[saga-rg] Research Group / Working Groups

[Shantenu Jha]

To: Tom Goodale <goodale at cct.lsu.edu>, saga-rg at ggf.org
From: Craig Lee <craig at rush.aero.org>
Subject: Re: [saga-rg] Research Group / Working Groups
Cc: mark.linesch at hp.com, David.Snelling at uk.fujitsu.com

All,

I apologize for not making today's telecon but I was very happily trying
to get some real work done by not talking on the telephone or responding
to email (until now ;-).

I think the proposed decision here is the best approach!

I do, however, want to give my 2 cents on how I think things should work
out in reality.  (Steven and Dieter: Are you listening? ;-)

The umbrella RG is a strategic move for all of GGF (not just for SAGA or
the GFSG debating society!)  The ability to coordinate the look-and-feel
of grid APIs will be, imho, quite beneficial.

Given the reality of the available cycles, however, the core SAGA team
should get their bit flipped so they can charge full-speed into the WG
work.

The RG can be relatively inactive and just kept "on the books" as we (the
GFSG and SAGA team) "socialize" the idea of coordinating APIs across GGF
with other WGs.  Of course, by "socializing" the idea I mean getting
people to understand its importance and become part of a self-sustaining
critical mass to do the work (like the SAGA team has now).

This should definitely be a discussion topic for the Town Hall meeting.

My best regards to all,

--Craig


At 04:27 PM 2/3/2006, Tom Goodale wrote:
>Hi,
>
>We discussed the research group/working group structure on today's call, 
>present were myself, Andre, Shantenu, Thilo, Pascal and Hartmut.
>
>The consensus was to go down the umbrella research group with spawned 
>working group road.
>
>To be concrete:
>
>We propose to split the current RG in two:
>
>SAGA-RG:
>
>    This research group will be responsible for deciding look and feel of
>    the API, identifying new SAGA subsystems which we should/might want to
>    have APIs for, spawning working groups to look into them (e.g. after a
>    design team has come up with a straw-man), and coordinating the
>    resulting working groups.  It could look into issues with OGSA
>    alignment, or work with OGSA to spawn a group to look into common
>    issues.
>
>    This group will inherit the current charter, but remove the API document
>    deliverables and add some text describing the new scope, the process for
>    spawning working groups, and the relationship between the RG and the
>    groups.
>
>Proposed chairs:  Tom Goodale, Shantenu Jha, Thilo Kielmann
>
>SAGA-CORE-WG
>
>    This group will concentrate on producing an API document from the
>    current strawman.  It will inherit the current charter, but removing the
>    use case and requirements document deliverables.  The charter will be
>    refined to specify precisely the areas covered by the strawman as the
>    scope of the WG, and will define how it relates to the RG.  The timeline
>    for producing the API documents will be unchanged.
>
>Proposed chairs:  Tom Goodale, Andre Merzky
>
>Note that the chairs proposed above are just suggestions, and will need to 
>be ratified by the group.  If anyone else would like to become a chair, or 
>if anyone has an issue with the proposed chairs, please don't hesitate to 
>speak.
>
>This reorganisation will hopefully produce a clear delineation of the 
>roles of the research group and the working group, and provide a mechanism 
>for us to spawn more working groups to look at other subsystems such as 
>GridCPR and GridRPC, or start SAGA activities within such groups if that 
>would be appropriate.  Creating new WGs in this way would, we hope, make 
>it easier for people to engage in the process of defining new APIs, and 
>provide a much clearer process for the generation of these APIs.
>
>We do have some worries, though, which we need to discuss before 
>finalising on this route:
>
>1) Will the additional admin overhead be worth the gain ?
>
>    The feeling on the call was that this approach has potential to get more
>    people involved, and worst case, leaves us in the current situation with
>    an active WG and an inactive RG.
>
>2) Will this approach really help us to engage and attract new people ?
>
>    We are hoping that the ability to spawn small, tightly-focussed
>    groups will help make it easier to attract people and focus them on
>    the API development.
>
>We are planning to have another conference call next Wednesday at 1400 GMT 
>(same time as today's call), to continue discussion of this, and on 
>Thursday wish to send the decision of the group to the GFSG so that they 
>may discuss it before GGF.
>
>I know this is a short time-frame, but we need to finalise this issue 
>soon, and comments from the wider group are essential.  Please speak up 
>one way or another in the next few days as to whether we should go forward 
>with this plan, or ask the GFSG to just 'flip-the-bit' as per the original 
>discussions. Any other comments or suggestions would be great.
>
>Even a response such as 'no, just flip the bit', or 'go for it' would be 
>helpful.
>
>We have assurance from the ADs that whichever way we decide to go, the 
>transition will be quick and relatively painless.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Tom