G'day Derek and All I have been meaning to reply to this email for some time now, but have been caught up with a number of things.
Firstly, I must concur with most of the other comments in regards that for my perspective, AG usage is increasing. If I may voice my opinion, I thought I would provide some perspective from my Australian point of view and also from a QA and install guide perspective as well. * A point of note that occurs to me is that the AG is no longer considered a TOY or a research experiment, rather than a tool that gets used in a production environment, hence people no longer "play" with the technology, rather they implement and use it.. * Secondly, I know of a number of research groups who are funding within Australia their own Access Grids (10+ sites) for the sole purpose of research, teaching and collaboration. * Thirdly, I am seeing an increase in the number of collaborative teaching's across multiple institution. (Example, we have 2 classes a term for a particulate cross institution subject.) * I would also say that a number of sites no longer regularly sit in a Venue's Lobby (Hence the possible belief that people are no longer using it), rather they are in regular sessions, or have formed their own niche or internal groups and have become less visible. A simple example that I am seeing, is a number of internal AG's purposely build for a single institution. * On a QA perspective, I have had a number of emails informing me that they are in the process of building a number of sites and are interested in the QA process. * I have also seen institutions that have had an AG for a number of years, building additional ones, which giving the institution has had previous experience, doesn't advertise the fact. Overall I would say the use of the AG is ever increasing, but it is no longer a global group, but rather AG users have began splitting up into their own niche groups for a variety of purposes. Anyway, that's just my 2 cents worth. Cheers, Jason. As a side note, I think these issues are making it ever more important to have a single location for AG related topics, ie accessgrid.org. As the AG community begins to diversify and begin forming there own internal groups... It is ever more important in my opinion for a single point of contact for AG related topics. -----Original Message----- From: Derek Piper [mailto:dcpi...@indiana.edu] Sent: Friday, 5 January 2007 5:25 AM To: ag-t...@mcs.anl.gov Subject: [AG-TECH] Fading AG usage? Hi all, I've been part of the AG community for a while now, nearly 3 years and over that time I've not seen a lot of growth in the number of sites that we interface with for AccessGrid meetings. Quite oppositely I have seen sites that were good AG participants fall into 'disrepair' through lack of funding and site expertise. A bit of a devil's advocate question, but is AccessGrid usage declining? Is AccessGrid on the way out? I've seen people turn to things such as Polycom for meetings rather than have AccessGrid meetings. I'm curious to learn of other points of view on this. Derek -- Derek Piper - dcpi...@indiana.edu - (812) 856 0111 IRI 323, School of Informatics Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
