[CCGT] RE: Community Activities at Meetings

[Walter Stewart]

I am essentially in agreement with Geoffrey's analysis.  I would also say that we need to review things after Boston to see how GGF activities and Grid World work together.

Walter 



Walter Stewart
Director Business Development SGI Canada
Global Co-ordinator SGI Grid Strategy
Directeur du développement des affaires SGI Canada
Co-ordonnateur mondial de stratégie "Grid Computing"
905-282-8997


-----Original Message-----
From: Geoffrey Fox [mailto:gcf at grids.ucs.indiana.edu] 
Sent: 16 August 2005 17:20
To: CCGT at ggf.org
Cc: Linesch, Mark; Julie Wulf-Knoerzer; Steve Crumb; Ann M. Collins; Walter Stewart
Subject: Community Activities at Meetings

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
-------------------------------------------
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!

--
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: Geoffrey Fox  gcf at indiana.edu FAX 8128567972 http://www.infomall.org
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