[seek-taxon] Re: SEEK - TWG

[Matt Jones]

Hi Jessie,

Yes, we missed you at the meeting, but it did go well.  We had some good 
discussions about where to go, and mainly focused on the development of 
EcoGrid.  Each breakout group had a chance for discussion, and each got 
a little further along on the needs scale.  There is a Wiki page with 
some incomplete notes on it that Jim Beach took at 
http://speciesanalyst.net/seek, and we've all attached our summary 
report slides for each breakout to that page (except KR, which should be 
there soon!).  The Taxon breakout discussed some cool ideas about how to 
use statistical techniques to guess at concepts as a stopgap to the time 
when explicit concept maps can be generated.  Jim can summarize that 
best for you I think.I guess I'll ping him and ask him to summarize it 
for the group -- maybe a conference call is in order for the Taxon WG?

Yes, I saw your email.  It was very thoughtful, as usual.  And I'm glad 
you tried to get things rolling again.  Jim Beach is the lead on the 
Taxon WG, and I will be involved to try to integrate this group with the 
other seek groups.  I will be supervising developers as they get hired, 
and so will be involved that way too.  I think the best thing for you to 
do is to keep in touch with both Jim and me, but mainly through the 
seek-taxon mailing list.  The fact that your subcontract went through 
UNM was just an artifact of the timing during the proposal process, so I 
wouldn't worry about that.

I very much see you as having a specific role in the project, in that 
your expertise in concept-based taxonomies probably exceeds most of the 
other participants.  We are certainly hoping you will contribute that 
experience.  As far as specific deliverables go, there will definitely 
be some, but I think it is up to the taxon WG to decide what they should 
be jointly.  But that is true of all of the people on Taxon.  The way I 
see it, Taxon will have contributions from you, jim, susan, bob, other 
pi's, and the people that are being hired to work with all of you.  The 
working group as a whole should be deciding the work for all of these 
positions.

 From our discussions at UNM, people seemed to like the idea of 
evaluating/contrasting the existing models, and that you and Bob would 
have a big hand in getting that rolling.  I had thought we had decided 
that at our last conference call.  So I think that is still on track as 
a short-term issue.  The document we created from the last taxon meeting 
has been relocated, and is now at:  http://speciesanalyst.net/seek/.  It 
may move again, but we'll get the address nailed down soon.  Hopefully, 
that document will be turned into something that can be checked into a 
formal use-case/specification document into CVS, but for the time being 
I don't think anyone has done the work of completing that document.

We focused a bit on communication and collaboration at the meeting.  We 
had to point out again that the mailing lists exist, and encouraged 
people to start using them instead of sending emails to one another 
individually.  That will help to create the sense that everyone knows 
what is happening.  Another way you can keep in close touch with me and 
others on SEEK is through IRC.  I am there every day, and you can get me 
withing seconds.  IRC is the best way I have found to create a unified 
team from geographically dispersed people.  You can log into 
irc.ecoinformatics.org using an IRC client if you send me your IP number 
so that I can authorize your host.  This communications stuff is mainly 
a problem because it is just getting started, and this group of people 
aren't used to working closely together yet.  We've just have to keep on 
each other and it will improve.

As far as your hiring goes, I'm happy to go along with whatever plan you 
feel is best.  I do, in general, have concerns about hiring small parts 
of people. I generally find that people that have less than about 40% of 
their time dedicated to a project feel no compunction against ignoring 
the project altogether for long stretches of time.  By getting dedicated 
people, we can try to inculcate a "SEEK-centric" mentality that will 
help the project.  Nevertheless, sometimes people with only a little 
available time have the most valuable expertise, and that was the case 
you made.  So, if you feel that the expertise of your colleagues will 
outweigh the negative aspects of their being only partially involved in 
SEEK, then you should feel free to pursue that line.  I was simply 
trying to get people to think about the impact on the project.

The SEEK developers meeting in San Diego is still on, and it will have 
some part of it focused on Taxon.  It will probably be structured as a 
'rolling' meeting, where subgroups meet to do their things and there 
will be some overlap among them, but not everyone will be there the 
whole time.  We talked about an agenda briefly, and Bill and I have a 
todo to get that assembled asap. We'll be in touch soon with the details.

Cheers,
Matt


Kennedy, Jessie wrote:
> Matt, 
> 
> I hope the PIs meeting went well and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to be
> there.
> Were there presentations given with slides available that I could look at?
> Will there be minutes from the meeting? I noticed you've updated the doc.
> repository with the design docs for ecogrid and ams but still don't see
> anything about the taxonomy working group.
> 
> I recently wrote and email to the TWG list and received only one response to
> it, from Bob saying got your message will be in touch soon....
> I've still not heard anything - thought I might hear something after the PIs
> meeting.
> 
> So I'm feeling a bit unsure of what's happening re the TWG and what you're
> expecting of me in the project at the moment and thought that I should speak
> to you as overall project manager. To be honest I'm not sure who I should be
> 'consulting with' on this. Jim as leader of the Taxonomic Working Group,
> Bill as PI of the Institution that I'm subcontracted out of or you as
> project manager.....  It would be good to get this clear. Being the most
> remote from everyone in terms of previously working with you and in terms of
> location I feel that it is important that we find a good way of working and
> progressing things. Are things happening and I just don't know or is nothing
> happening?
> 
> I wanted to talk to you about appointing someone to work with me on SEEK and
> whether or not you saw me having a specific role in the project or not. I
> got the feeling in Washington that you didn't like the idea of me using bits
> of people here to do work on SEEK and wanted to speak to you about that too.
> I've been talking to my Head of Department and we can fund 6mths of a person
> here so I can employ an RA full-time and have him/her working 0.5 time on
> SEEK for the duration of the project - would you prefer that?
> 
> I was also wondering about the upcoming Developers meeting and whether or
> not it is definite and if so should I and my RA if I appoint in time be
> attending? I need to be back in Edinburgh for Friday the 4th but could be
> there for the for the first 3 days.
> 
> Well I'd appreciate your thoughts on what I should be doing - I'm reluctant
> to do anything specific on my own at the moment for SEEK as it seemed at the
> Washington meeting that people wanted to work together rather than go off
> and do things and come back to the group with stuff for discussion.
> 
> Hope to hear from you soon,
> 
> Jessie
> 
> Prof. Jessie B Kennedy
> School of Computing
> Napier University
> Merchiston Campus
> 10 Colinton Road		tel:	+44 (0)131-455-2772
> Edinburgh			fax:   	+44 (0)131-455-2727
> EH10 5DT			mobile:	07974948703
> Scotland			email: 	j.kennedy at napier.ac.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>