[HASS-RG] OGF20 follow-up, web 2.0 and the social grid

[Alexander Voss]

Dear all,

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch since OGF20 but was busy preparing a 
workshop on virtual research environments (aka. cyberenvironments, 
science gateways, collaboratories, etc.) and collaborative work 
environments. The presentations from this workshop are now online at 
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/esi/contribution.cfm?Title=768 and I would 
like to draw your attention to the keynote by Charles Severance of the 
Sakai Foundation in particular.

In my opinion, his talk has made an excellent contribution to our 
thinking about what web 2.0 might give us - and what else we might want 
to have!  I have started using his notion of "functionality mashup" to 
describe the stuff that web 2.0 does not currently give us, namely the 
easy integration of the functionality _we_ need into _our_ work 
environments, just where we need them. Web 2.0 is great for mashing up 
content that is generally available but it does not allow you, to use 
Chuck's example, to see _your_ files on _your_ file server within _your_ 
favourite collaboration environment. This leads to people uploading far 
too many files to far too many different systems far too often and 
getting really annoyed with this (at least I do...) In my opinion, this 
is where the Grid world has something to offer and the "social grid" as 
envisaged by Tony Hey would probably be a nice thing to have but my 
prediction is that it cannot be "built" but needs to be carefully 
fostered to come about eventually.

Anyway, I hope we can continue these discussions. I am sure there are 
important overlaps and synergies to be found between e-A&S and e-Social 
Science and I will see that I contribute my bit to the discussion.

Best wishes,

Alex

-- 
Alexander Voss, Research Associate
National Centre for e-Social Science
University of Manchester
Phone: +44 161 275 1384
Phone @ eSI: +44 131 651 4041
Email: alex.voss at ncess.ac.uk
Homepage: http://www.alexandervoss.de