3-8-07 Minutes

Attending

• Matt (taking minutes), Greg (taking minutes), Stan, James, Amit, Stefan, Bill, Joe, Bob

Agenda and Discussion

Discussion of milestones and responsibilities

• Distinction quickly emerged between intrinsic and extrinsic collaboration

• Examples of intrinsic collaboration: sharing data sets, system states, annotations

• Examples of extrinsic collaboration: putting data into formats usable by Zotero (using the UnAPI, accumulate "MONK chunks" within a Zotero library), ManyEyes, TAPoR

• Stefan suggested a model whereby we expose MONK functionality through Web services; rather than MONK developing one-off tools, we can use TAPoR tools (for example) to analyze data; MONK would be providing fast results for comparative purposes

• Stan raised comparison as rubric for thinking about tools and applications

• General agreement on responsibilities and first milestones (Stan suggested feed formats belong under use cases)

Discussion of resources and assignment of roles

• Very speculative, since project roles are still emerging for everyone across the board; many here see themselves in "learning" or observation mode; nonetheless, the following tentative roll assignments:

• Implementation (Amit, Joe, James, Bill); leverages their work in the Data Cell

• Design (Stan, Stefan, Bob); Stefan in particular sees himself as an "outreach" (for want of a better term) coordinator with other text analysis projects, making sure we don't overlook opportunities or duplicate effort; Bob wants to ensure that we are drawing on available resources and expertise at NW

• Evaluation (John); no clear sense of what this will entail, as of yet

• Documentation (Matt, Greg); includes public Web presence and minutes for the group

• Matt expressed some concern that only he and Greg saw Collaboration Cell as their primary focus within MONK; various people pointed out that both roles and levels of effort will adjust themselves once the shape of the project as a whole becomes clearer, and that Collaboration is also a "phase 2" application, building on foundations from other Cells

• Bill described some of the prior work on annotation at NW; WordHoard allows users to attach text annotations to arbitrary spans of text, then share these with other members of an annotation group (including security model); want to be able to attach annotations to logical structures as well (paragraphs, divs, etc.)

Survey assignments

• Using the "Snapshot of Social Software" document provided by Stan, we will survey existing social software applications with an eye towards those that look particularly promising for MONK

• The following assignments, based on the categorization in the "Snapshot" document (which we're using only as a starting point, people should absolutely explore beyond the resources listed there): Communication/Networking (Joe, Amit); Organization (Greg, James); Collaborative Learning Tools (Bob, Stefan); Social Networking (Stan, Bill). Matt will explore the particular case of Second Life.

• Reports to take the form of pointers to most promising resources in each category, with a brief explanation of why. Due in 4 weeks, April 5.

Future Meetings

• Thursdays, biweekly, 11:30 Eastern, 10:30 Central, 9:30 Mountain; next call March 22

Public Web site

• Public face of the MONK project (news, demos, PR, etc.)
• Wordpress blog, which will function as a simple CMS, including collaborative editing

Blue Sky

• Stefan: synchronous applications, like whiteboarding
• Matt: MONK in Second Life

Outcomes and Action Items

• Work on public Web site to begin (Greg, Amit)

• Survey assignments, due April 5 (all)

• Future meetings scheduled, next one March 22