Social Networking and Scientific Gateways

Social Networking and Scientific Gateways Roger Curry, Cameron Kiddle and Rob Simmonds Grid Research Centre University of Calgary

Outline
Motivation
Related Work
Integration Approaches
Our Experiences
Conclusions and Future Work
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Motivation
Scientific Gateways
Aim to enable collaboration and transparent access to data and computational resources
Social Networking
Can enhance collaboration capabilities and improve transparency
Widely adopted
Facebook
> 300 million users (50% log on to Facebook on any given day)
> 1 billion chat messages per day
> 2 billion photos, 14 million videos uploaded per month
> 350 thousand applications on Facebook Platform
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Related Work: Social Networking for Science/Academia
Academia.edu
Aims at being Facebook or LinkedIn for academia
Biomedexperts (biomedexperts.com)
Connecting biomedical experts based on author connections between publications
SciWeavers (sciweavers.org)
Bookmark and share links to source code, data sets, publications, presentations, etc.
myExperiment (myexperiment.org)
Share computational/data workflows and other research objects
HUBzero (hubzero.org)
Collaborative platform to share publications, presentations, etc. and provide on-line access to scientific tools
REAL (Research Environments Associated with Learning through Social Networks)
Access to data and compute resources from Second Life
OGCE (Open Grid Computing Environments) (collab-ogce.org)
Recently began development of OpenSocial based gadgets/containers
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Integration Approaches
Build on an Existing Social Network
Build a Custom Social Network Hosted by a Third Party
Build a Custom Social Network Hosted In-House
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Build on an Existing Social Network
Examples: Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, orkut
Advantages
Likely that users are already members
Familiarity with features/tools
Wide range of robust features/functionality
Do not have to scale/maintain collaborative aspects
Disadvantages
Lack of control/customization
Data privacy/ownership
Distractions: advertising, “social noise”
Risks affiliated with vendors going out of business
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Build a Custom Social Network Hosted by a Third Party
Examples: Ning, KickApps, Haystack
Advantages
Customizable (to a certain extent)
Wide range of robust features/functionality
“ Social noise” can be avoided
Do not have to scale/maintain collaborative aspects
Disadvantages
Still don’t have complete control/customization
Data privacy/ownership
Advertising, potential fees
Risks affiliated with vendors going out of business
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Build a Custom Social Network Hosted In-House
Examples: Elgg, Drupal, PHPizabi, Dolphin
Advantages
Complete control and customization
Ownership of data
Open source
Advertisements and “social noise” can be avoided
Less risk if vendor goes out of business
Disadvantages
Features aren’t always as robust or fully developed
Must maintain, manage, scale collaborative aspects
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) Demonstrator
Created a Facebook-based interface to provide users with access to cloud-based FDS simulation/visualization services
A one-stop shop
Upload/edit input files
Submit/resubmit/execute simulations
Share/visualize/download results
Message boards
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Facebook-based GeoChronos
GeoChronos – CANARIE/Cybera funded project to create an on-line collaborative platform for earth observation scientists
Developed initial Facebook-based prototype for accessing and sharing MODIS satellite data
Create, edit and share subscriptions
List and view details of subscriptions
View thumbnails and metadata
Message boards
Evaluation
Positive feedback from scientists
Concern over customizability and “social noise”
Concern over data ownership
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Ning-based GeoChronos
Created a custom social network in Ning for GeoChronos
Ported the MODIS application to Ning
Evaluation
Scientists liked more custom environment, but wanted even greater control over customization
Scientists did not like advertisements
Application API not as easy to work with as Facebook API
Data ownership concerns
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Elgg-based GeoChronos
Settled on Elgg
Have incorporated tools for sharing spectral data and running applications on-line
Evaluation
Much more positive feedback
Fully customizable
Full ownership of data
Wide range of features but not quite as polished as Facebook
Usage
Over 70 users from around the world
IAI Summer School, July 2009
Tropi-Dry community
Registration currently restricted – will open to the broader community by end of 2010
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Elgg-based GeoChronos GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009 Interactive Application Service Spectral Libraries

Conclusions and Future Work
Conclusions
Custom in-house hosted social network suited needs for GeoChronos best
Other approaches may be more suitable for other communities depending on their needs
Future Work
Plan to monitor usage/adoption to better evaluate impact of social networking
Build more common reusable tools and services that leverage social networking and can be used in other gateways
GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009

Contact Information GCE 2009 Nov. 20, 2009 Cameron Kiddle [email_address] http://pages.cspc.ucalgary.ca/~kiddlec/ http://twitter.com/kiddlec http://grid.ucalgary.ca/ http://geochronos.org/ [email_address]

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Social Networking and Scientific Gateways

by Cameron Kiddle on Nov 20, 2009

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Social Networking and Scientific Gateways — Presentation Transcript