academic) participants
However in general I think we should let each workshop make its choice as
"external outreach, publication and publicity" which should exist in
some fashion

===
Comment 4:
While the exact details of this
workshop proposal may not be complete, e.g., the candidates
for a program committee, the concept and goals for the
workshop are IMHO rather clear.  Certainly in Thilo's case,
a long, written proposal with the 'i's dotted and 't's crossed
is less critical since he has an absolutely solid track record
for organizing GGF workshops.

Nonetheless, we could emphasize some issues for the future
(but not necessarily just for this proposal):

1) Try to get the workshops organized as early as possible,
that is to say, get a draft or partial program committee put
together prior to making the proposal.

2) Maximize external visibility.  Besides just the GGF-Info doc,
I'm sure that Thilo would be very receptive to the suggestion
of trying to organize a journal special issue from the workshop.
===

Comment 5: (Satoshi)

Balancing the comments above with the rather short time available to
organize workshops for GGF14, Thilo should not be felt pressured to make
full journal publications for this workshop (of course if there is that
would be great). What we should also do is to make sure that, as
organization of the workshop gets more solidified (and probably rather
quickly), make sure that the GGF office and Thilo sync with each other frequently
so that anything about the workshop presense that has external
visibility (external calls, programs, publication plans etc.) will be
updated very quickly as refinements occur.

---------

A)     Workshop Title

Grid Applications: from Early Adopters to Mainstream Users

We are intending a type two (refereed workshop)

B)     Proposed workshop organizer names and affiliations (possibly incl. review committee for type 2). Be sure to identify yourself if you are a chair of an existing RG/WG.

Thilo Kielmann, Vrije Universiteit, Co-Chair APPS-RG
Thomas Hinke, NASA AMES, Co-Chair APPS-RG
Laura McGinnis, PSC, Co-chair PGM-RG (to become PGS-RG)
David Wallom, Bristol Univ, designated Co-chair PGS-RG

Full reviewing committee to be announced soon.

C)     RG/WG that will be involved (including potential RG/WGs as well as RG/WGs up for approval). If you are proposing a workshop without being a full RG, please provide a separate RG submission info, including candidate RG name, charter, area, chairs, BOF descriptions, etc.

APPS-RG
PGS-RG (currently PGM-RG)

D)     Scope and Content (a paragraph or two of the workshop description to be put on the program.

In this workshop, we aim at experience with bridging the gap between
early adopters of grids and the more mainstream use of grid technology.
Currently, for the most part grids are on the early adopter side of the
gap, asking for the move to the more mainstream users.
Here, applications are the key. We are seeking experience from early
adoptors who would like to become mainstream users, from mainstream
users who would like to use grids, from those who already do, and from
middleware developers and system operators in charge of
providing grid working environments to user communities.

We are seeking contributions on the following topics:
- user experience with early-adoptor and/or mainstream grid applications
- management approaches for production-quality grid environments
- techniques for robust (fault tolerant) grid applications and middleware
- software tools for automatic testing and signaling of error conditions

Our focus is on hands-on experience with existing grid environments,
focusing on bridging the gap between early adoption and production use.

E)      Potential speakers for type one (invited( and possibly two workshops. Any additional info are welcome including the title of the talk, their abstract, etc. In fact the proposed program may be put here.

Potential speakers come from major grid projects, from grid user
communities, and from grid service operators.
We seek to enrich the program by an opening keynote presentation and a
final panel discussion.
A candidate for  the keynote could be Steven Newhouse from OMII,
talking about his user survey among UK E-science users.

F)      Past History of hosting a similar workshop inside or outside GGF.

Prior to GGF5 in Glasgow:
NeSC Workshop on Applications and Testbeds on the Grid
  organized by APPS-RG and GUS-RG (just prior to GGF5)

At GGF7 in Tokyo: Applications workshop:
What can be achieved with today's Grid technology (and what cannot)?
  organized by APPS-RG

At GGF8 in Seattle:
Workshop on Grid Applications and Programming Tools
  organized by APPS-RG and UPDT-RG
Workshop on Tools For Grid Management
  organized by PGM-RG

At GGF10 in Berlin:
Workshop on Case Studies on Grid Applications
  organized by APPS-RG, UPDT-RG, GUS-RG, and PGM-RG

At GGF11 in Honolulu:
Semantic Grid Applications Workshop
  organized by APPS-RG and SEM-GRD
Management of Grid Services in Production Grids
  organized by PGM-RG

At GGF12 in Brussels:
Workshop on Grid Application Programming Interfaces
  organized by APPS-RG with DRMAA-WG, GridRPC-WG, SAGA-RG

At GGF13 in Soul:
The Usable Grid
  organized by APPS-RG

G)     Duration of workshop (half day (2-3 slots incl. Breaks) or whole day (4-5 slots)

whole day 

H)     Estimated # of participants (if possible)

50-70

I)        Publication Plans --- 
please indicate if you have plan to publish the workshop result with a
certain publisher. If left out we will assume that the workshop product
will be a GGF Informational Document.

We plan to publish a proceedings volume in form of a 
GGF Informational Document.

--------------------- Original Message Ends --------------------

Satoshi Matsuoka,  Professor
Global Scientific Information and Computing Center 
 & Dept. of Mathematical and Computing Sciences
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Address: 2-12-1 Oo-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552 Japan
Tel&fax: +81-3-5734-3876   E-mail: matsu at acm.org, matsu at is.titech.ac.jp