Collaborative Expedition Workshop #40, May 17, 2005 at NSF    (2PVF)

Building Discernment Across Communities: Seeing Through Complexity Together    (2PVG)

DRAFT AGENDA    (2PVH)

Purpose/ Description    (2PVI)

How are new collaboration norms and civic tools broadening how societies create, preserve, and act on "shared meaning" across boundaries? As communities organize to achieve the creativity and responsiveness demanded by complex national challenges, what will the net-centric, build-out of new forms of public association, solution envisioning, and credible agreements look like? Historically, the evolution of notation systems (language, music, books, architecture, mathematics, money, etc.) contributed significantly to broad social progress. Are we experiencing a formal notation breakthrough in data and information-sharing? Can we accelerate agreements around stable representations of complex information, augmented by web packaging and "network effects" to more effectively work together in large, complex settings?    (2PY5)

How can collaborative prototyping around a highly leveraged use case/ national scenario prepare us for the shared meaning and common understanding that is a pre-requisite for strategic actions around:    (2PY6)

  1. better appreciation of our relationship to wholes – institutions, organizations, and multi-sector governance;    (2PVK)
  2. use of our influence to better cooperate and compete as part of those wholes; and    (2PVL)
  3. better control of our separate resources for higher value results with others and the whole?    (2PVM)

The President's Management Agenda requires all federal agencies to transform the roles and relationships among their people, processes, and technology in order to become a citizen-centered government. The PMA emphasizes bringing value and results to citizens, businesses, and government workers by "reducing the burden" and producing measurable improvement. The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) is emerging as an important collaborative organizing process to promote the delivery of effective, efficient services. FEA Reference Models serve as catalysts for foresight and discernment around improved mission and business performance, including data and information-sharing.    (2PVN)

/AdditionalContextualBackground - from the Network of Communities of Practice    (2PVO)

/VenueLogistics_2005_05_17    (2PVP)

Attendees    (2PVQ)

1. Agenda    (2PVS)

8:30 a.m. - Check-in, Lunch Order ($7.00/person) and Coffee    (2PVT)

8:45 a.m. - Welcome and Introduction - SusanTurnbull, GSA, Co-Chair, Emerging Technology Subcommittee (AIC) and Co-Chair, Social Economic and Workforce Implications of IT Coordinating Group, NITRD, AIC Representative, Data Reference Model WG    (2PVW)

and Information and Communications Technology R&D in the U.S. Federal Government - Suzi Iacono, Ph.D., Information Technology Research (ITR) Program, Collaborative Systems, CISE International Coordinator'''    (2QLK)

9:00 a.m. - Bridging Distance in Collaborations: Lessons Learned from a Broad Look at Collaborations in Science and Engineering and the Corporate World, Judith S. Olson, Richard W. Pew Professor of Human Computer Interaction, Professor of School of Information, Ross School of Business, and the Department of Psychology, University of Michigan    (2PW5)

Abstract: Many organizations today find value in connecting people who are not co-located so that they can work together. Corporations frequently refer to this kind of work organization as “virtual collocation.” In science and engineering, these environments are often referred to as “collaboratories,” implying laboratories without walls. At the University of Michigan, my colleagues and I have been involved over the past decade in supporting the development of some of these environments and, more recently, in identifying and collecting data on nearly 200 US-based collaboratories. From these investigations, we have extracted lessons learned, and have embodied them in a Theory of Remote Collaboration (TORC) and in a series of practical questions called “the Collaboration Wizard,” which can evaluate collaboration readiness. The key elements of collaboration readiness are not only technical (i.e., having the right technology to support the work), but are also and, perhaps primarily, social (i.e., having common ground, not assigning tightly coupled work to distant locations, and being technically ready). I will provide examples of how the theory works, and illustrate the Wizard.    (2QLD)

In Light of these Findings, How are We Building Collaboration Readiness and Discernment? Key Workshop Questions:    (2Q04)

  1. How can multiple Communities of Practice discover and organize around common mission needs to build shared understanding?    (2Q00)
  2. How can shared understanding around several select, urgent cross-boundary use cases be accelerated?    (2Q01)
  3. How is collaborative prototyping around emerging technology potential supporting the evolution of the Federal Enterprise Architecture's Data Reference Model?    (2Q02)
  4. How can the FEA Reference Model Ontology and related tools evolve to provide the common frame of reference needed to support diverse communities tuning up together around their information sharing capacities?    (2Q03)

10:00 a.m. - The Evolution of the Data Reference Model: Elements of Prescription and Description - MikeDaconta, DHS, Meta Data Program Manager, Meta Data Center of Excellence and Lead Agency, DRM WG    (2PZ4)

10:30 a.m. - BREAK    (2PW8)

11:00 a.m. - Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP), BrandNiemann, SICoP Chair, EPA    (2PZ5)

Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Model Ontology developed by GSA as catalyst for innovation and competition; SICoP is leading socialization and CoP review.    (2Q2B)

12:00 - noon - Industry Advisory Council's Enterprise Architecture Shared Interest Group: Collaborative Approach to Addressing Needs Common to Government and Industry, John Dodd, Chair, Emerging Technology Shared Interest Group    (2QLL)

12:20 a.m. - 1:20 p.m. - Networking Lunch    (2PWB)

1:20 a.m. - Chief Architects Forum (CAF): Where We are with the EA Glossary and Where We are Going , IraGrossman, Chair    (2PWA)

1:40 p.m. - W3C Web Acessibility Initiative Use of Collaborative Road Mapping to Solve Access to Script Enabled Web Applications, RichSchwerdtfeger, Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist, Emerging Technologies, Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board    (2PY4)

2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m - BREAK    (2PWE)

2:45 p.m. - Who is Here? Who is Missing? Reflections from Participants...Introduction to emerging tools for collaborative prototyping around distributed information integration    (2PX1)

4:00 p.m. - ADJOURN    (2PX2)

2. Collaborative Expedition Workshop Series Background    (2PX3)

The Collaborative Expedition workshops serve individuals and policy-makers from all sectors: government, business, and non-government organizations to practice an emerging societal form that advances realization of the citizen-centric government goal of the President’s Management Agenda. Each workshop organizes participation around a common purpose, larger than any institution, including government. By learning how to appreciate multiple perspectives around the potentials and realities of this larger “purpose”, subsequent actions of individuals representing many forms of expertise, can be expressed more effectively in their respective settings. Workshop sponsors, including, GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions, the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the Federal CIO Council and National Coordination Office of the Interagency Committee on IT R&D (Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development (SEW) Coordinating Group) value this “frontier outpost” to open up quality conversations, augmented by information technology, that leverage the collaborative capacity of united and diverse Americans seeking to discover, frame, and act on national potentials.    (2PX4)

A key finding of the past year, is the need to apply emerging technologies (web services, grid computing, and semantic web) to tune up the innovation pipeline with better linkages among business incubators (state economic development programs), innovation diffusion networks (SBIR, angel investors, etc.) and business intelligence centers with quality information about e-government and e-commerce gaps. Many of the agile business components surfacing in the small business innovation world are not easily discovered by e-government managers, resulting in lost or delayed opportunities for both parties.    (2PX5)

3. Workshop Archives, Collaborative Pilots, and Related Resources    (2PX6)

Formal Taxonomies for the U.S. Government    (2PW6)

Semantic Interoperability, Ontology and Their Potential for Federal Information Sharing'''    (2PYZ)

4. Upcoming Events    (2PXJ)

Some notes from RalphHodgson    (2QNZ)

I promised the following during today's meeting:    (2QO3)

  1. Social Bookmarking - some of my public bookmarks - http://del.icio.us/ralphtq    (2QO2)
  2. NIIIP - A link to the "National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols". Of interest for its work on interoperability in manufacturing    (2QO0)
  3. CDIF - CASE Data Interchange Format. This was an initiative for exchanging schemas between CASE tools (read systems) that had little adoption. I draw your attention to the way Entities, Relationships and Attributes are defined. Why did it not get adopted? Take a look at http://www.metamodel.com/oopsla98-cdif-workshop/. The list of contributions indicates the implications of building a new standard - many things have to be sorted out. In here, lies the reason for the failure to be adopted.    (2QO5)
  4. IRDS ANSI Information Resource Dictionary System. IRDS was a standards effort that also did not have wide adoption. See also http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=7885.7888    (2QO6)
  5. Example of a FOAF file rendered through an XSLT script (view source to see the RDF) - http://www.topquadrant.com/people/rhodgson/foaf.xml    (2QO1)

Notes from MarkFrautschi    (2QUA)

  1. Joanne Twining Williams Ph.D. Dissertation on Collaboratories.    (2QUB)