Winter CSG meeting wrapup - USC

From January 3-5, 2007 I attended the winter Common Solutions Groups (CSG) meeting at the University of Southern California. Attending with me was Steve Kellogg and Vijay Agarwala. The agenda and materials from the various presentations can be found at the CSG website.

The first workshop was on "Models and Methods of Hosting Research Computing." We talked about governance, funding models, and developing cyberinfrastructure support on our campuses. The presentations are on the web site, but the big takeaway for me is that everyone is either starting an investment in developing cyberinfrastructure support of figuring out how to invest more in what they already do. With the reports coming out of various consortia and the recent meetings I've attended, it is abundantly clear that this is the hottest topic right now.

The second workshop was about managed storage solutions. The presentations on these ran the gamut and are very content rich. I found myself coming away from this workshop with the feeling that we don't leverage what we do and know about storage within ITS as much as we could. Perhaps we should do our own workshop on managed storage solutions in ITS.

The Collaborative Tools workshop was highly charged and provocative. Not only was the format engaging, but the dialogue that was stimulated really helped peel apart the onion as they say. An overwhelming majority of us are in the same boat - working hard to understand the landscape in its own right, what we need to do to serve our campuses, and what we need to do within our own organizations. I highly recommend reviewing these presentations.

The meeting topics (the meeting is separate from the workshops) were, as usual, compelling. The last session on DRM, lead by Paul Hill, validated my concerns about how terrible the landscape is in all phases - technology, standards, existing laws, possible future legislation, etc. So much is happening so fast that our country is having a hard time wrapping its head around the social and economic outcomes of the changes. As a result, there are knee jerk reactions to what's currently happening and of course, in such an atmosphere every vendor is scrambling to create the one tool or technique that will master lock-in. And even with all that, it's a challenge we really need think about a lot. This one isn't going away, it's getting more complex, and we'll need to be able to help out when it collides with how we're helping people manage their content and how they gain access to others content. Our own Mairéad Martin was mentioned twice in the conversation - she may be hearing from some of her old friends in I2 about DRM in the future.

As usual, a stimulating meeting. We meet next at Columbia in late May.