Feedback from workshop participants
From Asia at Home
Mohd Bazli Ab Karim works for Mimos Berhad (http://www.mimos.my), a Malaysian Center for innovative information and communication technologies, where he is part of the Grid Computing Team. Mimos Berhad also focuses on cyberspace security, encryption systems, Micro Energy, Micro Systems and Advanced Informatics and Knowledge Technology. When asked why he had decided to attend the Asia@home workshop, Mohd Bazli explained: "I am from the Grid Computing Department of Mimos Berhad in Malaysia. We are working with Grid technology, but have not yet tried to use BOINC for research applications. I think it would be quite useful, as the cost of this technology is much lower than for Grid Computing and Cloud Computing. It might be attractive to more people in the future for this very reason."
Ana Silva from UNOSAT (http://www.unosat.org) came from Geneva (Switzerland) to attend the Workshop on Volunteer Computing. She explains: "We, at UNOSAT, work with volunteers and use volunteer computing for mapping purposes". The BOINC application was initially launched thanks to the help of African cybervolunteers, recruited through ICVolunteers’ CyberVolunteres Program, involved in the Africa@home. Peter (from KNUST in Ghana - http://www.knust.edu.gh) and Eloi (from University of Bangui in Central African Republic) helped us develop the platform in both Bossa and Gis. BOINC allows us to do mapping where multiple people submit results which can subsequently be compared. For its Myanmar mapping project, UNOSAT worked with volunteers from GISCorps (http://www.giscorps.org), helping collect information to show disaster areas hit by the recent cyclone that hit the country in May 2008 and caused an estimated 13.000 deaths.
Shiro Harada is an Associate Professor at the Interfactulty Initiative in Information Studies of the University of Tokyo (http://harada-lab.net), Japan. He also came to Academia Sinica to learn more about volunteer computing. In his words, "this kind of endeavor is particularly useful for applications created in developing world, where it is often times impossible to obtain enough computing power in a given lab". Shiro Harada has extensively worked on language issues related to Cambodia and the Khmer language. He pointed out that volunteer computing and volunteer thinking could precisely be useful for applications related to linguistic diversity and translation. He shared his experience with surveys conducted in different countries: "From my experience, translation is complex. I have been been involved in surveys that were translated into Khmer, but when checking their quality and comparing them to surveys in other languages, they did not convey the same idea. Thus, the results are not useful for comparative studies". Shiro Harada continued by pointing out that volunteer thinking could help cross-check and harmonize languages thanks to information shared among a number of volunteer translators cross-checking information.
Dr. Jonathan Back, Research Associate at UCL Interaction Centre (http://uclic.ucl.ac.uk), based in London (UK) sees the potential of volunteer computing for his institution. "At UCL, we know about grid computing but less about volunteer computing", he explains. "My particular interest is in human computer interaction". He continues: "There seems to be the need for a lot of work in relation to designing systems that engage communities". UCL collaborates with clinicians in cancer care. A possible use of volunteer thinking or computing would be to support cancer patients during their treatments, so they would feel actively involved in the aspects of cancer research. Dr. Back further points out that there has been very little done to get cancer patients actively involved in cancer science. "There is an increasing need for information rich information about cancer and for cancer patience. Volunteer thinking / computing might be an interesting way of doing this", he says and concludes, "It has been great meeting people from such diverse backgrounds. While the technical aspects are interesting, there seems to be a need to investigate the socio-technical issues such as recruiting volunteers that may not normally participate in volunteer computing projects".
Article by V. Krebs, http://www.icvolunteers.org
