Collaboration SIG session

Fall 2005 Internet2 Meeting

Andrew Elble, aweits@rit.edu; Greg Monoco, greg@greatplains.net; Craig Locatis, locatis@nlm.nih.gov; Bob Gerdes, gerdes@rutgers.edu; Anil Srivastava, anil@acrossworld.com; John Yost, johny@bradley.edu; Joe Bishop, joe.bishop@manatech.com; Serge Lachapelle, serge@marratech.com; Parvati Dev, parvati@stanford.edu; Darleene Heath, darleene@ncren.net; George Brett, ghb@internet2.edu; Sanggyun Kim, sgkim@anf.ne.kr; Jonathan Tyman, tyman@internet2.edu; Andrew Howard, andrew.howard@oarnet.odu.av; Juan C. Franco, jfranco1@worldbank.org; Boyd Knosp, boyd-knosp@uiowa.edu; Gurcharan Khanna, gurcharan.khanna@rit.edu;

Started about 20 after - 7:00 too early?

Agenda:
Welcome
*We are now a SIG not BOF
Mission Review
User perspective - what are the barriers, how to reach people, what works what doesn't, avoid fixing problems - what classes of technologies that are good/bad, cultural impacts - discipline or legacy systems. - Social computing - technology practice versus community attitudes.

Common platform - eat our own dog food

Admin Items
I2
Magic Minute
-Introduction and brief description of everyone's work.

We had three informal presentations from Parvati Dev, Jonathon Tyman and John Yost. Below is a summary of these presentations (rough notes)

Parvati Dev, Stanford University * Parvati is working to develop a virtual community around anatomy. Anatomy is a discipline that fewer people (than in the past) are going into. Parvati's project seeks to address this issue using distance teaching. She is developing a BOF in digital anatomy that will promote video conferencing with application sharing. She has worked with people at Michigan and around the world in this effort.

Social problems have been her biggest road block. Issues include working out meeting times with people in different time zone (timelines?) and managing complex sessions. Also the technology can be daunting (other issues?).

Example of session complexity is a surgical demonstration which was had nodes in the operating, in a conference room and in a classroom.

Technology interest vs social interaction.

Her work includes working with Michigan (Ted Hanss) in teaching anatomy. Social issues are enormous/ Technology daunting/timelines are critical

Interested faculty in Anatomy should contact her?

Discussion (comments from SIG members):

-suggestion: - Eric Hofer's presentation has expectations and expectation management

• concept - preparation to virtual meetings and follow-up are key to nurturing a successful collaboration.
• concept - usage scenarios with users are key, even help first 10 minutes of meeting.
• Research study - people like projected image to be just a little larger than life size this is based on a study reported two years ago.
• Concept - Want technology to disappear
• Craig - work on details - the room/ the interactions. - virtual audience often like interactions better than - instructor feedback view of audience is important and seems to increase
• Concept - TV level quality video and sound will help make video conferencing more appealing to the technology generations.

*Medicine - instructional technology - develop a community around anatomy, difficulty to get faculty - people teach remotely - BOF in digital anatomy - collaboration through video conferencing with application sharing - 1 person serves as moderator and communicates around the world - social problems - Managing Complexity session - 1. Communicating- 2 yrs ago - surgery demo/serial imaging out of standard/OR- conference room - students
Technology interest vs social interaction.
Work with MI in teaching anatomy. With Ted Hanns
Social issues are enormous/ Technology daunting/timelines are critical
Anatomy interest?
-Idea - Eric Hofers presentation has expectations and expectation management

• idea - preparation to virtual meetings and follwup are key
• idea - usage scenarios with users are key, even help first 10 minutes of meeting.
• Idea - people like image to be just a little larger than life size - projected images - based on study reported two years ago - Jonathon
• Want technology to disappear
• Craig - work on details - the room/ the interactions. - virtual audience often like interactions better than - instructor feedback view of audience is important and seems to increase

Jonathon Tyman (Rough notes follow)

• I2 commons mission is to promote and facilitate remote collaboration
• Video technology h323 seems to work best, provides a gateway to SIP
• The commons has a bank of MCUs - 1 of everything (eg. Radvision, Polycomm etc...)
• The commons is now supporting some desktop technology - 2 tools, one each from Marratech and Wave3 are supported. These are multiplatform.
• The Commons also supporting Insors a commercial product that "makes the Access Grid usable".
• The commons runs servers for conference XP, Insors runs, unicast and multicast bridge a I2c and a gateway - Insors AG and H323
• H264 they have looked at
• The commons serves as a Test venue for vendors
• Jonathon's Mantra (or credo?) regarding collaboration technology- easy to use and reliable and affordable - quality not necessarily top priority.
• Jonathon feels that new collaborative technologies compete with phone - 10 cents/minute
• Training - the commons has been holding training sessions with a couple of new twists:
  o Advanced topics - training by Eric Hofer as first attempt by this - very well received.
  o Virtual training - held two sessions this summer and had 89 people for the first and 60 for the second.
• Next training scheduled during Vide conference in march
• Collaboration problem
• RTC advisory group formed at spring meeting - Jonathon is involved
• *problem with time zone issues
• *head of group not there - set up room correctly - multi camera/screen set up
• Still have bad video conferencing
• Meeting moderating is an important part of video conferencing success
• Request - The RTC advisory group is collecting case studies.
• Idea - ontology of events -
• Idea - media conditioned generation - production is important - good lighting/audio - looks like a TV program - constituents like this way - watch when you want - Research Channel - should be multi-lingual
• Marratech is available for anyone - clients are free server is what is paid for i2 commons home page and download - ditto for ConfXP
• Insors - you buy that client
• Wave3 have own pricing -
• John Yost (Rough notes follow)
  -technology does not solve all collaboration issues - brain imaging example
  -range of meetings on collaboration
  -PKI - security is important for collaboration -trusted network security
  -NIH/Educause - federated security and connection to industry
  -MS says internet has big security problem
  -emphasize pervasive computing
  -Openness
  -Virtual communities - boundaries - intellectual property issues
  -Academics need to be less academic (quote)
  -e.g. PKI meetings
  -AIMC very strongly academic maybe too academic
  -trust - involves more than technology - managerial
  -trust - means boundaries - confidence and competence
  -collaboration should be long term - continuity requirement
  -trust involves leaders - participating minds - intelligent/ideas and information
• competence/confidence/cooperation - needed for collaboration
  -Federations can be done to reduce the bureaucracy -
  -collaboration has some structure that protects what needs to be protected
  Collaboration is a major theme -PKI is important
  Biz - emphasis on trust -collaboration should build confidence based on competence

Action Notes

Monthly meetings?
5 people
Collaboration SIG requires continuity