Lecture: Daw Michael, "The Vision and Reality of Access Grid and How it Can Save the Planet"

Past Event

Date
24 October 2007, 7:00pm - 10:30pm

Location
Oxford University e-Science Laboratory
7 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG

Access Grid is an advanced collaboration environment that has been described as "videoconferencing on steroids". It can support a huge number of sites interacting simultaneously with an emphasis on effective distributed collaboration between groups. It was invented in 1997 in order to provide a human interface to the Grid and continues to be an accessible route to Grid technologies. There are over a hundred Access Grid nodes across UK academia and thousands of users worldwide. This talk will look at the technology in more detail and consider the divergence between the inventors' vision of Access Grid and the reality of its implementation illustrated by use cases in science, social science and the arts and consider (briefly) the possible role of videoconferencing-type technologies in a low-carbon future.