Internet Applications Strategy Council

September 26, 2004

Austin, Texas

Meeting Notes

Participants: David Lassner, Cliff Lynch, Jacqueline Brown, Pavarti Dev, Russ Hobby, George Thoma, Cheryl Munn-Fremon, Charles Yun, Laurie Burns, Egon Verharen, Vijay Kumar, John Krienke, Jonathan Tyman, Terri Saarinen –scribe, Bill Decker (e-dial), Mark Ellisman (e-dial), Ben Teitelbaum, Ken Klingenstein

1) Introductions - All

2) Agenda Bashing - David

3) Internet2 Organizational Updates – Laurie & Cheryl

As mentioned during the last ASC call, Internet2 has completed an internal reorganization of major work areas for staff and now has four groupings:

• Operational Infrastructure (OI) – directed by John Kennedy.
• Technical Development and Direction (TDD) – co-directed by Doug Van Houweling and Steve Corbato until permanent director is named.
•   Deployment and Infrastructure Delivery (DID) – is directed by Cheryl Munn-Fremon. 
• Member and Partner Relations (MPR) - is directed by Laurie Burns.

4) Administrivia – Cheryl

TO DO: Terri will update the ASC roster to include term expiration dates.

TO DO: ASC send names of potential candidates to be members of this council to Laurie.

5) Advancing the Applications Strategy

a)      Real Time Communications & Collaboration Strategy

Ben Teitelbaum was invited to talk about the white paper he developed for RTC. David would like the ASC to provide Internet2 with some guidance.  The ASC should provide guidance to the process of moving applications from research and development to operational levels.

Ben asked for brief comments and allowed time for questions. 

RTC Recommendations:

1. RTCCC  oversight group.  There is a need for the work of developing strategy, aligning projects and establishing a guiding architecture needs to continue.
2. Internet2 take on the investigation of voice services.  Is there a business model for campuses to have Internet2 provide voice?  Cheap phone calls in motivation.  Long term marriage to strategy that would build future better than POTS real time communication.
3. Understand barriers to campus deployment procedures and how they evolve. PBXs installed for Y2K have 10 year longevity and will soon be obsolete.  IP PBX vs. re-thinking of 5-7 more years of depreciation.  Interesting service evolution questions and other legacy (H.323) services.
4. Desktop video authorization and authentication work – effort to engage corporate partners into the field.
5. Align The Commons – get to issues of folks (the Commons Management Team -CMT) who are providing service and looking to see that future technologies are aligned and benefit from research and development activities.  Better alignment with tech scouting efforts.

There followed a lively discussion of this topic.  The discussion ranged from real life cases of how difficult it is to get good information about and support for setting up video conferences to suggestions that case scenarios be part of the outcomes to a suggestion that a decision matrix be created to assist campuses.

The right focus for future work is real time communications between humans in support of collaboration.  ASC will appoint and charge an advisory group for Real Time Communications.

TO DO: ASC is asked to email suggestions (names, constituencies) to David.

TO DO: Ben will convene a broader group to review the paper and make changes as needed so that it can serve as an informational item for the RTCCC.

TO DO: David and Cheryl will write the charge to the Advisory Group.

TO DO:  Members to send nominations for Advisory Group membership to David.

b)     Applications Dissemination Strategy / aka RFP / aka Getting Some Apps into Production to Learn some Lessons

The ASC is trying to identify a few applications that we can put into production in a broad community to help us understand the challenges of getting widespread use.  Various strategies for accomplishing this were discussed.  Strategies ranged from a call for participation, to identifying case studies, to identifying and publishing the resources that are necessary to put an application into production.

c)      Expectations for Internet2 Members / Create shared understanding and commitment of support for applications

The goal here is to create an expectation of what the end users need and identify the specifics that campuses need to include in their infrastructure planning.  Help campuses know what they need to do today that could lead to future funding awards.

TO DO: Laurie, Cheryl, and David to get draft of charge to ASC and NPPAC (Joint effort with NPPAC).  Results by SMM ‘05

d)     Teaching & Learning

The group discussed options for what ASC's strategy should be in this area.

TO DO: Vijay and Jacqueline will report back to the ASC with a recommendation in this area.

e)      Streaming/Lecture Object

Analog to RTC came from Homer Neal – the lecture object.  Why not a set of approaches to capture what should be used and best practices?  Lecture objects are composites, more than video and may include PowerPoint, etc.  There is a need here for standardization.

TO DO: Cliff volunteered to move this along.  Egon will do so for RTC.

f)        Outreach

Vice presidents for research represent the first community we need to reach.  PIs of big science project and big Chief Research offices also need to be informed.  There is a need to identify where they go (what meetings and conferences do they attend?).  How do we go to where they are?  Big Ten Chief Research Officers meeting is an example.  Provosts have the same problem.  Would regional meetings work?

The responsibility for moving this item forward rests with Laurie and her team in MPR.

TO DO: ASC wants another long meeting at SMM05.  Perhaps Bill Wulf could speak for an hour at that meeting?

TO DO: Laurie/Ann Doyle to contact Johns Unsworth – IL Urbana-Champaign.

g)     Application Database

There are several similar projects.  NLANR, NYSERnet and SURFnet all have databases.  Problem is that databases are not well maintained.

Challenge to implementation include too many projects, how to keep information up to date, no good unless someone uses it, what is the vetting process, only Internet2 projects or broader?

TO DO: Cheryl, Laurie, George will gather requirements for what ASC would need in such a database.

6) Other Matters

7) Next Meeting (Teleconference)

                  27 Oct 2004 – 1:00pm EDT

Meeting adjourned at 4:45 PM Eastern (3:45 PM Central)