SPARC Comments

1
SPARC Comments

• Inspired many things!
• Many Collaboratories
• Analysis of Collaboratories
• Scientists asking for Collaboratories
• Collaboratory-ready instruments/data/institutions

2
SPARC Questions/Comments (2)

• Victim of its (and collaboratories) success
  everyone does it now
• People have unbundled the key features
• Do the simple stuff (data access)
• SPARC seen as slowing down science (never has the
  analysis view du jour?)
• UI/tech issues appear with evolution (or s/w
  doesnt keep pace with expectations?)
• Waiting for tech and social changes to make new
  level economical

3
SPARC Questions

• Access was the driver not integration?
• Have people stopped doing the things SPARC
  provides, or do they have alternates now (was
  rapid response a compelling value or a fad?)
• Good questions get answered regardless of status?
• Did expansion to so many instruments cause a
  lowest-common-denominator approach, or did it add
  too much complexity?
• Or did it expand the user base beyond the size of
  a good chat community?

4
Natural Scale of the Science/Tasks

• If all 300 researchers and all instruments were
  together, how would they organize?
• Right now, the organization is a compromise
  between the scale at which funding works, at
  which teaching is done (departments), at which
  data can be gathered, at which analysis can be
  done, papers can be written, buildings can be
  heated, garbage collected, line management
  performed, etc.
• Did SPARC move people closer to that or farther
  away? (access is community level, view is group
  preference,)

5
Satisfying needs ala Maslo(Hierarchical,
Separable)
Community
Integration
Group Collaboration
Access