[AG-TECH] Shutdown of Argonne Access Grid services

[John I. Quebedeaux, Jr]

I 2nd, third, etc. this Brian's message.

I too remember the meadow, the moo, AG1, etc. and all the fine helpful
people (in no particular order!): Ariella, Jennifer, Julie, Brian, Ivan,
Tom(s), Nancy?, Jeremy, Jimmy, Paul, Piers, Doug, Gurcharan, Derek, Cindy,
Paul, Ron, Many, Darin, Brian, Michael(s), Ed, Andrew(s), Jeonghoon, Jim &
Nathan, Dan, Douglas, Mike, Robert & Eric, Rhys, Monika, Jason, Christoph,
and all those I somehow missed - i'm sure there were many many more who made
this a successful in just being available, responding on the list, in the
meadow, etc. etc. to make this successful for the rest of us.  I could
probably list every name in the alphabet, but those here will recognize
yourself or those who have moved on I think. But truly a GLOBAL Access Grid
community. I have contacts all over the world today - from Alaska to Korea
to Australia and everywhere in between and all have been exceptional
contacts, both professional and friend.

The Access Grid retreats helped to cement these connections as well as the
Super Computing Conferences over the years. SC Global, etc. I feel fortunate
to have been a marginal part of it and yes, my "AG" ipod wakes me every
morning with a new song that has an inscription on it for being part of that
community. Again thanks!

Worthy note: Louisiana has made use of this extensively as part of an NIH
grant since 2002, and is still doing so today due to a robust network
infrastructure that utilized the Access Grid as one of its example
applications for success. We broke our record of 500 events last year and
this year appears to be about as busy (just the other week we had 4
simultaneous meetings going on on the same day with 4 different groups in
the state). So while for some this may have come and gone, for us it is
entirely a successful medium for human interaction and until I can't run it
anymore, or computing gets to where a interactive experience is more easily
had with portable devices (getting there!) I think we'll be running it for a
little longer (or until the equipment dies).

Kudos to all now and in the past for making this a success. I'm sure many of
you I'll still be in touch with in one form or another I hope! I hope to
continue to run into those I made friends with in the meadow and beyond.

Cheers from the Louisiana Venues (view.lbrn.lsu.edu),

John Q.


> From: Brian Corrie <bcorrie at sfu.ca>
> Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:24:03 -0800
> To: "<ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov> <ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov>" <ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov>
> Cc: "Michael E. Papka" <papka at anl.gov>
> Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] Shutdown of Argonne Access Grid services
> 
> Hi Tom, the Argonne AG Team (past and present), and the AG Community,
> 
> The end of an era!
> 
> I remember the first time I visited Argonne and there were all these odd
> characters chatting with each other using this thing called a MUD,
> always on line, always connected. Ahh, the meadow!
> 
> The AG was a vision that embodied connecting the global research
> community, and is still actively used 15 or so years later... That is
> impressive! The AG community was always connected, always on line, way
> before that was cool... heck, even before it was possible any other way.
> 
> Many thanks to the Argonne group and the rest of the AG Community. I
> consider many of you my colleagues and friends and I am sure my
> collaborations with many of you will continue on for many more years...
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Brian
> 
> On 3/1/2012 9:51 AM, Thomas Uram wrote:
>> Access Grid community:
>> 
>> The Access Grid was created nearly 14 years ago here at Argonne National
>> Laboratory, as an open source alternative to the proprietary
>> videoconferencing systems of the day. Our goal was to build the
>> videoconferencing equivalent of Linux: a foundation for collaboration to
>> which anyone could contribute, and from which everyone would benefit. We
>> believe that the Access Grid has achieved this goal by supporting countless
>> scientific and administrative conferences in academia and research.
>> 
>> The team at Argonne maintains several servers and services to support the
>> Access Grid, and can no longer continue these services. We are drafting a
>> transition plan to support the still active Access Grid community. The
>> current plan includes the following steps, which will be taken over the next
>> 3 months; services will continue until June 1, 2012, when they will become
>> unavailable.
>> 
>> € Source code will be migrated to a public repository (e.g. Google code,
>> SourceForge)
>> € The Argonne Venue Server and associated services (Jabber, Bridge Registry)
>> will be turned off
>> € The AG-Dev Certificate Authority will stop issuing certificates
>> € The accessgrid.org web site will be turned off
>> € AG-related mailing lists will be migrated to a public forum (e.g. Google
>> Groups)
>> 
>> Thank you for all your support and involvement over the years,
>> 
>> The Access Grid developers
>> 
>> (You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to one of the
>> Access Grid mailing lists, either ag-tech, ag-users, or ag-dev)
>>