[CCGT] Community Activities at Meetings

[Geoffrey Fox]

Please comment on the analysis below that is meant
to summarize my thoughts on what we have learnt so far
It was requested by Mark at last events steering group call
Below I view Enterprise as a particular (large important)
community and so I don't differentiate it.

GGF Community Challenges and Strategy
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I think the CC (Community Council) has as promised successfully
developed and executed a community focus for GGF14
and should probably succeed in similar way for GGF15.
We have not published as promised a community participation
guide or charter documents for all areas. (Industrial
Applications are one where a draft exists)

Let us discuss the nature of community activities and why
there are difficulties in putting participation and
charter documents in writing. First note that currently
at least, all GGF-related community activities are
associated with GGF meetings although of course
communities associated with GGF do lots of things outside
GGF.

Communities are attracted to GGF meetings presumably
partly due to the effectiveness of organization of an
event at GGF meetings but other organizations can compete
here. I suggest that dominant attraction of communities
to GGF is the synergy between the community event and
other GGF meeting activities. This synergy comes from both
standards and other community activities. In particular a
particular community member benefits from attending other events and
individuals primarily attracted to GGF for other reasons,
attend the community event and so enhance it.

Given the synergy observation, it suggests that we need
to think about the community from both particular
functional areas as now but also from the synergy point
of view. The need to have synergy implies
a) The main role of area director is to to catalyze the
interest of communities to have GGF related events
b) The success of the events is partly connected to
contacting people within given community but also in
having other synergistic activities
c) The attraction of a particular GGF meeting depends on
its geographical area and the existence of both standards
and community activities or some other synergy as
explored in 4) below.
    1) Thus it is doubtful if GGF events outside USA
    will succeed unless there is effort and people
    devoted to exploiting geographical synergies --
    we saw this working in last Korea GGF meeting.
    2) It is not going to be easy to make events
    successful unless they have both standards and
    community components. Thus partnering community
    with a standards-free Gridworld in 2006 seems
    challenging as we will miss standards people
    synergy.
    3) It is not clear if communities can get
    momentum with one event per year; it is certain
    that they need at least one per year. 2006 with
    at most one event in USA will be challenging and
    after GGF15 we will be challenged to maintain
    momentum with the next USA event at least a
    year away. This is not to say Athens and Japan in
    2006 will not succeed but rather their community
    events will have a regional flavor and will have
    significant input from local people. I discuss the
    challenge to maintain interest in communities
    with a USA bias in 2006.
    4) I think it is important to experiment with a
    low-key regional GGF event in USA (the mid-west
    or equivalent such geographically focused event.)
    This could be community only, held in late spring
    2006 (six months after Boston), and have a mix of "international"
    communities interested in a USA meeting then but
    with main drive from Grid communities in the
    chosen geographical region,.
    5) We need to structure the community council with
    people able to deliver on synergies. We need either
    directors or advisers able to deliver on geographical
    synergies.

Please comment
Thank you!

-- 
:
: Geoffrey Fox  gcf at indiana.edu FAX 8128567972 http://www.infomall.org
: Phones Cell 812-219-4643  Home 8123239196 Lab 8128567977