Cyber Infrastructure (UCLA - July 2006)

It's been almost 2 months but better late than never. I managed to be at 2 of the 3 main Hastac events planned for the Summer 2006 (Thinking Through New Media and the Cyber Infrastructure Institute); unfortunately I could not make it to Technospheres! Here are a few lines about the Summer Institute at UCLA (UCHRI). For me it was all about "demistifying". We started by addressing terms that we all use but may not quite understand such as "standards", or "metadata". We visited the "big machines" and realized they are just that: big machines. It was fun to see where projects X Y and Z physically "lied". I think it was impossible not to feel engaged with *all* the presentations. They reflected the very core idea of interdisciplinarity that HASTAC advocates. The split between the Humanities people and the Tech (Engineers, Computer Science) people was very clear at times - the best moments of the event, I thought.:) So as a post-event through it is interesting that while HASTAC is precisely about promoting collaboration between different disciplines, we can still feel cleavages and sometimes the edges are rough. But that is where the challenge lies.:) If there is one things that I believe could have been different is the Lab component, the practical work. I think we should dealt with a bit in greater depth. I understand the option of having us work with manageable chunks of data... but on the other hand it's difficult to grasp the true interest and nature of the Grid technologies with anything less than very large collection. I would also like to have seen specific uses of the GRID for video - namely video processing (rather than storage) and am still unclear if in fact we can use the Grid power to liberate our "other" machines to deal with more creative tasks. As for the organization, it was incredible (the food was amazing) and it was good to see a mix of folks there. I spotted Lev Manovich a couple of days. Larry Smarr's presentation was very inspiring. And Kevin Franklin did an awesome job. Thanks Kevin and everyone else! Just my 2 cents... Ana Boa-Ventura