WP # 10: Activities initiation, monitoring, coordination and control using open electronic network-map
WP10 STREPs activities coordination using open electronic platform An interactive software tool including the conceptual specifications, user interface design and actual coding is constructed and maintained to support the coordination of the STREPs and the CA activities and to represent interactively their conceptual evolving relationships. We use this to self-organize the STREPs research environment. This is a quite innovative way of building interaction and communication among the various STREPs. However, the real proof of the concept is to make it available to the STREPs on line for open (un-moderated) contribution by all the members and sub-communities. The goal is the use of the platform as the central nervous system of the CA. Thus, in the process of recognizing its own extent and its internal connectivity, the STREPs community use (reflexively) complexity specific methods, namely self-organization.
Leading institution
ISI - FONDAZIONE ISI - TORINO, ITALY
HUJI - THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM - JERUSALEM ISRAEL
WP Leaders
Prof. Sorin Solomon giacs05@gmail.com
Dr. Tiziana Bertoletti giacs@isi.it
Prof. Jacob Goldenberg msgolden@mscc.huji.ac.il
Objectives
WP10 provides a tool for interaction and self-organization of the STREPs community. The tool provides a transparent mechanism for reporting the progress of the STREP research and the CA activity. It involves the following subtasks:
- Create an online tool, available to all participants of the STREPs and the CA, describing all the fields of study, the research projects in their various stages, and the scientists working in the STREPs.
- Serve as the central interface for the online coordination. The software tool exhibits the activity of the STREPs, and as such it serves as the “Control Center” of the STREPs and the CA, allowing unprecedented visibility and transparency to the work of the various participants. This tool is also aid the STREPs, the CA and WP leaders in their evaluation of progress.
- Serve as an interactive “desktop” repository of common resources of the STREPs and the complexity field, including the complex systems database of WP9.
Description of work
WP10 should provide first and foremost a highly efficient medium of communication and cooperation, and an online "control center" encompassing the various activities of the STREPs and the CA, allowing the STREP leaders and members, the coordinators and the WP leaders, as well as the evaluation committee, to perceive the specific activities going on. Thus, it plays a major role in assuring transparency and smoothness of operation with regard to activities of the CA vis-a-vis the STREPs.
It is the main ambition of this WP to introduce this powerful means for communication between the parties of the STREPs and the CA, and to use it adamantly in order to benefit from all the managerial possibilities it presents. An important facet of the CA is the generation of new initiatives. There are two management instruments (presented in detail in WP14), which facilitate this objective: proactive initiatives and reactive initiatives.
Instruments
The tools of WP10 are intended to be used extensively in both these modes. A message is posted by the WP leader/coordinator (in the case of the 'proactive' mode) or by one of the CA or STREP members (in the case of the 'reactive' mode) and linked to the topics it relates to. The improved visibility and accessibility (literally making that data one click away) helps all of the interested parties locate that topic and participate in their suggestions. Using the tool, both the process of creating the activity plan, and moving it from planning to reality are expected to become much smoother and more efficient.
In parallel, we develop an advanced system that would provide, at a later stage, a novel platform for integration of the research community of the STREPs in a visual intuitive environment. This system is based on the "Tree-Map" system / Postext, and allows the CA partners to put together their scientific output in a synergetic way, by supporting an intimate linking between the work of the different groups. This helps a true realization of the goals of the CA, since the different STREPs would be brought together by a "spontaneous" self-organization.
In the final stage, the Postext software permits the un-moderated updating of a community map by any member of the community at any time. The Postext map is composed of nodes that may represent entities (e.g. fields of study, categories and subcategories, research project, scientists and groups, events such as conferences, etc.) and links that represent the relations between them.
Each node is a container of data, that may either be in the form of an article (which can include links to external references), or a conversation. The members of the community participate in the forming of the structure by directly editing the graph and by inserting or editing the content of the nodes. Thus the Postext map depicts the community that formed it and display an updated picture of the activity in the community.
See the Complexity Roadmap.