Attendees
Hal Abelson
Dennis Baron
Martin Greenwald
Steve Lerman
Vijay Kumar
Bill Mitchell
Rough agenda:
- Voice services in dorms - Steve
- Update on large initiative - Steve and Sandy
- The next six months - Dennis
Notes
Voice services in the dorms
What are the implications of the changes in student phone service planned for this fall? Will this increase the usage of VoIP by the students? Is the network infrastructure able to handle the increased demands of VoIP users? Will this create an inequity between dorms with good networks and those with older, less robust networks. Is IS&T planning on offering any alternatives for the students.
ACTION: Vijay and Dennis will meet with Theresa and Allison and report back to the group.
The larger initiative
This has the potential to become a major institutional project. Research could leverage using MIT as a "living lab" - including students, faculty and the surrounding community. There is an opportunity to indentify new applications - eg. for education; for health care. Potential for a $20-30M program.
Steve and Sandy met with Tom Magnanti. Tom suggested that they also meet with Rod Brooks - including discussing the overlap with Oxygen II and other major research initiatives.
Steve and Tom also met with Rod. He didn't think this would interfere with other CSAIL activities but that it would need to be coordinated. In fact, some CSAIL activities might benefit from an initiative in this area. Also some overlap with T-Party.
How does this differentiate MIT from other universities? Why can it be done better here? We can link this to outside community - MBTA services; local health care; adopt-a-school/K-12. An entity could be spun off to provide the actual community services.
Hal - We should start with a compelling educational application - that has a technology "pull" and an applications "push".
What are the infrastructure implecations? How does this change space use - scheduling of class rooms? You would want to schedule physical spaces "on the fly". What are the new community behaviors that this will create/encourage?
Services need to be integrated - tie everything together over IP. Cellular migration to IP is important - we finally have a devide that we always carry with us. It needs to be integrated.
Bill - Students Googling in class improves the experience.
What are the new opportunities with new audio/video communications devices? People will want to huddle around spaces that include large screens - spaces will have enhanced communications capabilities. Architecture design studios will evolve - the ability to casually integrate remote people; cost and ease of use are important; capabilities have to be "always on".
Make an image of documents and send them. Sync' voice, text, video (Howie Shrobe?)
Other devices will converge - other things you carry with you eg. keys, credit cards. Security will be important. How do you take your context with you.
Dennis - Is the Institute really up for this? Steve thinks probably, yes. Are we ready; what exactly is it; are other people convinced? Is MIT the right place? CMU and a few other places might be able to do it - but not many. MIT has been successful with this model. Are we late; are we too early? Is the infrastructure ready? This can help IS&T build the right infrastructure. (Athena took eight years to be folded into the central I/T infrastructure.)
How do we build something that people will actually use? Can we use this to take Oxygen II and apply it to education? Look at freshamn year - Redwine. Microsoft. Core curriculum - d'Arebelof proposals. Again, need compelling and concrete application to support education. We need a revolution and not just incremental improvements here.
Next steps are to flesh on the proposal in writing. Steve and Sandy to sharpen the vision. Then take to Academic Council. We need to shop this idea around. Identify a half dozen key stakeholders - Dave Clark, etc. - and get their input. Be prepared to share with the new Provost in 4-6 weeks. Goal to have something on paper by the end of July.
We need to make sure to engage the SoS - they would value some sort of lab interface. BCS has potential - they require high quality images.
Update on ICP Phase I
Out of time - Dennis gave a brief update. Short term experiments are getting started. Longer term vision will come from the above for the big initiative.