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Workshop Call
Introduction
On October 31, 1994, a one-day workshop will be held at
National Science Foundataion (NSF)
headquarters to focus on ways in which the
World-Wide Web (WWW)
and its viewers/browsers such as Mosaic
can be used and enhanced in support of the research communities supported by the
Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems (IRIS),
in support of the computer science research community as a
whole, and in support of NSF's dissemination of program information
to the research community and the public. The workshop will involve
Principal Investigators (PI's) funded by each of the IRIS program areas,
other WWW/Mosaic resource individuals, and IRIS staff as observers. The workshop will be chaired by Dr. James Foley, director of the Graphics, Visualization & Usability (GVU) Center.
A report summarizing action recommendations will be prepared and disseminated.
In the following, we use the abbreviation WWW to refer to the
collection of information represented on the World-Wide Web, the
networking infrastructure which makes possible access to this
information, and the set of viewers (typified by Mosaic) which have
been developed for accessing the informatin on the web.
The WWW has captured the imagination, attention, energy, and
resources of many individuals and groups, and has become the second
largest consumer of Internet bandwidth. The amount of information
accessible via the Web grows at the rate of megabytes per day. The
computer science research community regularly disseminates
information about research projects and research centers via WWW
pages. Distributed research projects sometimes use WWW pages as a
project notebook. Students investigate potential graduate programs
by browsing through the web. The uses of the web seem never-ending,
and the set of users and information, ever-growing.
Purpose
WWW presents many opportunities for the communication and
collaboration within the research communities supported by IRIS as
well as for the general computer science research community. In
addition, the Web provides an important new way for NSF to make
information available to the research community and to the public.
The proposed workshop is designed to provide IRIS with a set of
recommendations for planning purposes, falling in the following three
categories:
- Recommendations concerning use of WWW as an experimental platform for
collaborative efforts in the IRIS and computer science research
communities, including potential enhancements to WWW in support of this.
- Recommendations concerning research which NSF in general and IRIS in
particular should consider undertaking with respect to the WWW, its
accessibility, and its usability.
- Recommendations on NSF information delivery to the public and research
communities via WWW.
Ways to think about the above three questions, and hence to categorize your
comments, include:
- How might the research community supported by IRIS leverage on methods
of access, search, and navigation in the WWW to improve communications
amongst themselves, and with NSF?
- What should the IRIS research programs consider for NSF page content
that would most help grow their investigative communities and be most
useful in dissemination and retrieval of NSF-related science and technology
information?
- What issues are there regarding coordinating with information sources
from the professional societies of the investigative communities that could
be addressed via mosaic-like mechanisms, and what role should NSF play in
such an activity?
- What format, linkage, or content guidelines, if any, should be provided
PIs to whose pages NSF pages point in order to enhance the usefulness of
the pages?
- Are there any special "viewers" that might be of particular help to the
CISE and IRIS investigative communities, and how should they be developed
and supported?
- How can we deal with potential information overload in the research
communities (e.g., intelligent agents to search/filter information for
specific investigative communities) and what experimental research, if any,
should be considered on these topics?
- What research should be conducted in the area of user interfaces
(viewers) to the WWW, in order to enhance the accessibility of the
information? What is the role of information visualization techniques?
Natural language? Speech? User adaptability? Handicapped users?
- How can we leverage on WWW (and NSF) for education and training of
future researchers and PIs?
Incidentally, topics which will NOT be the focus of the workshop include:
- Policy, privacy and approval issues at NSF.
- Information delivery technology and method considerations within NSF.
- Cost of WWW or Internet services.
Workshop Schedule:
Morning:
8:30 Coffee
8:55 Welcome - Jim Foley
9:00 Introduction and NSF Objectives for Workshop - Y.T. Chien
9:10 WWW activities within IRIS - J. Hestenes
9:15 Current Status and Near-term Plans for Mosaic -
Larry Brandt (NSF), Joe Hardin (NCSA)
10:30 Questions and Answers regarding current and near-term
capabilities and plans
10:45 Break
11:15 Interactive Systems - Moderated by O. Garcia
John M. Carroll, Virginia Tech, carroll@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
Jim Foley, Georgia Tech, foley@cc.gatech.edu
11:45 Robotics and Machine Intelligence - Moderated by H. Moraff
Bob Berwick, MIT, berwick@ai.mit.edu
Rod Grupen, U Mass, grupen%rabbit@cs.umass.edu
Afternoon:
1:30 Knowledge Models & Cognitive Systems - Moderated by L. Reeker
V. Subrahmanian, U. of Maryland, vs@cs.umd.edu
1:45 Information Technology & Organizations - Moderated by S. Chen
Tom Mitchell, CMU, tom.Mitchell@cs.cmu.edu
2:00 Database & Expert Systems - Moderated by Maria Zemankova/Ron Ashany
Avi Silberschatz, Bell Labs, silber@research.att.com
Thomas Imielinski, Rutgers, imielinski@cs.rutgers.edu
2:30 Break
2:45 Discussion, organization of ideas, organization of short writing
assignments for final report - Moderated by Jim Foley
5:00 Adjourn
Please direct your comments or questions about the workshop to James Pitkow
pitkow@cc.gatech.edu, with Subject: NSF-WS.
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