Template:Executive Director Report

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Reports by Greg Monaco

Contents

2008

June, 2008

  1. I took about two weeks off during this period, however, I was involved in several meetings and teleconferences during that period.
  2. Annual Meeting Survey
    • completed by 49% of attendees
      • Over half of the respondents DID NOT give a presentation
      • 36% of all respondents rated the meeting as "Better than expected"
    • Positive feedback about this meeting was relatively uniform:
      • Goals for meeting met or exceeded;
      • Speakers were considered uniformly informative and well-prepared
      • Keynote speakers were singled out as highest quality--Rick Summerhill received most "Better than expected" ratings
      • Presence of Internet2 reps was singled out as positive
    • Individual negative comments included
      • shortness of time to "get to know one another" and, related to that, need for more BoFs; (3 respondents)
      • need for about 10 to 15 additional minutes per session and BoF (2 respondents)
      • criticism of a private sponsored event contesting with a public sponsored event (cocktail hour on Thursday);
      • in general, people rated the hotel well and the meeting rooms well, but there were 3 specific comments criticizing cramped quarters in the meeting rooms--recommendation to enlarge room (we actually can do this).
      • Get info to presenters at least 2 weeks in advance (1 respondent)
    • 5 new individuals volunteered to be on the GPN2009 program committee
    • I also did some follow-up to thank individual presenters and sponsors for their contributions to the annual meeting
  3. Strategic Plan
    • Received comments from Claude, Bill and Dave Byland
  4. Initiatives
    • Cyber Physical Systems proposal going in from MST (Rolla)
    • EPSCoR RII Track II
      • Following the annual meeting I have been coordinating teleconference discussions among interested parties at several universities on this (proposed) cyberinfrastructure funding
        • At the present time, we really don't know much about this. Amy Apon (UAF) and James Rice (EPSCoR Project Director from SD) have provided some of the most recent info and it looks like the solicitation is a few months off
    • Bioinformatics: Assisted a researcher at KU to link up via our shared resource repository with MU
    • GENI Effort: There have been discussions going on between our GpENI team and the project office; we are one of the selected projects
    • Collaborative Middleware
      • John Krienke, Ken Klingenstein and I had a call to discuss how to move GPN and members down the road on InCommon participation; I tried to reflect what I took back from the EC on this. Claude suggests working with them to draft something that can ultimately be used to assist consortia in future efforts, perhaps unrelated to InCommon. We will be scheduling a future call, with Claude, to discuss this.
  5. North Dakota inquired about member fees

May, 2008

  1. Annual Meeting
    • Preparation
      • Spent a lot of time this month planning, approving final arrangements, formalizing and organizing agenda, creating the program, etc. with massive help from Dena
      • Continued to solicit sponsorships
    • At the Meeting
      • 23 sessions over two days
      • About 72 attendees
        • Thanks to MORENET for their handling registration
      • 29 unique speakers
        • 10 of the 29 had never given a presentation at a GPN Annual Meeting in the past
  2. Initiatives
    • Collaborative Middleware minutes are here
      • Duncan completed the storage server at KSU and we now have storage available at MU and KSU
      • Duncan has begun setting up our cluster at KSU
      • I extended GPN's participation in SURAgrid as a user. We may make our new compute resources available to SURAgrid participants in the Fall.
    • GENI Initiative: We are still awaiting word on the outcome but seems positive from my discussions
    • K20 making plans for next school years programming
      • I made contact with Linda Rosenblum, a National Park Service representative re participation in this initiative from the Brown V. Board of Education National Park here in Topeka
    • Biosci initiative group planning to help flesh out the regional collaboration VO repository
  3. Strategic Planning: Circulated a Draft Strategic Plan

April, 2008

  1. Annual Meeting Planning
    • Continued planning, including solicitation of speakers at Internet2 meeting.
    • Doing what I can to increase attendance
    • Adding panels on a variety of topics
    • Finalized all contract components
  2. Attended Internet2 DC Meeting
    • Met with potential GPN Annual Meeting sponsors to encourage and in other cases solidify commitments
  3. GPN Initiatives
    • Began planning activity with GPN K20 Initiative participants for school year 2008-2009
    • Working on joint proposal for cyber-physical systems with Bruce McMillan. We have been discussing this with the appropriate program director at NSF. We have also been discussing a planning workshop activity as part of the GPN2008 Annual Meeting.
    • Collaborative Middleware
      • Minutes are here
      • GPN Identity Server up and running
      • Investigating InCommon participation as a way to
        • Create upward compatibility between member shibboleth service providers/GPN/Internet2
        • Demonstrating value of shibboleth to GPN membership
      • Sponsoring Denis Hancock (UM Columbia) to attend a Shibboleth 2.0 training of trainers and conduct a similar workshop for GPN membership
      • Looking into shared storage across network via single sign on
      • Invited to a Federation Soup workshop and asked Gordon Springer to attend for GPN

March, 2008

  1. Collaborative Middleware & Grid
    • Reports on several ongoing pieces to this effort are here.
    • In the coming weeks we expect to create a common agenda for working with colleagues from Argonne National Lab.
  2. Research
    • Cyber-Enabled Discovery Pre-Proposal
      • 15% of pre-proposals were invited to submit full proposals. Ours was not amont those invited.
      • We expect to submit this elsewhere.
    • GENI: No word yet.
      • I attended the GENI Engineering Meeting in DC and with help from Dale Finkelson and James Sterbenz, made a presentation on our plan.
      • Interesting speaker on Networking Science, Will Leland from Telcordia. His presentation was received with a great deal of interest and you can find it here
    • Cyber Physical Systems: We continue to pursue this, led by Bruce McMillin of MST.
    • March GPN Research Advisory Board Meeting Minutes
    • GPN Bioscience group co-sponsored workshop in Oklahoma last month and continues efforts
    • EPSCoR Cyberinfrastructure Solicitation
      • Regional
      • Planned a series of teleconferences for the region
    • Continue to be engaged by the international community and am pursuing the concept of a GPN International Task Force
      • Particular interest from Ministry of Education and Research in Tunisia
      • US State Department
    • Wrote letters of support for researchers in Missouri and Arkansas
  3. K20 Education
    • Lessons from Greensburg coordinated among states
      • Classrooms in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Dakota all participated interactively in 4 events
      • Info about it on the Internet2 web site is here
      • This was not the only site streaming the event, but MORENET recorded the following live streams:
      • North Dakota – 31, Kansas – 23, Missouri – 3, Minnesota – 3, Georgia – 3, New York – 3, Utah - 3, Illinois – 2, Colorado – 2, South Dakota – 1, Washington, D.C. – 1, Massachusetts – 1, Michigan – 1, Wisconsin – 1, Alabama – 1, Ohio – 1, New Jersey – 1, Texas – 1, Unknown – 4
    • Note: GPN now has a streaming media server located at KSU. We used an old server of Rick's.
  4. GPN Representative Council March meeting minutes are here
  5. GPN2008 Annual Meeting
    • Stellar line up of keynote speakers, if I do say so myself!
    • Other events are shaping up based on suggestions from many of our groups

February, 2008

  1. Revised my priorities for FY2008/FY2009 based on Strategic Planning Meeting as follows:
    1. Broaden participation in GPN research initiatives
      • Increase number of multi-university proposals submitted,
      • Increase number of funded proposals;
    2. Increase SHARED access to GPN member resources
      • computing,
      • data storage,
      • other;
    3. Provide useful, consistent communication to members and interested parties through
      • newsletter,
      • workshops,
      • technical and research reports, and
      • annual meeting;
    4. Provide support on emerging technologies.
  2. Research
    • Submitted GENI proposal for regional GENI nodes
      • List of contributors include
        • Personnel: James Sterbenz, D.Sc. (PI and Project Coordinator), Deep Medhi, Ph.D. (co-PI), Byrav Ramamurthy, Ph.D. (co-PI), Caterina Scoglio, Dr. Eng. [co-PI], Gregory E. Monaco, Ph.D. (co-PI), Jeff Verrant (co-PI), Wesley Kaplow, Ph.D. (co-PI), Joseph B. Evans, Ph.D. (co-PI), Don Gruenbacher, Ph.D. (co-PI), Richard Becker (KSU), Dr. Baek-Young Choi (UMKC), Dale Finkelson (UNL), Dr. Rongqing Hui (KU), John Louis (KU), Dr. Gary J. Minden (KU), Jim Schonemann II (UMKC)
        • Letters of Support: Claude Garelik (GPN), Bill Mitchell (MORENET), Denise Stephens (KU), Victor Frost (KU), Lynn Carlin (KSU), Mary Lou Hines Fritts (UMKC), Walter Rychlewski III (UMKC), Don Gruenbacher (KSU), Prem Paul (UNL), Kristin Bowman-James (KS EPSCoR), Doug Van Houweling (I2), Wes Kaplow (Qwest), David Peed (Ciena)
      • Tremendous effort on the part of all concerned
    • coPI on proposal from Internet2 for a GENI workshop
    • There will be a SUMMER call for EPSCoR CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE proposals and now is a good time to begin planning
    • Work on cyber-physical systems and IGERT possibilities continue--plan to use GPN Visiting Scholar program as vehicle
    • Attended panel review at Science Foundation Ireland
  3. Emerging Technologies
    • Duncan Cunningham is doing an excellent job on learning GPN technologies of interest
      • Straightened up the GPN mailing lists
      • Installed a GPN media server
      • Duncan attended the GPN Tech Committee meeting and took minutes
      • GPN will be getting a multi-node, multi-core cluster from KSU CS department and Duncan will be configuring it
  4. Communication
    • Planning for Annual Meeting has begun: Dates May 29-30
    • Bogged down a bit in discussion with KS EPSCoR about holding joint meeting
  5. Partnerships
    • GPN partnered with the Mid-South Bioinformatics Consortium to sponsor attendance at their annual meeting -- they had a record attendance of 140 with 50 people from GPN institutions at MCBIOS - 31 students and 19 faculty. 16 of those students presented their work at the conference.
  6. Other
    • Lessons from Greensburg Kansas re disasters in small towns on March 11
      • 3 video streams, one for elementary schools, one for middle/high schools and one in the evening for adults
      • Partnership among KANED, KANREN, ONENET, MORENET, North Dakota
  7. Strategic Planning Follow-Up
    • GPN Institutional Representation: Currently, we do not specify how the Institutional Representative (IR) from a member is appointed.
      • Proposed recommendation: Specify that the IR is appointed by the member CEO – president or chancellor. Benefit: This will engage the highest level in appointing the IR to GPN.
    • Executive Council: Currently, the Executive Council is made up of state representatives who really understand networking and have a long history of collaboration. This is valuable and one of the strengths of GPN.
      • Proposed recommendation is to expand the EC and specify lengths of positions, as follows:
        • Designate the current EC members as STATE MEMBERS who may serve multiple 3-year terms (current members could be considered to have terms started on July 1, 2007). Currently, there is no designation of length of terms or number of terms.
          • Election of STATE MEMBERS – no change. Election remains in the hands of the Institutional Representatives from that state.
        • Add 6 AT-LARGE MEMBER positions to the EC, representing a President/Chancellor, a CIO (state system or university), a networking researcher, a domain science researcher other than CS, a chief research officer (could be statewide, like Scott), an industry representative.
        • Create a Nominations Committee whose responsibility is to devise the way in which nominations and elections to the AT-LARGE positions are held. GPN staff can carry out the actual work.
  8. Week off.

January, 2008

  1. Research
    • Geni
      • working out details of ciena donation
      • coordination of meetings among principals
      • working out budget items
      • Coordination of proposal submission
    • Cyber Enabled Discovery
      • Preproposal completed and submitted
    • Starting on center planning grant
    • Cyber Physical Systems planning resumed (Bruce McMillin is leading this from MST/UMR)
  2. Initiatives
    • Bioinformatics
      • MCBIOS presentation in Oklahoma - Springer and Berleant
    • Grid/Middleware - began scheduling presentations
    • K12: Lessons from Greensburg, KS - 3 events in March
  3. Other
    • Contribution to epscor cyberinfrastructure report
    • Hired Duncan Cunningham as replacement for Rahul
    • Publicized the KU Director of Research Computing position - had to re-locate some individuals
    • Requested and sent info on my work with GPN - Applied Psychology group -- for their web site
    • GPN featured in campus technology article by Doug Gale
    • Met with Myron Lowe re joint efforts with Minnesota
    • Representative Council meeting: Minutes here
    • Submitted recommendations for I2 board of trustees
    • Presentation on involving social scientists in GPN activities
    • Recommendations developed following Strategic Planning Meeting

2007

December, 2007

  1. GPN Strategic Planning Meeting
    • Arrangements, Participants, Agenda, Handouts & Follow Up -
    • Preliminary meetings with Michael Ruhrdanz and Bonnie Neas
  2. Research
    • GPN GENI Planning Meeting in Kansas City, Phone Meetings, Arranging Participation from All Sides
    • Initiated work on cyber enabled discovery proposal basic outline and participation defined at beginning of month.
  3. GPN Middleware/Grid Initiative
    • Conference with Ian Foster of Argonne/Uchicago
  4. GPN Bioinformatics Initiative
    • Initiated work on MCBIOS presentation
  5. GPN Organization
    • Initatied interviewing students to replace Rahul
    • Initiated Conversations with Kathryn Huxtable to install gpn ldap server
  6. Invited back to Ireland for proposal review in February (Science Foundation Ireland)

November, 2007

  1. Research
    • Bruce McMillin of UM Rolla (Missouri University for Science and Technology) has been leading several web-enabled conferences to form teams for the NSF cyber-physical systems program.
    • Researchers in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and South Dakota joined together to submit a letter of intent (Title: Enabling Collaborative BioScience in a Virtual Organization)to the NSF Cyber-Enabled Discovery program.
      • I've learned a lot from watching Bruce coordinate the program mentioned earlier. So, I asked that participants for this project submit detailed information in order to be considered part of the project. And they did!
    • We continue to make progress on GPN GENI and are scheduling a meeting for December 21 in KC.
    • Ian Foster will speak with the GPN grid and middleware folks in December.
  2. Education and Outreach
    • K12
      • We started off the month with the visit to the Riverbluff Cave site in Missouri on November 7. Estimated 3000 viewers! Please refer to the blog for details. This was a terrific event and all involved deserve a great deal of credit.
        • Next time we can expect even deeper penetration to schools across our region.
      • We are planning for several future events. Themes include
        • Introduction to High Performance Computing to Solve Large-Scale Scientific Problems
        • Emergency Preparedness: Visit to Greensburg and Coffeeville Kansas
        • Visit to Native American Earth Lodges
    • Rahul assisted KSU faculty to use our AG node to meet with colleagues in an ongoing collaboration of hydrology researchers in the region.
    • Rahul has built the registration site for the mid-south bioinformatics consortium and we are hosting it on a GPN server.
  3. Organizational
    • Work continues on planning for the Strategic Planning meeting in December. The arrangements for the hotel were coordinated between Dena Bunnel, GPN Member Coordinator, MORENET, and the Marriott.
    • Dena has sent out a newsletter for November.
    • I have discussed with Claude Garelik the possibility of hiring a technical consultant for several hours to implement the LDAP directory server and Shibboleth for GPN. I have also discussed this with the potential consultant. I believe that the cost of trying to have a grad student learn this and do it is too great. This will also assist us in pursuit of several of the NSF programs.
    • I spent some time updating one of our corporate affiliate members to discuss their involvement in a GPN workshop. I spent some time with another corporate affiliate to involve them in some of our research efforts.

October, 2007

  • SEGP Group has an event scheduled for November 7, 2007: Exploration of an Ice-Age Cave Details here.
    • Rahul created a GPN Blog for the event
    • Notes are here.
    • Participants from Missouri, ND, Kansas, Oklahoma
  • Meetings Attended
    • Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium
      • GPN Session with participants from Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and more
      • GPN will be a sponsor of this meeting in the future
    • GENI Architecture Meeting at University of Minnesota
      • My notes are here.
      • GPN GENI presentation received well
    • EPSCoR Cyberinfrastructure Meeting at University of Kentucky
      • Notes are here
      • Most recent version of the report (Version 4) is here.
    • Science Foundation Ireland Review Panel
      • Some notes are here. I plan to add more extensive notes based on literature I picked up and discussions.
  • Presentations
    • Supercomputing for the Social Sciences is here
    • GPN GENI presentation at GENI architecture meeting is here.
    • EPSCoR Cyberinfrastructure Meeting
  • GPN Bioscience Group
    • Assisting the MACBIOS group on their upcoming conference in Oklahoma
    • Providing some attendance fee relief to grad students attending
    • There will be several GPN related events: Panel Discussion and Demonstration of Middleware Tools
  • Upcoming NSFNET Celebration
    • We are putting about $200 towards Ken Bishop participating in a panel on NSFNET & representing, in part, GPN.
  • Etc.
    • Dena put out another newsletter
    • Rahul is working with another grad student on the cluster
    • Gaurav met Denis Hancock of MU and is working with him on the LDAP server
    • Dena is also working on the GPN2008 program committee
    • We have Strategic Planning dates in December
    • We welcomed True Broadband Networks to GPN

September, 2007

(I am writing this in November, 2007)

  • GPN Disaster Recover Meeting
    • Co-sponsored by Ciena
    • Excellent presentations: Slides are here.
    • Attendance from Missour, Nebraska, and South Dakota
    • A bit disappointing that there wasn't broader GPN representation
    • Evaluation of meeting is here.
  • Accepted invitation to Science Foundation Ireland review panel for computer science proposals
  • GPN GENI initiative is moving along in fits and starts with a lot of interest, continuing, from Ciena
  • Planning for panel presentation at Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium in October
  • Strategic Planning is waiting on finding dates that all can make
  • Students
    • Gaurav has been getting his feet wet with creating a test LDAP server
    • Rahul has been setting up Major Cool for email lists
    • Dena has been working on the newsletter
  • Cyber Physical Systems Project
    • I put together the information which Bruce McMillin of MIST accumulated
    • We are looking for a new program announcement to really push this forward
  • GPN SEGP group has moved forward on the Riverbluff Ice-Age Cave virtual experience
  • Put together a GPN GENI white paper
  • GPN Research Advisory Board Meeting: 9/12/2007, minutes

August, 2007

  • The Great Plains Grid School, co-sponsored by GPN, UNL and the Open Science Grid, was successful with an overflow crowd: Syllabus and Attendance Information is here.
    • While in Nebraska, I met with the following folks:
      • Janet Poley, President of ADEC
      • Pam Holley-Wilcox
      • Carol Farnham
      • James Merchant, Member of GPN's original Science Advisory Board
      • Michael Ruhrdanz
      • Sandra Scofield, Director of UNL Rural Initiative
      • Rich Sincovec, Head of Computer Science
  • GPN Disaster Recovery Workshop planned for September 25 & 26 and sponsored by Ciena: Register Here * Current Registrants
  • Projects
    • Middleware/Grid continued through August. We are looking for speakers for the upcoming semester.
    • Bioscience is partnering with the MCBIOS organization for their 2008 meeting and the group will have a panel on GPN and the Bioscience effort.
      • UM Columbia is also using the GPN WAYF pretty heavily for their biosci site.
    • Cyber Physical Systems: This is an effort of the GPN Research Advisory Board and Bruce McMillin of University of Missouri, Rolla, has been organizing this effort. There are participants from several member universities, including UMR, UAF,
    • GPN GENI Effort: We have begun to hold conference calls. There is a plan to bring Chip Elliott of BBN to the region to meet with him. Many of the members of this group will be attending the Minnesota GENI meeting which overlaps with the Internet2 meeting.
      • My colleague from NSF, Ty Znati, is now the Division Director for CNS which houses the GENI program.
    • GPN SEGP: This effort resumes this month and there will be a virtual visit for students in the region to a Missouri cave site on November 7. This is being arranged by Bill Giddings of MOREnet.
  • GPN Strategic Planning: With Claude's approval, I have meeting with Patrick Sanaghan of the Sanaghan group regarding facilitating a GPN Strategic Planning session. Pat's web site is http://www.thesanaghangroup.com/. He has facilitated two meetings for EDUCAUSE that I have attended. He also facilitates their strategic planning process. He is quite familiar with higher ed and with the EDUCAUSE crowd. I recommend that we utilize his talents to facilitate a GPN strategic planning session that runs from noon on Day 1 to noon on Day 2.
  • IBM Academic Initiative: I have been in contact with several folks from IBM regarding our grid efforts. I began with the main frame crowd, which is the wrong crowd for grid computing, but they have been quite helpful in getting me in touch with others on the grid side.
  • Cyberinfrastructure Team Proposal from Oklahoma: GPN and other members are partners in a proposal from OU to NSF.
  • Other GPN News
    • Beth Unger is on sabatical and will be back in January. She will no longer be VP of IT at KSU.
    • James Lyall is the new Associate Vice Provost of IT at KSU and the GPN representative council member replacing Beth. Diane Carlin is the Interim VP of IT at KSU.
    • I mentioned the new division director at NSF, above.
    • I hired a new graduate student, Gaurav Chauran, who is backing up Rahul and working on some issues related to middleware.
    • We have added a new Research Advisory Board member, James Guikema, from KSU.
    • I have been in joint (GPN/ADEC community) project discussions with Janet Poley of ADEC.
  • Regional
    • Berkeley awarded NSF grant to proceed with deep underground S&E lab in South Dakota.
    • Susan Gauch, formerly of KU, is the new Chair of the CS Department at University of Arkansas.
  • Related

July, 2007

  • I was invited to attend the EDUCAUSE Cyberinfrastructure Summit (July 10-11)
    • This was a very interesting meeting that touched on Cyberinfrastructure, Academic IT, and coordination with and support from the Research arm of the university.
      • I thought that the decision of the EC to form a Research Advisory Board for GPN was really addressing a communication need identified by this group.
      • It might be useful to have the RAB meet occasionally with the Representative Council or Executive Council.
      • I wrote and circulated a summary to several GPN constituent groups, including the Executive Council, and discussed it in teleconferences
    • I took three days off after this meeting
  • Great Plains Grid School 2007 at UNL August 8-10
    • We are a sponsor of this meeting.
    • There have been several organizational meetings coordinated by Mike Wilde of OSG and David Swanson of UNL. Assuring that the final list of participants included GPN representatives was essential and David was quite helpful in making sure that that happens.
  • Mini-GENI Effort
    • There have been several teleconferences with a core group of researchers and corporate representatives to plan the strategy.
    • There will be a meeting in Lawrence in September with a core group of researchers and representatives from the GENI Program Office thanks to James Sterbenz and Joe Evans.
  • GPN Representative Council
    • Meeting Minutes
    • At KSU there is a new interim CIO, Lynne Carlin replacing Beth Unger, and a new associate VP of IT, James Lyall from Colorado State University.
      • James Lyall is the new KSU Representative Council Member
      • I met with James and Lynne on her second day at KSU to discuss GPN and Internet2. We also spoke with a staff member from I2.
    • I put together a GPN University Membership Information Request which has been sent out to all the GPN Representative Council members. The request asks for contact info for a variety of interests, including research, disaster recovery, high performance computing.
  • GPN WAYF
    • The GPN WAYF was getting heavily utilized by researchers and others at MU. The server was sitting in my office. We ported the WAYF to a server at the Level(3) PoP and that is working well.
  • GPN Strategic Planning
    • In discussions with Claude, the concept is to do this as a face to face meeting
    • I spoke with Pat Sanaghan who facilitates the EDUCAUSE meetings re facilitating the strategic planning process. We are still discussing.
  • GPN Disaster Recovery Workshop
    • National Academies Improving Disaster Management Report Circulated
    • Upcoming call with CIENA to discuss the workshop in the fall of 2007.
  • Research
    • I wrote a letter of support for a researcher from Arkansas who is submitting a Career Proposal to NSF
    • Bioinformatics group: Planning a joint effort in early Oklahoma in 2008 in coordination with the McBIOS conference.
    • GPNgrid: Moving along well. Workshop at UNL on Aug 8-10.
    • Water monitoring research: I am getting interest in this again and plan to speak with some individuals on this when I'm at UNL.
  • Personal
    • Working with Claude to set personal goals for FY2008
    • I took some additional vacation time in July--a total of 7 days.
  • GPN2007
    • Circulated meeting results
    • Reviewed and approved payments for meeting
  • OU Supercomputing Symposium: Will be presenting a GPN Roundtable tigether with Amy Apon of UARK.
  • Staffing: Rahul will be graduating in December and we are working on backing him up.

June, 2007

April, 2007

  1. Internet2 Meeting
    • Internet2 GPN BOF - largely corporate interest
    • Meeting with potential members on the side
    • GPN SEGP dinner was very productive--planning 4 events for next year beginning with the MO Cave
  2. Internet2
    • I am planning to nominate several folks from GPN region to I2 Advisory Boards
  3. Affiliate Membership
    • GPN-ADVA Press Release picked up at several websites (HPCWire, Lightwave Press, GridToday, Webwire)
    • Ciena
    • Fujitsu
  4. Corporate Membership Possibilities I am exploring
    • Internship Possibilities
    • Parterning with Researchers
  5. National Science Foundation
    • Participated in a review panel
  6. Research Advisory Board
    • Cyber Physical Systems effort led by Bruce McMillin
  7. Networking Research
    • Discussions in DC regarding a GPN mini-Geni
    • Teleconference followup
    • Meeting in Kansas City at GPN2007
  8. GPN2007: Annual Meeting
    • Doug Van Houweling, Ken Klingenstein, Ruth Pordes
    • Reminders being sent out to groups and subgroups
    • Currently about 40 registrants, aiming for 100
    • Need a leader for a StateNet Roundtable from EC
    • Globus Tutorial on June 2 following meeting
    • Some of the science groups are planning to incorporate this for face to face meetings
    • I'm a bit worried about lack of sponsorship
    • Jenny Lorenz at MOREnet has been terrific to work with
  9. GPNgrid and Use
    • about 30,000 hours in March and 40,000 hours in April
    • journal article by Amy Apon
  10. GPN and Shibboleth
    • Article in Kstate Collegian
    • Article by Doug Gale
  11. Related Documents

March, 2007

  1. GPN2007: Markers, Milestones and New Directions
    • Contracts Signed with Hotel (Deb Kidwell & Jennifer Lorenz)
    • Meeting Announcements sent out
    • Call for Papers sent out
    • Confirmed Keynote speakers
      • Doug VanHouwelling, CEO, Internet2 (Thanks to Bill Mitchell)
      • Ruth Pordes, Exec. Dir., Open Science Grid
      • Mary McLaughlin, MERIT
    • Unconfirmed but corresponding Keynote Speakers
      • Dan Atkins, Head, NSF Cyberinfrastructure Office
      • Ken Klingenstein, Internet2
    • Other Presentations
      • Statenets Roundtable
      • Disaster Recover Roundtable
      • Potential Biosci workshop
      • Globus Workshops offered
    • Sponsorships
      • Force10 Networks
  2. Affiliates
    • This month I met with Ciena and Force10 about becoming corporate affiliates
    • Still need our first private university member: Creighton, SLU, Washinton U, Bradley? Others?
      • Information for Wash U and SLU was sent to Bill M.
    • We now have brochures!
    • Affiliate Agreement says that we are primarily organized to connect to I2--we may want to include an expanded scope or the mission which was approved in 2004-2005.
    • I attended the Missouri Higher Ed (HELIX) meeting and spoke about GPN
    • There will be a GPN informational BOF at Internet2
  3. GPN Groups
    • BioInformatics
      • Possible workshop at GPN2007
      • [GPN Biotools] Invitation to Register sent out to member university department heads [GPN Biotools]
    • K20
      • Robots Alive! MOREnet was great! I hope the SEGP contacts were helpful.
      • Meeting planned at I2 to firm up coordinated efforts for next school year.
    • Representative Council
    • Research Advisory Board
      • Minutes
      • Cyberphysical Systems is first new initiative we are pursuing
    • Shibboleth
      • Worked out bugs for MU and KU and GPN Wayf
      • Now working on a GPN Identity Provider (Rahul)
      • Article in KSU Collegian on Shibboleth! (Dena)
    • GPNgrid - Collaborative Middleware
      • Workshop at GPN2007 by Jennifer Schopf from Argonne/UChicago (also mentioned above)
      • Taking old GPN servers and configuring them into cluster mix (Rahul)
    • Networking
      • I'm meeting with Ciena and a Ciena partner about a GPN mini-GENI initiative
  4. Other
    • Kansas Clinical Capacity Survey with KU Med Center
    • GPN and North Dakota
    • We had some mail problems and those were fixed by Eric Anderson of MOREnet
    • GPN brochures are now available. Let me know how many you may want.
    • I ordered a computer for my office use to replace the laptop I received in 2000.

February, 2007

  1. GPN Membership
    • ADVA Optical will be GPN's first Affiliate Member.
    • We need our first private university member.
      • I would like to approach Bradley University about joining GPN. Any suggestions for approach?
      • I would like to approach Creighton and (Washington or St.Louis U) about membership. Suggestions?
    • We have increased the number of subscribers to GPN's general mailing list to about 400 -- that's a 25% increase over last year at this time.
    • GPN Member WIKI: Repository for content we do not want to get beyond membership.
      • Rahul has created a GPN member wiki which is Shibboleth-protected.
        • There is now a GPN WAYF (where are you from) page which will list GPN Shibboleth Identity Providers and re-direct folks to their organizations single-sign-on location.
        • This WAYF can take the place of INQUEUE and can be used for GPN members to test their Shib installations as well as to focus resources for the benefit of just GPN.
  2. GPN Projects
    • Bioinformatics: We are adding potential users to the our list in biology and chemistry departments. They can access the GPN web site and register for use of GPN Biotools. Currently, Samuel is contacting
    • Collaborative Middleware/GPNgrid: The workshop, held Feb 2-3 in Lawrence, KS, was a real success. We had about 20 participants and IP and telephone from Oklahoma and Nebraska. You can find the list of registrants at http://collaboration.greatplains.net/register/workshop/gpngrid/list.php .
      • We are also discussing another proposal to SUN for additional equipment.
    • Networking Research: Jennifer Rexford from CMU will be coming to KSU to discuss the NSF GENI and FIND programs. The folks at KSU have invited those who participate in the GPN Net Research group.
  3. GPN Groups
    • Representative Council: (Minutes)
    • Research Advisory Board: (Minutes)
      • I understand we are getting closer on a Kansas member. THERE IS NO MEMBER FROM AN OKLAHOMA INSTITUTION
    • K20 Education (Minutes)
      • FIRST Competition
        • Can we put something at WIKI?
  4. Annual Meeting Planning: http://collaboration.greatplains.net/wiki/index.php/Annual_Meeting:2007
  5. Other
    • Cooperative Research with KU Med Center continues
    • Formation of a Med Center working group - coming soon (perhaps next fiscal year)
    • Brochure is to be printed
    • Strategic Planning Recommendation: Exec Council recommended that we get started on updating the strategic plan. I suggest we get a cross-cutting committee together to do the strategic plan. I recommend:
      • Representative from the Board (Chairperson)
      • Rep from technical networking committee (e.g., Michael)
      • Rep from research advisory board (Scott Meyer)
      • Rep from representative council (e.g., Beth Chancellor)
      • Rep from gpnGrid (amy apon or gordon springer or david swanson)
      • Rep from bioinformatics
      • Rep from K20 (e.g., Randy Stout, Bill Giddings, someone from North Dakota)

January, 2007

  1. GPN Projects
    • Bioinformatics: January efforts are continuation of efforts to make computing resources broadly available to bio researchers around GPN
    • Collaborative Middleware/GPNgrid: Workshop to be held Feb 2-3 in Lawrence
    • Human Language Technology: Final report to NSF; joint proposal between KU, KSU being developed; anticipate participation of researchers in Arkansas, NE, ND
    • Networking Research: I have been communicating with them and they seem to be dormant for the time being
  2. GPN Groups
  3. Other
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