Date and time

Thursday, 2 October 2008, 9:00 - 12:30

Description

Registration fees for this workshop are being met by ARCS.  There is no cost to attend; however space is limited. 

The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) has been supporting a wide range of Collaboration Services and Tools which have been allowing researchers, groups and research communities to share ideas and collaborate across organisational boundaries.

This workshop will give an introduction into a number of web based and real-time collaboration tools and services which researchers may find useful for day-to-day collaboration with members of a research team located within an institution or across institutions. Attendees will be shown how a number of these tools work with strong emphasis placed on how these tools can help facilitate communication and collaboration. Attendees will have the opportunity to try out a number of examples themselves, and interact with the workshop staff to discuss how their own use cases could benefit from the tools and services which can be provided.

Who should attend

This workshop would be useful for anyone interested in using or finding out about different collaboration tools which may be useful within their research domain. It will be assumed that attendees have not had any experience with these tools.

Outline

A hands on introduction will be given to a number of services which ARCS is now operating and/or supporting such as:

• EVO – A video conferencing environment, which is particularly suited to desktop or low bandwidth applications.
• AccessGrid – An open source video conferencing and collaboration tool kit, which is great for room to room meetings.
• Sakai – An online collaboration and learning environment, support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.
• Plone and Drupal – A ready-to-run content management system, that provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities, web sites, extranets and intranets.
• Wikis – A way to easily create, edit, and link pages together, to create collaborative websites.

What to bring

To participate in the interactive parts of the workshop, attendees should bring laptops capable of wireless networking, and a web browser. Java 1.5 or later is required for one part of the workshop.

About the presenters

Ashley Wright is a staff member at Queensland University of Technology where he works with the HPC and Research Support group, and coordinates the ARCS Collaboration Services team. He has been working with grid and collaboration technologies for several years. He holds a Bachelor of Information Technology, a Bachelor of Mathematics, both from Queensland University of Technology, and a Graduate Certificate in Applied Finance.

Padric McGee is a staff member of eResearch South Australia where he supports numerous research groups using different video conferencing, as well as visualisation techniques. A particular interest in this latter regard is the development of 3D content in both computer-generated animation and real-life imaging. He holds a PhD in Astrophysics and is a member of the ARCS Collaboration Services Team.

Russell Sim holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from James Cook University. He is a staff member at James Cook University and a member of the ARCS Collaboration Services team where he works on web based collaboration tools, like Plone and Shibboleth. Russell previously worked with the Dataset Acquisition Accessibility & Annotation e-Research Technologies project.

Jason Bell is the main developer and tester of the AG global Quality Assurance program and runs a weekly AG test session for the Asia Pacific region. He has also developed numerous guides, including Linux installation, AG improvements and other miscellaneous documents. He holds a Bachelor of Information Technology (with honours) from Central Queensland University. Jason works at the Central Queensland University and is a member of the ARCS Collaboration Services Team.

Lev Lafayette is a Systems Administrator, starting with the Victorian Partnership of Advanced Computing in September 2007. Prior to VPAC he had worked as a systems administrator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in Timor-Leste and as a computer systems trainer for the Parliament of Victoria. He is an honours graduate from Murdoch University in Politics, Philosophy and Sociology. Lev provides support to the number of technologies used in the ARCS Collaboration Services team.

Simon Diong completed his Bachelor of Science of Information Technology at University of Technology, Sydney. He is a staff member of ac3, and works on various collaboration technologies as part of the ARCS Collaboration Services team.

Leigh Gordon works at the University of Tasmania in the Tasmanian Partnership of Advanced Computing where he coordinates the High Performance Computing facility. He is a RedHat Certified Engineer, and has over 7 years experience in client support and system administration. He is also a member of the ARCS Collaboration Services team.