Collaborative Virtual Workspace
http://www.beopen.com/ossindex/entries/924349135.shtml
http://cvw.mitre.org/cvw/info/ArchOverview.php3
This is what Undersecretary of the Navy Jerry MacArthur Hultin says
about MS-Netmeeting/Wireless Knowledge/Windows-CE technologies:
“I’m going to Microsoft at the end of this month to say to Steve
Ballmer(CEO), ‘You talk about how you create a business group process
system, but I’ll tell you [that] you don’t come close to giving us what
we need,’ ” undersecretary of the Navy Jerry MacArthur Hultin said. He
spoke at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s
West 2000 conference in San Diego.
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/1308-1.html
The Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW) is an office automation
environment that enables people to converse, collaborate,
and interact regardless of their geographic location. CVW establishes
and manages a collection of persistent virtual rooms;
each room incorporates the people, information, and tools appropriate to
a task, operation, or service. CVW users can move
from room to room just as they would in a building, meeting team
members, discovering collaborators, entering group
discussions, providing knowledge, seeking information, and performing
all the other functions they normally would.
A Uniquely Human Activity
Collaboration is a uniquely human activity, and CVW preserves the human
element critical to the success of any such
computer-based system. CVW mimics the semantics of the physical world as
closely as possible, giving users the illusion of
physical space that permits natural social behavior to occur. The only
break in the physical metaphor is when something is
deemed particularly useful, such as the introduction of a proxy (a
replica of an individual user), which allows a person to
collaborate in two places at the same time.
"The system actually allows for chance encounters when moving from room
to room," observes Rhode. "Just as in a real
building, you can bump into someone in the hallway and get to talking;
as with a face-to-face meeting, this sometimes leads
nowhere, but other times provides the key ingredient in solving a
problem."
MITRE has developed a CVW prototype to demonstrate the system's
applicability and usefulness. A number of detailed
demonstrations have convinced our customers of the potential of the
system to better accomplish their missions; based on
these demonstrations, several customers have asked to have CVW deployed
as an experimental pilot to various organizations
within the intelligence community and the military; these prototypes are
assisting our customers in a variety of applications,
from conducting current operations to the formulation of future
warfighting concepts.
Immediate Benefits for Collaboration
"As our customers gain more experience with CVW, their initial feedback
indicates that the system yields immediate benefits
for collaboration," remarks Lucy Deus, MITRE lead engineer. "It also
stimulates thinking on potentially far-reaching effects on
the future workplace." Geographically distributed teams were more
efficient since members were able to share resources and
communicate more effectively; in addition, the system enabled team
members to form the interpersonal relationships critical to
effective teams.
"The ease with which team members can share resources has led to shifts
in thinking about the underlying processes of an
organization and inter-organizational interactions to achieve higher
productivity, efficiency, quality and responsiveness to their
customer base," observes Spellman. "In addition, the system made it far
easier to capture interaction between participants,
documentation, and information relevant to a specific crisis or team
effort for later analysis, helping to understand the process
as well as the function and effectiveness of tools used to gain insight
into successes and failures."
"We are continuing to develop CVW to add new capabilities in response to
our customers' needs," remarks MITRE Lead
Engineer John Kordash. "For example, further research will extend the
mobility of CVW through the increased use of wireless
communications. We have implemented an initial Java-based CVW capability
in our drive to achieve platform independence
and provide CVW access from a Web browser. In addition, new
server-to-server communication will expand the ability to travel
from one virtual workplace to another."
Moving to the Commercial Sector
"Due to overwhelming enthusiasm and urging from our customers," Rhode
continues, "we are moving CVW into the
commercial sector so that vendors can begin producing the appropriate
components. To that end, we have begun to
aggressively pursue discussions with interested vendors, and have
provided detailed demonstrations of CVW in operation."
"We are also investigating the application of CVW to different mission
areas," remarks Rhode. "These missions include
counter-proliferation and counter-narcotics efforts, battle management,
doctrine development, command and control, mission
planning, and information warfare."
Many questions about the effectiveness and efficient use of
collaborative environments remain; MITRE is currently investigating
issues such as organizational motivators for collaboration, team
building, privacy, security, and individual interaction. "We are
continuing to investigate innovative means of promoting teaming and
collaboration," concludes Spellman, "in our drive to help
improve productivity even in the face of shrinking resources."
Doug Engelbart - Bootstrap Institute wrote:
> BEOPEN.COM: Just learned about this last saturday: new, for-profit enterprise,
> but totally oriented to facilitation of open-source software. Its founder is a
> long-time acquaintance of mine, Bob Weiner -- who also is an old friend of
> Chris Nuzum. Very ineresting business plan.
>
> <http://www.BeOpen.com>
>
> NOTE: They are having a sort of business-launch reception tonight, from
> 6:30, at their office suite:: 160 Saratoga Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95051 /
> (408) 985-4700
>
> COLLAB.NET: Founded in the past five months, by Brian Behlendorf and the
> O'Reilly and Associates. Apparently has very explicit and direct endorsement
> by hp.
>
> <http://www.collab.net>
>
> FYI, Doug
>
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