April’s Contributions on Bright Hub

In April, I contributed two articles to the Web Development channel over on Bright Hub:

• Introducing The Aptana Cloud
• HTML vs. XHTML: The Five Key Takeaways

ORION/CANARIE National Summit

Just in case you haven’t heard:

… join us for an exciting national summit on innovation and technology, hosted by ORION and CANARIE, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Nov. 3 and 4, 2008.

“Powering Innovation – a National Summit” brings over 55 keynotes, speakers and panelist from across Canada and the US, including best-selling author of Innovation Nation, Dr. John Kao; President/CEO of Intenet2 Dr. Doug Van Houweling; chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley Dr. Robert J. Birgeneau; advanced visualization guru Dr. Chaomei Chen of Philadelphia’s Drexel University; and many more. The President of the Ontario College of Art & Design’s Sara Diamond chairs “A Boom with View”, a session on visualization technologies. Dr. Gail Anderson presents on forensic science research. Other speakers include the host of CBC Radio’s Spark Nora Young; Delvinia Interactive’s Adam Froman and the President and CEO of Zerofootprint, Ron Dembo.

This is an excellent opportunity to meet and network with up to 250 researchers, scientists, educators, and technologists from across Ontario and Canada and the international community. Attend sessions on the very latest on e-science; network-enabled platforms, cloud computing, the greening of IT; applications in the “cloud”; innovative visualization technologies; teaching and learning in a web 2.0 universe and more. Don’t miss exhibitors and showcases from holographic 3D imaging, to IP-based television platforms, to advanced networking.

For more information, visit http://www.orioncanariesummit.ca.

Cyberinfrastructure: Worth the Slog?

If what I’ve been reading over the past few days has any validity to it at all, there will continue to be increasing interest in cyberinfrastructure (CI). Moreover, this interest will come from an increasingly broader demographic.

At this point, you might be asking yourself what, exactly, is cyberinfrastructure. The Atkins Report defines CI this way:

The term infrastructure has been used since the 1920s to refer collectively to the roads, power grids, telephone systems, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy to function. … The newer term cyberinfrastructure refers to infrastructure based upon distributed computer, information, and communication technology. If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy. [p. 5]

[Cyberinfrastructure] can serve individuals, teams and organizations in ways that revolutionize what they can do, how they do it, and who participates. [p. 17]

If this definition leaves you wanting, don’t feel too bad, as anyone whom I’ve ever spoken to on the topic feels the same way. What doesn’t help is that the Atkins Report, and others I’ve referred to below, also bandy about terms like e-Science, Grid Computing, Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), etc. Add to these newer terms such as Cooperative Computing, Network-Enabled Platforms plus Cell Computing and it’s clear that the opportunity for obfuscation is about all that’s being guaranteed.

Consensus on the inadequacy of the terminology aside, there is also consensus that this is a very exciting time with very interesting possibilities.

So where, pragmatically, does this leave us?

Until we collectively sort out the terminology, my suggestion is that the time is ripe for immediate immersion in what cyberinfrastructure and the like might feel like or are. In other words, I highly recommend reviewing the sources cited below in order:

1. The Wikipedia entry for cyberinfrastructure – A great starting point with a number of references that is, of course, constantly updated.
2. The Atkins Report – The NSF’s original CI document.
3. Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery – A slightly more concrete update from the NSF as of March 2007.
4. Community-specific content – There is content emerging on the intersection between CI and specific communities, disciplines, etc. These frontiers are helping to better define the transformative aspects and possibilities for CI in a much-more concrete way.

Frankly, it’s a bit of a slog to wade through all of this content for a variety of reasons …

Ultimately, however, I believe it’s worth the undertaking at the present time as the possibilities are very exciting.

Earth and Space Science Informatics at the 2007 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

In a previous post, I referred to Earth Science Informatics as a discipline-in-the-making.

To support this claim, I cited a number of data points. And of these data points, the 2006 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) stands out as a key enabler.

With 22 sessions posted, the 2007 Fall Meeting of the AGU is well primed to further enable the development of this discipline.

Because I’m a passionate advocate of this intersection between the Earth Sciences and Informatics, I’m involved in convening three of the 22 Earth and Space Science Informatics sessions:

• Ontology Integration: A Pressing Challenge for Earth and Space Science Informatics
• Grid Technologies and Associated Infrastructures
• Putting Ontologies to Work: Real-World Applications in the Earth and Space Sciences

I encourage you to take a moment to review the calls for participation for these three, as well as the other 19, sessions in Earth and Space Science Informatics at the 2007 Fall Meeting of the AGU.

CANARIE’s Network-Enabled Platforms Workshop: Follow Up

I spent a few days in Ottawa last week participating in CANARIE’s Network-Enabled Platforms Workshop.

As the pre-workshop agenda indicated, there’s a fair amount of activity in this area already, and much of it originates from within Canada.

Now that the workshop is over, most of the presentations are available online.

In my case, I’ve made available a discussion document entitled “Evolving Semantic Frameworks into Network-Enabled Semantic Platforms”. This document is very much a work in progress and feedback is welcome here (as comments to this blog post), to me personally (via email to ian AT yorku DOT ca), or via CANARIE’s wiki.

Although a draft of the CANARIE RFP funding opportunity was provided in hard-copy format, there was no soft-copy version made available. If this is of interest, I’d suggest you keep checking the CANARIE site.

Finally, a few shots I took of Ottawa are available online …

York’s Grid Contribution

From a recent York bulletin:

In just over a month, the York University Research team on the World Community Grid has exceeded 200 members, placing York in the top 70 of more than 14,000 teams on the grid worldwide.

Annotation Paper Submitted to HPCS 2007 Event

I’ve blogged and presented recently (locally and at an international scientific event) on the topic of annotation and knowledge representation.

Working with co-authors Jerusha Lederman, Jim Freemantle and Keith Aldridge, a written version of the recent AGU presentation has been prepared and submitted to the HPCS 2007 event. The abstract is as follows:

Semantically Enabling the Global Geodynamics Project:
Incorporating Feature-Based Annotations via XML Pointer Language (XPointer)

Earth Science Markup Language (ESML) is efficient and effective in representing scientific data in an XML-based formalism. However, features of the data being represented are not accounted for in ESML. Such features might derive from events, identifications, or some other source. In order to account for features in an ESML context, they are considered from the perspective of annotation. Although it is possible to extend ESML to incorporate feature-based annotations internally, there are complicating factors identified that apply to ESML and most XML dialects. Rather than pursue the ESML-extension approach, an external representation for feature-based annotations via XML Pointer Language (XPointer) is developed. In previous work, it has been shown that it is possible to extract relationships from ESML-based representations, and capture the results in the Resource Description Format (RDF). Application of this same requirement to XPointer-based annotations of ESML representations results in a revised semantic framework for the Global Geodynamics Project (GGP).

Once the paper is accepted, I’ll make a pre-submission version available online.

Because the AGU session I participated in has also issued a call for papers, I’ll be extending the HPCS 2007 submission in various interesting ways.

And finally, thoughts are starting to gel on how annotations may be worked into the emerging notions I’ve been having on knowledge-based heuristics.

Stay tuned.

Cooperative Computing Program Operating in Stealth Mode

Normally I don’t like to bandy about words like ‘cool’. It bespeaks narrative laziness. However, in this post I will purposely make an exception.

While at Platform, one of the coolest projects I worked on was one of curriculum development.

Working with a team of faculty, administrators and industry representatives, a curriculum was developed for the Michingan Jewish Institute’s (MJI) degree program in Cooperative Computing.

What is Cooperative Computing? We defined it this way:

Cooperative Computing is the facilitated interchange of information between willing participants for individual or mutual gain.

Specifically:

• Facilitated implies use of a enabling environment (e.g., .NET, J2EE, etc.), along with its associated data (e.g., XML with related standards and technologies) and programming models (e.g., C/C++, Java)

• Interchange emphasizes the (e.g., XML-)detailed interaction that is mediated via standards-based protocols and interfaces (e.g., SOAP plus Grid-enabled Web services)

• Information is the payload of the interchange – and note that it’s information purposely, instead of data. Why? Information is “data that has been interpreted, translated, or transformed to reveal the underlying meaning”. (Use of a lingua franca like XML ensures that this is the case.)

• Willingness implies that the interaction is agreed upon – in fact, it’s most likely negotiated

• Participants may be one or more people, but might also be other concrete entities (e.g., the environment) or even abstract entities (e.g., software and/or hardware components like agents, machines, robots, etc.)

• Gain conveys the individual and/or mutual benefit derived from the interaction – e.g., the provision of service, a step in a business process, etc.

Use of this definition was consistent with MJI’s desire to use Cooperative Computing as an umbrella that could encompass Grid Computing, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), and so on.

Although the curriculum was laid out almost-exactly two years ago, it took MJI a little bit of time to do the real work of developing the content.

When I recently connected with marketing director Dov Stein, he indicated that the first cohort of students has almost completed the program.

If you open http://mji.edu/inside.asp?id=99929 and search for “Cooperative Computing” you can have a closer look at the curriculum. (Well, I said they were operating in stealth mode!)

PR Agency Deems My Article Cynical: Internal OGF Communication Leaked via Google Cache

I’m a huge fan of WordPress and Google .

While perusing my blog’s WordPress stats recently, I noticed that my opinion piece on the creation of the Open Grid Forum (OGF) was receiving interest.

On Googling “open grid forum”, my GRIDtoday article rated as the number three result. In first place was the OGF’s Web site itself, and in second place a breaking news article on the OGF in GRIDtoday. Not bad, given that Google reports some 17.7 million results (!) for that combination.

This prompted me to Google “open grid forum lumb”. Not surprisingly, my GRIDtoday article rated first out of some 822 results. Following four results pointing to my blog, and one more to a Tabor Communications’ teaser, is the seventh result:

[gfac] FW: Final OGF Coverage Report
Harris also discusses a cynical article contributed by Ian Lumb of York University (formerly of Platform Computing Inc.), “Open Grid Forum: Necessary…but …
www.ogf.org/pipermail/gfac/2006-July/000171.html – 12k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

Somewhere between “… cynical article …”, and a subject line that belies an internal communication, my attention was grabbed!

So I clicked on the link and received back: “The requested URL /pipermail/gfac/2006-July/000171.html was not found on this server.” Darn!

Then I clicked on “Cached” … and:

This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/gfac/2006-July/000171.html as retrieved on 30 Sep 2006 05:14:59 GMT.
G o o g l e’s cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.

Excellent!

Below is an extract from the cached version of the page:

[gfac] FW: Final OGF Coverage Report

Linesch, Mark mark.linesch at hp.com
Thu Jul 6 16:15:25 CDT 2006

• Next message: [gfac] Open Grid Forum At-Large Board Nominations
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

fyi mark
—–Original Message—–
From: Hatch, Marcie [mailto:Marcie.Hatch at zenogroup.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 1:08 PM
To: Linesch, Mark; Steve Crumb; tony.dicenzo at oracle.com; John Ehrig; Don Deutsch; Toshihiro Suzuki; robert.fogel at intel.com
Cc: Maloney, Nicole
Subject: Final OGF Coverage Report

Hi Team,

There have been nine pieces of total coverage resulting from the EGA/GGF merger announcement. The coverage has remained informative and continues to reiterate the key messages that were discussed during the press conference. Please note, the expected pieces by Patrick Thibodeau of Computerworld and Elliot King of Database Trends and Applications have not appeared, to date.

GRIDToday has featured four different pieces as a result of the announcement. Editor Derrick Harris summarized the various stories in an overview, providing the details of the announcement and points to the overall importance of grid computing. Harris also discusses his Q&A with Mark regarding the next steps for the OGF, the pace of standards adoption and how the OGF plans to balance the concerns of the commercial community with those of the research community.

Harris also discusses a cynical article contributed by Ian Lumb of York University (formerly of Platform Computing Inc.), “Open Grid Forum: Necessary…but Sufficient?” Lumb uses his experience working for Platform as a basis for his pessimistic outlook on grid computing. Hestates, “I remain a grid computing enthusiast, but as a realistic enthusiast, I believe that grid computing sorely needs to deliver definitive outcomes that really matter.”

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Kind regards,

Marcie Hatch

According to their Web site: “ZENO is a new-style communications company.” (Indeed!) And presumably, Marcie Hatch is one of their representatives. In this internal communication of the OGF’s Grid Forum Advisory Committee (GFAC), Ms. Hatch relays to OGF president and CEO Mark Linesch and colleagues her assessment of the coverage on the Enterprise Grid Alliance / Global Grid Forum merger announcement.

In the first paragraph of Ms. Hatch’s message, it is revealed that there have been nine items on the merger, although at least two more items were anticipated. The second paragraph introduces the coverage in GRIDtoday, and in the third paragraph, explicit reference to my GRIDtoday article is made. Before commenting on Ms. Hatch’s assessment of my article, let’s review how GRIDtoday editor Derrick Harris contextualized it originally:

However, not everyone is wholly optimistic about this new organization. Ian Lumb, former Grid solutions manager at Platform Computing, contributed an opinion piece questioning whether the OGF will be able to overcome the obstacles faced by the Grid market. While most in the Grid community are singing the praises of the OGF — and for good reason — it is nice to have a little balance, and to be reminded, quite honestly, that it will take a lot of work to get Grid computing to the place where many believe it should be.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, and Ms. Hatch’s assessment, I remain very comfortable with Harris’ contextualization of my article. And because it’s difficult to take the cynical spin from his words, I must assume that the cynical assessment derives from Ms. Hatch herself. For a variety of reasons, it’s very difficult for me to get through Ms. Hatch’s next sentence, “Lumb uses his experience working for Platform as a basis for his pessimistic outlook on grid computing.”, without laughing hysterically. I’m not sure how Ms. Hatch arrived at this assessment, as I appended to my GRIDtoday article the following in my bio:

Over the past eight years, Ian Lumb had the good fortune to engage with customers and partners at the forefront of Grid computing. For all but one of those eight years, Lumb was employed by Platform Computing Inc.

Now that’s a fairly positive spin for a cynic, and one that can be attested to by the Platform colleagues, customers and partners I interacted with. In re-reading my article, and indeed the earlier allusion to Platform in it, I believe it’s fairly clear that Ms. Hatch was unable to appreciate the Platform context. To re-iterate, I needed to step away from the community, so that I could appreciate the broader business and technical landscape. Ironicaly, even the OGF has acknowledged this broader landscape directly through the first of their two strategic goals. Ms. Hatch concludes her paragraph on my GRIDtoday article by quoting me directly. Not only is the quote not entirely a cynical one, it expresses sentiment that was conveyed by numerous others around the recent GridWorld event.

Not too surprisingly, I suppose, my GRIDtoday article did not make the “OGF News” page. Ironically, however, Globus Consortium president Greg Nawrocki’s blog post did:

July 2006 InfoWorld.com Blog, “A Broader Scope Needed for Grid Standards Bodie”
http://weblog.infoworld.com/gridmeter/archives/2006/07/a_broader_scope.html

Greg’s blog entry starts off: “There is a great article in a recent GRIDtoday from Ian Lumb detailing the Open Grid Forum’s necessity but questioning its sufficiency.“
For those of you who’ve read this far, I feel I owe you some lessons learned in closing, so here goes:

• PR companies may position what they think you want to hear, but not necessarily what you need to hear – Engage in your own due dilligence to ensure that their assessment matches your assessment, especially on matters that have any technical content.
• OGF’s tagline is “Open Forum, Open Standards” – Hm?
• Google results may inflate perspective, but Google cache delivers the goods – Semantics aside, is there any credibility in 17.7 million results for an entity created this past July? (I just re-ran the query and we’re up to 19.1 million results. Not bad for a few hours!) Google cache allowed me to view a mailing-list archive that, I expect, should’ve been off limits.

Cynically yours, Ian.

Gridness As Usual

In the wake of GridWorld, Intel’s Tom Gibbs writes in GRIDtoday:

The people toiling in the trenches in the Grid community have long stopped caring what it’s called or how folks outside the community think about it. They’re too busy making it work and haggling though standards needed to make it work better.

Understandable. However, if Grid Computing is to rise out of Gartner’s “Trough of Disillusionment”, a customer centric perspective is needed. Based on their strategic priorities, even the Open Grid Forum acknowledges this.