[gce-rg] GGF GCE-RG Reactivating

[Mary Thomas]

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Dear Portal Community, GCE-RG Members,  future members:

The GCE-RG is waking up from a long and comfortable snooze. Recall that 
when last we met, we had a workshop in Japan, where we determined that 
Web Services and Portals bases on Portlet technologies were very 
exciting directions to investigate. Since then, the GCE-RG has taken a 
hiatus and many of you have been off doing some very interesting and 
productive work.

As a result, we think that there are several very good reasons for the 
GCE-RG to become active again:  there have been  many advances in grid 
and web services; shell and portal technologies and supporting 
frameworks have new standards; and a growing number of user communities 
are now hosting GCE's. Clearly, now is  a very good time to bring our 
developer and user communitites together, exchange ideas, and 
investigate new directions.

Our esteemed GGF Area Directors (Craig Lee and Satoshi Matsuoka) have 
obtained official approval from the GGF for the GCE-RG to become 
reactivated. We will begin by reviewing and renewing our charter. We 
will meet at the next GGF meeting (Summer, Chicago).

We would like to propose the following activities at the next GGF (this 
Summer). Note, this is only a preliminary agenda and we would like to 
hear about other ideas and activities you would like to see happen 
within the GCE-RG. We are especially interested in activities that will 
lead to spin-off Working Groups so that we can better support the 
mission of the GGF in setting standards.

Proposed Agenda:
   - solicit input/interest from attendees, and emails beforehand if 
possible
   - discuss new directions for GGF (portal frameworks, shells, other)
   - if there is community consensus, begin update of charter and web site
        -- seeking volunteers to spearhead this effort
   - new activities:
       - Portlets WG BOF (M. Pierce, others TBD)
       - upate/revisit GCE draft doc on portal architectures (begun at 
GGF in Japan, 2002).
       - promote new community portal sharing wiki (opengridportals.org)
        - Gather input/volunteers/make plans for an SC05 GCE-Portals 
workshop (not a GGF event though). 
              -- This activity is based on input from attendees at the 
SC04 Portals BOF
              -- Papers will be published in C&C:P&E publication with 
overview article to contribute to GGF.
              -- will be posting email soon seeking voluteers to server 
on program committiees/etc.

Please let us know your thoughts on what you would like to see emerge 
from new GCE-RG activites.

Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you -
Mary, Dennis and Geoffrey

===============================================================
Mary Thomas              Department of Computer Science
mthomas at rohan.sdsu.edu   San Diego State University
(619) 594-1694 (office)  San Diego, CA 92182-7720
(619) 594-6746 (fax)     http://rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/mthomas
Adv. Comp. Env. Lab      http://acel.sdsu.edu