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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 30, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 26
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Special Features:
GGF8: OTHER COMMUNITIES COMING TO
GRID
by J.S. Hurley, Editor-at-Large
The Global Grid Forum (GGF) held its eighth conference this week
(June 23 - 25, 2003) here in beautiful Seattle (Truthfully, the weather was
excellent!). Many discussions took place concerning how the concept of the
Grid has changed since its early inception. In its early phase, the Grid was
inexorably linked to harvesting unused cycles. This premise, in fact, became a
dilemma beyond the Academic research community for many users (especially
those within the business sector) for which access to cycles was not a major
issue. As such, although some of the benefits of Grids have remained largely
undisputed, the perceived narrow applicability limited serious discussion
beyond the traditional applied science research community. As Grids have
evolved, so have the potential benefits and applications for which they can be
used and, more importantly, how they may impact society.
The business community has increasingly been attracted to Grids as it seeks
to
optimize its return on investment (ROI), while improving its ability to
address a variety of different applications. At the same time, we have seen
growing interest in communities beyond the business and applied science
communities. Grids are also gaining momentum in non-traditional, applied
science disciplines such as Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). With
the support of the Global Grid Forum, members of the HASS community held the
first Grid-related Humanities, Arts and Social Science Grid-based Birds of a
Feather (BoF) of its kind at this conference. Their underlying agenda is to
assess grid technologies and how it may facilitate or provide ubiquitous
access to the volumes of HASS data. The concept of the Grid has finally been
seriously undertaken by the HASS community who now appreciates the Grid as a
potential major asset in solving many of its applications. (see GRIDtoday
article, HASTAC: THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF EMERGING SCIENCE AND TECH, in this
issue)
Over the next few issues, we will present some of the new developments and
engage discussions with many of the major HASS practitioners of Grids. We
will look at a variety of different communities on issues of Education, the
Workforce, and National Security with emphasis on roles played in the
development of the Grid in non-traditional applied sciences.
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