IST-Data Services Blog

For this month’s Data Services news update, we highlight (1) the Berkeley Natural History Museum (BNHM) and IST Re-Architecting program and (2) the IST Collaborative Tools analysis project. 

BNHM-IST Re-Architecting Program

Based on the results of an extensive planning exercise between BNHM and IST last year (see http://bnhm.berkeley.edu/about/informatics.php), we have begun a re-architecting program of core BNHM informatics technologies to help support the next generation of IT enabled museum research, teaching, and public service.   In addition to enhancing core technology and support for the BNHM, this project is charged with outlining a more coordinated and sustainable system for managing, developing, and sharing our digital assets as part of the broader campus efforts to improve Research-IT management (see http://technology.berkeley.edu/critical5.html).

The re-architecting program is a year long effort, with the core focus from October 2006 - April 2007 on architecture defintion and implementation planning.  Because of the scope of the effort and the multiple partners involved from BNHM, IST, and campus, we have built a “Program” made up of “Projects,” each with teams, chair people, and project members.  Details of these projects and teams can be found in the program overview.

To help with overall program management, Data Services has brought Chris Hoffman on board in a 40% role through the spring to coordinate and faciliate program activites. Chris, who is currently IT Director for the Graduate Division, brings much experience with program management, architecture development, and academic collections to the project, and we are very glad to have his help with this important effort.

The next Data Services Brown Bag lunch, Thursday, November 30th in 370 Dwinelle, will feature presenations from a number of BNHM partners about biodiversity informatics, as well as an overview of the BNHM-IST Re-Architecting Program.  Please join us for this.

IST Collaborative Tools Project

The IST Collaborative Tools Team has released a report about the use of team collaboration suites in IST as part of a first phase effort to help OneIST determine what collaboration tools it shoud use in the future.  See below for details.

The IST team that carried out the project will be hosting an informal brown-bag lunch at noon on Monday, December 4 in room 200C of 2195 Hearst to discuss and answer any quesitons about this report.  All members of IST or OCIO are invitied.  We hope that you will join us for discussion of the report and what the next phase of project work look like.

Other Data Services Information in the News

The new Berkeley Computing and Communications newsletter has been released, and it includes several articles related to Data Services, including:

• Organizational changes at IST and the Office of the CIO
• IST Data Services
• Selected operational highlights, spring/summer 2006
• A roadmap for decision making: Data Warehouse Architecture
• New architecture groups in IST
• MIP’s business intelligence initiative named Laureate in Computerworld Honors Program

Some Updates on the Data Services News Blog

• We will now be publishing summary updates on this news site once a month, rather than every two weeks, in addition to other ad hoc posts.
• We have turned on the comments feature of the Data Services blog.  Please feel free to leave any comments or questions that you have about anything posted here–we’d love to hear from you.

The IST Collaborative Tools project team, which was facilitated by DataServices Collaboration, Presentation, and Analysis group, recently completed an investigation into the different sorts of collaborative tools in use within IST. Their report is now available.

Please send any comments or questions about the report to:collab-tools@lists.berkeley.edu, or post them as comments to this article.

The project team that produced this report included Chris Ashley, Randy Ballew, Ian Crew, Kevin Haney, Rick Jaffe, Jeff Kreutzen, Jeff McCullough, Aron Roberts, and Dianne Walker. This project team accomplished the following tasks:

• researching the current ways that people are working onlinecollaboratively
• examining where online tools such as bSpace, BearShare, andBaseCamp might improve these interactions
• defining the technical and user requirements of a collaborativetool for use in IST
• defining the larger realm of collaborative tools (e.g. tickettracking, bug tracking, version control, etc.) that IST needs to doits work.
• starting an examination of how the tools on the market might matchup to the requirements generated during this process

 The team will be hosting an informal brown-bag lunch at noon on Monday, December 4 in room 200C of 2195 Hearst to discuss and answer any quesitons about this report. All members of IST or OCIO are welcome.

Chris Hoffman, Director of the campus Graduate Division’s IT Department, will be working 40% time from October to April on temporary assignment to IST-DS to help Data Services manage the Berkeley Natural History Museum-IST Re-Architecting Program (Chris remains Director of Graduate Division IT). Chris brings many skills that will benefit this important partnership between BNHM-IST. Please join us in welcoming him to IST and Data Services.

More information about Chris’ background after the jump.

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