[saga-rg] Research Group / Working Groups

[Andre Merzky]

Hi all, 

  "the most useless part of the discussion takes up 
   90 percent of the time.  Minimum." 
   (Andres Leaden Rule)

I think the name SAGA-CORE-WG is misleading, as the strawman
does not really define a Core API.  That role, defining the
core, look and feel, and basic paradigms, would rather fit
the target of the RG.

However, during yesterdays discussion we could not come up
with a better name, really.  Just so you all have something
to laugh at, I'll repeat some suggestions below.  Well, the
point of this mail is: if you can think of a suitable group
name, please speak up!

  iSAGA       (very fashionable, for initial SAGA)
  SAGA-PRIMER (obvious)
  SSAGA       (confusing, but stands for Super simple API...)

My personal favourite for today is (cling on tight)

  SAGA-WG

Well, that might be confusing with SAGA-RG, but what the
heck - it describes what we do best I think...


Cheers, Andre.



Quoting [Tom Goodale] (Feb 04 2006):
> 
> 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



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