Hi- The purpose of the workshop is to bring together folks who are trying to bring Grid capabilities to a particular science community (atmospheric scientists, chemists, bioinformatics folks, etc.), and who are looking to use web services and/or web portals to do so. I am seeing these communities moving out ahead of GGF or the "grid" experts or "portal" experts. This is creating a danger that those of us running Grids or Grid resources will have a chaotic situation where our key commmunities will each want to set up an ad-hoc interaction mode with us to serve their communities. One will want to use group accounts and another will want to install a custom daemon on our machines. Another will want to use web services and another will want .NET. The draft I circulated was a first cut at understanding what 10 communities are trying to build, and all ten want to access Grid resources in TeraGrid. Some are also building their own Grids, and all would like to also access Grid resources in the UK or Japan. The idea of this workshop is to bring these consumers together with one another and with producers to see if there are some things we might agree on that can be implemented to nudge them toward some common solutions. Now, some TeraGrid folks have made some headway in looking at this and I would like to broaden that discussion to others who are doing similar things (or should be). To this end I asked Tony Hey last week to put me in touch with the right person or persons from the UK, and would like similar contacts from Japan (Satoshi please suggest) and elsewhere. I don't see this as a TeraGrid-centric activity - we don't need GGF to do that. We need GGF to help us broaden the effort by helping us reach other communities. So I would expect to do a call for participation not to the producer community (GCE-RG, GGF typical producer population, portal experts), though it would be good for them to participate, but to the consumer community. I.e. those who don't really care that much about standards or web services or grid technology other than that they want to use them to serve their customers doing science. The draft I circulated would be used to structure the workshop, get input from more consumer groups, get producer groups to talk about how they are addressing these issues, and then update the document as a GGF informational document. CeC At 2:21 AM +0900 4/10/05, Satoshi Matsuoka wrote:
Charlie, Dennis,
I agree on its viability, but still Malcolm's concern that it be a TeraGrid-only centric event will have to be considered. Here is a (form) letter, and with proper fulfillment of the workshop template and widespread solicitation to key portal groups in EU as well as AP, hopefully the concern will be addressed.
(form letter is attached below) Satoshi
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On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:52:37 -0500 Charlie Catlett <catlett@mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
catlett> Friends- catlett> Since the proposal I sent regarding this workshop mentioned a group catlett> in TeraGrid that was aiming to have a document drafted in March I catlett> wanted to send it to you. It's very preliminary, but it shows that catlett> the group is serious and already getting work done. I expect an catlett> iteration on this document within a few weeks since it was discussed catlett> in great detail during several sessions of the TeraGrid all-hands catlett> meeting earlier this week. I think this workshop will be very catlett> important to the community. My hope is that it will bring in some of catlett> the less-involved sectors of the community including people who are: catlett> catlett> - building portals for scientific communities catlett> - implementing web services on resources in operational grids catlett> - developing operational policies and mechanisms for varying degrees catlett> of authorization (from full access shell accounts to restricted catlett> service invocations) based on varying degrees of authentication (from catlett> highly trusted authentication to anonymous access) catlett> - trying to make multiple grids work together, etc. catlett> catlett> CeC
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Charlie, Dennis,
Thanks for yoru workshop proposal for the workshop proposal "Science Gateways Portals Workshop".
I am sending this email as the current GROC co-chair and also on behalf of the newly proposed community council.
As a part of transitional activity of GGF governance to strengthen the community activities, the GFSG and the proposed community council therein will be taking active responsibility in workshop oversight. In the light of this we have decided to provide active dialogs to the workshop organizers to help strengthen the organizational process as well as its exterior outreach.
Please re-distribute this email to other organizers as well as anybody else involved in your workshop organization.
Since time is short till GGF14, I am accelerating the process by sending you comment(s) already made. As you see, although you have solid backings, and the workshop is accepted in principle, nevertheless as you see the comments below indicate that there is room for improvement in the proposal. I hope you could make the initial revisions by reflect the comments as you see fit, and send to the (proposed) community council the revised version in about a week's time (around April 15th). In the meantime as additional comments come along, which will be forwarded to you if deemed helpful in the improvement, and if you make improvements as well, please let us know where you would like to do so.
Also please note that the primary intention for this is that we will want to allow some of the workshop to be a academically viable and recognizable activity from not only within the Grid community but from other CS communities. Thus, we would like to push on external communication of the workshop, both in terms of the content as well as the viability of its organizational manners. It is NOT intended to increase bureacratic stronghold of GFSG and the community council therein over the research groups.
To quote one community council member: "I am passionate about the high value of good workshops: they stimulate, they inform, they build communities, they cross-fertilise and they recognise the need for new lines of work. Without workshops I think GGF would drift towards narrow technical nit-picking standards. The value of workshops is much diminished if the only effects are on those at the workshop. Hence the demand for publication and publicity."
I hope the new (proposed) community council can fruitfully work with the workshop organizers to fulfill such desires, to have you host a high-quality and a productive workshop. Looking forward to the revised proposal as well as the workshop itself. Thanks.
Best Regards, Satoshi Matsuoka
Comment 1: === The Science Portals workshop looks a good topic, and we can trust Dennis and Charlie will run an excellent workshop. However, we need to take care that it doesn't become TeraGrid centred or US centred. We should see others, from Asian grids and European grids engaged in planning / presenting IMHO. I can find some, but the recent week on portals at eSI led by Jason Navotny has a good list of names (http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/esi/contribution.cfm?Title=549), particularly UK ones.
I would also suggest Roberto Barbera from Catania, bringing experience on EGEE's use of the GENIUS portal Roberto Barbera <roberto.barbera@ct.infn.it> https://genius.ct.infn.it/. We have used it extensively for traiining and (with GILDA) for new user community induction.
What is the planned model of communication? What should it not clash with? ...
I vote for accept, but push on broadening, getting questions answered and publication plan. ===
Comment 2 (general): === I think we might encourage more substantial publication such as journal special issues so as to give greater credit to (academic) participants However in general I think we should let each workshop make its choice as "external outreach, publication and publicity" which should exist in some fashion
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Comment 3: (Satoshi) === There are several groups in AP working on "Science Gateway" Portals, including those in Japan and Korea, and those should be contacted. For example, AIST-GTRC has a PSE Builder effort, and NAREGI's WP3/6 are working on high-level portals interface. Korea's K* Grid has several efforts in those regard.
Perhaps the best method is to do a call-out throught pragma, with help from Peter Artzburger @ San Diego. By all means it is important to make the intentions clear so that not all the Grid portals on earth will try to participate and ask for a time slot.
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