Please comment on the analysis below that is meant to summarize my thoughts on what we have learnt so far It was requested by Mark at last events steering group call Below I view Enterprise as a particular (large important) community and so I don't differentiate it. GGF Community Challenges and Strategy ------------------------------------------- I think the CC (Community Council) has as promised successfully developed and executed a community focus for GGF14 and should probably succeed in similar way for GGF15. We have not published as promised a community participation guide or charter documents for all areas. (Industrial Applications are one where a draft exists) Let us discuss the nature of community activities and why there are difficulties in putting participation and charter documents in writing. First note that currently at least, all GGF-related community activities are associated with GGF meetings although of course communities associated with GGF do lots of things outside GGF. Communities are attracted to GGF meetings presumably partly due to the effectiveness of organization of an event at GGF meetings but other organizations can compete here. I suggest that dominant attraction of communities to GGF is the synergy between the community event and other GGF meeting activities. This synergy comes from both standards and other community activities. In particular a particular community member benefits from attending other events and individuals primarily attracted to GGF for other reasons, attend the community event and so enhance it. Given the synergy observation, it suggests that we need to think about the community from both particular functional areas as now but also from the synergy point of view. The need to have synergy implies a) The main role of area director is to to catalyze the interest of communities to have GGF related events b) The success of the events is partly connected to contacting people within given community but also in having other synergistic activities c) The attraction of a particular GGF meeting depends on its geographical area and the existence of both standards and community activities or some other synergy as explored in 4) below. 1) Thus it is doubtful if GGF events outside USA will succeed unless there is effort and people devoted to exploiting geographical synergies -- we saw this working in last Korea GGF meeting. 2) It is not going to be easy to make events successful unless they have both standards and community components. Thus partnering community with a standards-free Gridworld in 2006 seems challenging as we will miss standards people synergy. 3) It is not clear if communities can get momentum with one event per year; it is certain that they need at least one per year. 2006 with at most one event in USA will be challenging and after GGF15 we will be challenged to maintain momentum with the next USA event at least a year away. This is not to say Athens and Japan in 2006 will not succeed but rather their community events will have a regional flavor and will have significant input from local people. I discuss the challenge to maintain interest in communities with a USA bias in 2006. 4) I think it is important to experiment with a low-key regional GGF event in USA (the mid-west or equivalent such geographically focused event.) This could be community only, held in late spring 2006 (six months after Boston), and have a mix of "international" communities interested in a USA meeting then but with main drive from Grid communities in the chosen geographical region,. 5) We need to structure the community council with people able to deliver on synergies. We need either directors or advisers able to deliver on geographical synergies. Please comment Thank you! -- : : Geoffrey Fox gcf@indiana.edu FAX 8128567972 http://www.infomall.org : Phones Cell 812-219-4643 Home 8123239196 Lab 8128567977