Last post...

...for now that is...

I am sure that I forgot to write about many things that I will remember later...

This morning I packed to fly home.
I will leave for the airport at noon.

At the NCeSS conference this morning there was a panel session on the future of e-Social Science.

The presentation of Tony Hey reminded me vaguely of the presentations of myExperiment and Carol Goble in the months before.
Apparently Web 2.0 is it...

I better get going.
Only 1 cab ride and two flights to go. (one of which is a United Airlines one... )

Pray for me!

Saving the best for last...

Adventures on Monday the 8th of October, Ann Arbour MI.

The last full day of work in Ann Arbour has proved to have been the most valuable.

In the morning I caught up on my emails and contacts. I also finally wrote some more blogs.

I checked the Poster sessions and ran into an interesting folksonomy tool project of the Policy grid. This might come in useful for CREW.

I attended a panel session on Funding possibilities in e-Social Science.
The panel consisted of some interesting figures:

• Frank Kuhn from the European Science Foundation
  
• Jeremy Neathey – ESRC
• David Lightfoot – NSF
• Diana Rhoten - NSF OCI
  

The NSF side was very interesting. There are some changes on the wind involving the Bush administration. Diana gave me her presentation on Funding 2.0, in case anyone is interested.

I had a lovely lunch with Chuck Severance and the Agora team at Zingermans. A famous deli I had heard about at Neal'sYard Cheese shop in London.

I got the sandwich #2. Reuben, hand cut rye bread with corned beef, cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing. Do not forget to order both pickles, young and old! Ha! And the Hibiscus Ice Tea and hand pressed Lemonade is Glorious!

In the afternoon I didnt attend sessions but had the following meetings:

14.00 Diana Rhoten, NSF OCI

15.00 Peter Knoop, Michigan University, SAKAI
Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.

There will be more news about Sakai soon.

16.00 Mike Elledge, Michigan State University, FLUID project.
Fluid is a worldwide collaborative project to help improve the usability and accessibility of community open source projects with a focus on academic software for universities. We are developing and will freely distribute a library of sharable customizable user interfaces designed to improve the user experience of web applications.

Mike updated me on their latest hackfest in Toronto, which Peter also attended.
I am very interested to see the developments in the User Interface level.

In the evening we had a Banquet dinner with a wonderful speech by Carole Goble. She told some very amusing stories from the field. I hope to get a copy as it is quite enlightening on the survival skills of Computer Scientists, Social Scientists etc. Montagues and Capulets to say the least! Ha. To have a taste, check her slides on Slideshare.

After all that hard work we went to have a beer at the Ann Arbour Brewery. Good old English Pints Yay!

Working on a Sunday...

Adventures on Sunday the 7th of October, NCeSS conference, Ann Arbour Mi.

On sunday the NCeSS conference took off in the early morning hours.

It was good to see familiar faces from the UK academia.
So I was happy to catch up with Dave de Roure, Mike Daw (both of which should be informed about some possibilities at Mellon), Meik Poshen, Alex Voss, Rob Procter and many many more. (most of them groggy from jetlag...)

The conference sessions I visited that day:

• Mapping international activities in e-Social Science by Alex Voss.
• Tutorial on the Globus toolkit by Lee Liming.

I will spare you the details of the full workshops, but both were extremely useful.
The international session gave me more insight in the projects in Taiwan, US, New Zealand and Australia. (getting me new contacts for VRE's)
The session on Globus refreshed my knowlegde about the toolkit.

In the evening the conference really took off with the opening Key Note by Dan Atkins of the NSF. I have a copy of the presentation in case anyone is interested.
It also allowed me to finally meet Diana Rhoten, and we agreed to take some time the next day to catch up.

In short a full working day, getting into gear for the busy day tomorrow!

PS. Ann arbour is a wonderful place.
Big enough to have diversity, small enough to see in only two days. :)

Sounds familiar?

Adventures on Saturday the 6th of October on a train between Chicago and Ann Arbour.

Most of Saturday the 6th was spent on a train.
Originally travel would only take 5 hours, because of signal failure on the track it too a full work day.

Actually one of the most pleasant workdays in a long while...

The trees were colouring nicely, the chair was comfortable and the soft and old fashioned sound of the train horn made me feel quite at home.

Lesson:
If you want to have some peace on an Amtrak train, make sure you are in the back of the train. You will not hear the horn and, as most platforms are too short for the entire length, the compartment will me entirely empty.

The windy city...

Adventures on Thurday the 4th and Friday the 5th of October, Chicago Il.

The flight from La Guardia to Chicago was one of the most comfortable ones I had in a long while. The landing was smooth and quick. Something I could also say about my stay in 'The Windy City'.

The weather has been amazing, 89 degrees, which is over 30 celcius!

The city was in a complete buzz over the upcoming marathon on Sunday. Regretfully it has been so warm that one of the runners actually died. 5 are still in critical condistion in the hospital.
The combination of the heat and 80% humidity were simply too much.

My meeting with the University of Chicago went well.
I met Chad Kainz at the SLATE conference, hosted by the University.

SLATE
This conference is a meeting held for the local Blackboard users community.
It was fun to meet the people involved in learning environments. The buzz of voluntary innovation is always very inspiring. Apparently it is one of the biggest in the country.

I even won a USB/MP3 player in a raffle... (even if it is just because English Business cards are slightly larger than American ones.... ) Thanks guys!

BAMBOO
The reason for talking to Chad Kainz was to learn more about the Bamboo project.
At the moment this project is in the process for funding by the Mellon Foundation.
So I can not say too much about it yet.
Globally I can say that they will be attempting to build an interinstitutional and interframework e-framework for E-learning, E-Research and E-Administration.

They will keep me posted on the progress.

Reese's
Ann I have found them!

They are glorious....
Yay Halloween Orange.




Fox & Obel
Before leaving Chicago, I was walking around to buy some food for the train ride to Ann Arbour. I ran into the most wonderful deli/foodmarket/diner.For any foody ever going to Chicago. Make sure the stop over at Fox & Obel! You can find them on McGlurg.





Glorious Time...
Anyway I have had a glorious time in Chicago... Highly recommended!
(and great fun to get the full perspective of a Private University)

Have you ever seen a university in the UK with a building like this in a prime location?
Who said that academia wasn't commercial?

Update - NSF

From my colleague James Farnhill I received some interesting info.

Please find the list of NSF calls (some related to e-Infrastructure and VRE's) here.
Very useful!

AND, I seem to get another chance...
Dan Atkins will be the Opening Key Note speaker at the NCeSS conference in Ann Arbour tomorrow.

Lucky that Amtrak took me there today.

:)

Ha!

The Big Fruit.

Adventures on Wednesday evening, the 3rd of October, New York City.

Yes, well. Everyone is always so hilarious about New York.
I have now found out it is mainly the 'Niu Yahwkers' themselves that love this place. Most Americans try to avoid ever coming here.

The distinct: 'Haw ya doin' was like in the films, apart from that most of the rest was even more so. Smelly noisy and rude!
It could also be related to the fact that it is a 86 F with 300% humidity over here for the past week...
Anyway enough about the town and people.

After coming into Penn Station I met with Jonathan Markow and Bill Thompson of JA-SIG/uPortal near the station.

After a brief introduction on JISC and my programme, we talked mainly about the uPortal and JA-SIG organisation. uPortal has come into a new era of leadership of Jonathan.
It seems to be rather well planned out.
The big news:
uPortal version 3.0 will come out at the end of this year!
For more information, you can keep up to date on their site.

I spent less than 24 hours in NYC. I only had time to walk around early in the morning on 5th Avenue. Had a look round St. Patricks Cathedral and peeked into the MoMa.
Managed to withstand the temptation to buy a hot-dawg. (as the breakfast in the Holiday Inn was devastatingly bad...) Got some fresh fruit smoothy instead and took a cab to La Guardia...

Off course the cabby tried to rip me off, luckily he backed off when he found out I was Dutch. Ha!

Lessons learnt about NYC:

• it is not my kind of place, London is a 1000x cooler. (In every way)
  
• it all revolves around money
• Holiday Inn in the center is not worth the money.
  
• Keep an eye on your wallet.
  
• Visit the MoMa.
  
• Jonathan Markow is a Jazz Pianist.
  

But hey, if you are really into living in the fast lane, NYC is the place for you!
Go get 'en tiger!