All-hands Meeting Scheduled

10.8.02 - When making popcorn the old-fashioned way - on the stove top in a pot with oil - the corn starts to sizzle, then you hear an occasional pop, a few in succession, then progressively more frequent popping until, suddenly, a critical mass is reached and the entire pot starts bouncing around from all the mini explosions going on inside.

"That's exactly what's happening in Calit² now," says director Larry Smarr with a big smile, "Lots and lots of popping."

Compared to a year ago, concludes Smarr at the end of the day-long All-hands Meeting held October 4 at UCI, both campuses are clearly up and running, and their construction plans are all set for earth moving to start within a month.

What are the next steps? More emphasis on collaboration, concludes Smarr, including using collaboration tools such as videoteleconferencing, between the two campuses. "To manage projects as they get larger, we also need to implement project management approaches. We need written projections with timelines and required staffing and equipment for each living lab - all Web-based, of course, so everyone has access to the information and can determine the best ways to work together."

We also need to identify common infrastructure requirements to create Calit² standard modules from which all the living labs can draw.

Because each living lab project will change the way society does business, we need to include social scientists in the projects. This, in fact, was a recommendation from the Calit² Advisory Board when it met in February. UCSD's Sixth College has taken a leadership position in this regard by calling on ethnographers in the Communications Department to study its "explorientation," the three-day, wireless PDA-based orientation for its first class of students last month. Smarr encouraged each attendee to adopt this general principle as "as a homework assignment."

Smarr also pointed to the need for developing a good "help wanted" system to enable the living labs, and projects within those labs, to map needed expertise to real faculty members and students, and needed technologies to potential industrial partners.

For ultimate success, Calit² participants themselves have to live in the future. "We all need to walk the talk," says Smarr. "By using the technologies to discover their up and down sides, we, as an institute, will establish a useful guide-post for next steps."

(See summaries of individual presentations as well as copies of the presentations themselves (PPT and PDF format) at the All-hands Meeting.)