Collaboration tools at Newcastle Caleb Racey

Collaboration past/present practices As  Communication platform  Distributed File system  Versioning repository  Calendaring suite (without a calendar)  Task manager  Backup/archive system Maybe a website  failed CMS experiment  failed forum experiment

Past/present problems is “source of all evil”  Massively over utilized  Co-opted (corrupted) to many causes  The 100meg file problem  The file type problem “I want my.exe”  No identity assurance =  Spam  Phishing  More spam  False positives Websites “Hard to write”  Out of date  Abandoned  One way communication

Past/present Positives “gets job done”  Very low barrier to participation  setup = get address  Usability is good Websites  Visible  Searchable  Durable Enormous demand for collaborative tools  Low expectation = easy to exceed

What we use/want What we presently use Blogs Mailing lists Wikis What we want Calendaring (CalDAV??) WebDAV community file spaces Mod_dav_svn? Suites: Sakai, Mindquarry? IM??

Group Blogs

Sympa mailings list

Mediawiki

Does it work? Benefits:  Simple User interface  Good technology  versioning, recent changes, notification  Trendy  Understandable Federatability  Easy joining process Problems: Interface not simple enough Group info locked away Yet more

What we need Approach Generic platform Loosely coupled collaborative tools Allow behaviour to emerge Group management Reusable across platform Scalable (not.htaccess) Federation aware Group Management User interface Self service By invite By manager with delegation

What we are doing Looking at Grouper to admin collaborative suite Gfivo project: “Grouper to support Federated Identity for Virtual Organizations” JISC funded 2 years National demonstrator Outputs free to HE + FE

Questions Can we wean people off ? Are they aware of their own problems? Do they care about real identity? Is loose coupling something users “get”? Do people only care about access control when it bites them? Good Collaboration is “emergent” from behavior do the tools really matter? Is it just attitude that counts?