[sem-grd] Re: GGF14 Cultural Computing Grid panel

[David De Roure]

A brief summary of my notes from the Cultural Computing Grid panel.  
Others may wish to add all the salient points I've missed as this simply
comes from notes to myself during the panel and is therefore a somewhat
singular view!

The panel was chaired by Allison Clark (University of Illinois Urbana
Champaign) and the panelists were:

Reagan Moore, San Diego Supercomputing Center
Associate Director Data-Intensive Computing, and the person behind SRB
http://www.sdsc.edu/~moore/rmoore.html

Nosh Contractor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Department of Speech Communication, Department of Psychology, Knowledge networks
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/nosh

Stephen Beck, Louisiana State University
http://www.music.lsu.edu/faculty/beck.html
Composer and e.g. responsible for Nemeaux cluster for computational arts

David DeRoure, University of Southampton
Semantic Grid
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dder

Andre Brock, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Community Informatics

Reagan gave a demo of traversing the sites of the SRB-based WUN DataGrid
(SDSC, Bergen, Manchester, NCSA, Southampton).  Due to the speed of the
network connection this was an ongoing demo throughout the panel, handing
back to the panel in between visits ("...and now back to Reagan for the
next visit" :)  Actually this made a good point to support the panel
discussion, i.e. the issue of ease of use of the Grid infrastructure.

Nosh Contractor talked about making it easier to use the Grid by making
recommendations to users based on the trails of previous users, touching
on social networks.

Stephen, who is both user and "technician", made a number of very
pereptive points and I hope someone else noted them!  He later talked
about the recent ruling re Grokster and the significance of this.

I told the story of last summer's "E-science in the Arts and Humanities"
seminar run by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.  In discussing
the role of e-Science infrastructure (e.g. Grid) in A&H disciplines, I
had noted a substantial need for information discovery and integration
technologies - i.e. Semantic Grid requirements (see report of the seminar
on http://www.ahrcict.rdg.ac.uk/activities/e_science.pdf)

Andre Brock gave a community informatics perspective - community
informatics is about enabling communities with ICT.

I noted that much of the discussion had been about the A&H community as
*users* but that they also had much to offer the Grid community, e.g. in
terms of understanding of community informatics, or social shaping, of
confidentiality and privacy issues.

I later noted that an effective way of articulating the requirements of
researchers is to find out what *questions* they want to ask.  e.g. in the
GGF Semantic Grid charter there are example questions from e-Scientists,
and in the course of the panel there had been examples of other questions.

In general the panel identified the issues and challenges to achieving a
"cultural grid" - and there are many, but with new funding in the UK A&H
research community and other initiatives we look forward to making
progress.

Look out for HASS-RG events at future GGFs!

-- Dave

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, David De Roure wrote:

> To GGF14 attendees
> 
> The following panel at GGF14 will also be relevant to Semantic 
> Grid (if only because I'm on the panel and just might mention it ;-)
> 
>   "HASS-RG panel - WUN Cultural Computing Grid"
>   Tuesday June 28 2.30-4pm in Windsor
> 
> More details below.  Also don't forget the Semantic Grid and agents 
> session on Wednesday - please come along...
> 
>   "Semantic Grids and the Agents Community"
>   Wednesday June 29 9-9.45am in Governor's Suite
> 
> I'm here at the event till Thursday if anyone wants to touch base
> on any Semantic Grid things.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> -- Dave
> 
> The WUN Cultural Computing Grid
> 
> Tuesday, June 28
> 2:30 - 4:00
> Windsor Room
> 
> This panel will discuss the creation of a WUN Cultural Computing Grid.
> 
> With the creation of the Cultural Computing Grid, we seek to establish a
> knowledge base and technology infrastructure for on-demand-access to
> digitized cultural artifacts. This nontraditional grid would provide
> access to materials, support tools for individuals and communities from
> populations who wish to access what may be a rich archive of heritage and
> cultural materials available in various locations throughout the world .
> but which for reasons of geography and/or access are not easily obtained.
> The discussion will include the technical as well as the sociological
> elements (social motivation and the challenges for developing a better
> social network, the need for education, outreach and training) involved in
> the creation of the WUN Cultural Computing Grid.
> 
> Our Objectives are:
> 
> . To prototype user-defined interfaces to the data-grid that are highly
>   flexible and simple to use for depositing, accessing and analyzing
>   digital artifacts.
> 
> . To document the process, design, implementation and communications of
>   the team producing the infrastructure and content and the resulting
>   knowledge base for presentation in scholarly journals, personal
>   journals, technology manuals, web blogs and books.
> 
> Participants:
> 
> Allison Clark, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
> Regan Moore, San Diego Supercomputing Center
> Nosh Contractor, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
> Kevin Franklin, Humanities Research Institute
> David DeRoure, University of Southampton
> Andre Brock, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> 
> Panel Organized by HASS-RG
> Calendar: Windsor
> Details:
> The Humanities, Arts and Social Science Research Group
> Session Leads: Allison Clark, PhD and Kevin Franklin, EdD
> 
>