[AG-TECH] Creating New Collaborative Opportunities on the AG

[Allan Spale]

Hello,

I was pondering about how to increase AG usage at EVL, when I came up with
an idea.  What if there was a one or two day session that lasted all day
where there was an exposition of all things AG over the AG.  The two
primary goals of this exposition would be the following.  

First, indicate the current uses of the AG for end-users (unlike the AG
Retreat which I think is more geared for technical and AG development
people).  There could be many seminar sessions about what the AG can do
for different user groups such as distributed classrooms, scientific
visualization, general usage, etc.  This would also be a good venue for
panel sessions discussing AG usage, future development areas, etc.

Second, provide an exposition floor type of venue which is already
provided in part using the Institution Lobby and the Institution-related
venues.  Sites would broadcast their "booths" from their Institution venue
and hold demos or just talk to people "passing through".  This "exposition
floor" would be used for individual sites to indicate what their
institution's strengths are (in research, strong curriculum areas, etc.),
current collaborative efforts using the AG, and prospective collaborative
efforts (i.e. sites that are looking to establish collaborations).
Basically, this would be a good opportunity for people at various sites to
do information gathering of what the AG is used for and find new
collaboration opportunities.

I think that this type of event should attract current sites and the
people working on the AG, but I would also think it would be good to
invite other groups from the sites that are not involved with the AG
(at universities, this could be other colleges that might benefit having
the AG as a collaboration medium for research or for teaching) to show the
possibilities of having an AG.  Another possible group of people that
could come are people interested in collaboration technology.  They could
attend by visiting the nearest AG site in order to participate in the
event.

Thanks for your time.


Allan
EVL at UIC
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