Google visit

I didn't know much about Zurich other than its in Switzerland, there is Lindt chocolate and that Google has their European headquarters there. I arrived mid-afternoon to visit Marco at Google and discuss a project with another Google intern that may be useful to Umonya in the future.

The Google office is huge and is highly quirky. Each floor has a different theme, cool kitchens that are fully stocked and their restaurant has a slide... New interns are made to go down the slide on their first TGIF (I visited on a Friday) but thankfully I got to go down without everyone watching.
I did manage to stay for TGIF Pub Quiz (which allowed Androids...cheating!!!) and then hang out with the interns in the evening, first to play Rock Band and then to dinner. Chatting to the various interns Marco and I expanded on Umonya and the logistical problems of following up post courses. As nearly every intern is an ex programming competition participant (between IOI and ICPC) they understand how much the mentorship and sustained training helps. Exciting things are happening :)

Official Google Blog

Project Umonya (University of Cape Town) was specifically mentioned in the Official Google Blog. They have high hopes for us and we are currently working hard to deliver.

Face2Face meetings: a thing of the past?

As some know I'm now a part of Project Umonya, a Google CS4HS initiative at UCT. Since it is being run by essentially computer geeks we seem to have moved away from face to face meetings (this is difficult at the moment with 1 in Austria, 1 in Switzerland, 1 in USA, 1 in Stellenbosch and 1 in Cape Town). Instead we have moved entirely into the realm of online meetings and planning tools.

Firstly meetings are scheduled on Doodle to find a time that suits everyone. The time is then decided and a Google Calendar invite/iCal event is sent out as a reminder.

Meeting agendas are posted on Etherpad for comment and editing a day or two before the scheduled date/time, you can save revisions, highlight changes by different people in different colours (the only drawback are no attachment/image facility).

The meetings themselves take place on IRC or Google Group Chat (depends on the SA internet connection). Any supporting documents are posted on pastebin for review. A bot on the IRC channel then takes minutes (I'm not kidding, you set it to meeting mode and tell it to record decisions and full log and attendance). If we need to conscript volunteers, we create a Doodle form with time availability options.

Minutes are compiled at the end and sent via email for review of decisions and todo lists and then the cycle starts again for a progress meeting. I know it sounds crazy but it seems to be working

SASAS Conference

South African Society for Atmospheric Scientists (SASAS) host an annual conference to bring together the Atmospheric Scientists and interested parties (agriculture, atmospheric chemists, hydrologists, oceanographers) a chance to meet and present their current research.

This year Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG) were tasked with running the conference. SASAS was held at Waterval in Tulbagh, a team building and conference venue just outside the picturesque wine producing town. There was snow on the mountains and fog in the mornings..nice and chilly.

The theme this year was BEYOND THE BOX. Trying to slowly shuffle atmospheric scientists from the traditional methods to the innovative. The conference structure changed to include 2 new sections; Grill the Climatologist and Beyond the Box.

Grill the Climatologist consisted of thought provoking questions put before a panel of three scientists. The questions were anonymously submitted to the chairman of the session. They included geoengineering, why we bother running more simulations when we can't cope with what we have already and carbon trading.

Beyond the Box was split into 2 sections, a short introduction by four scientists on what they think is the future of atmospheric science. These presentations highlighted the current failures and their visions of hope. The second section expanded on these ideas and included a few extra presentations on innovative approaches to climate science.

A few take home messages from this conference are that carbon trading is a disastrous idea, geoengineering is not a solution and that we need to stop looking to new and better models and tell a story with the data we already have.

Google Earth Scientific Applications

Day one of the Scientific Applications with Google Earth Conference was interesting in that I have never looked at the features of Google Earth in any depth. The first speaker Tim Killeen from NSF explained that less than 10% of all data they had was ever viewed and a system is needed for people to view this data in a simple environment. The two highlights to take away is that "data to knowledge" is key and "big uncertainties remain" wrt climate and understanding. So nothing new. He did however touch on new projects such as the NSF Ocean Observatories Inititiave , the final design of which is due in December.

The next speaker Dan Atkins from the University of Michigan and NSF spoke on the "Role of Data in the National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure for 21st Century Discovery". He touched on data stewardship, curation, federation, openness(over the long-haul). He stated that providing information a geographical-based entry to data is natural and compelling as we all have an inherent geographical frame of reference. I learnt a new word: nomenclature. Not sure I will ever use it though. Three project he reviewed were interesting:
TeraGrid: an integrating infrastructure
Blue Waters - look into tech specs
nanoHUB

The third speaker and possibly the most compelling was Michael Weiss-Malik from Google. He is a KML Product Manager and explained the design of Google Earth and the need for it. To use the analogy "to most users, the interface is the computer" he pointed out that with any paper we read the figure is the thing one remembers most and so the philosophy "to most viewers the presentation is the data". Something definitely worth remembering. KML is a standardised format derived from XML that encodes the Google Earth files.

The last two speakers, Sean Askay and Trey Smith, are both users of Google Earth to represent scientific data and presented a series of KMLs already developed that emphasized this point. The topics ranged from Appalachian Mountaintop mining to Geothermal resources, the global climate temperatures to Google Moon. The coolest thing I learnt about was actually GigaPan. Definitely worth viewing.

After lunch we split into Working Groups, mine was Climate Change and we heard from Lisa Ballagh (NSIDC) and John Bailey (University of Alaska) about climate KMLs and Virtual Globes. The group talked about various research endeavours that would be favourable for Google Earth apps and I realised I could present my seasonal forecast stuff in GE eventually. After reviewing current KMLs we found various things we wished were possible in Google Earth such as being able to switch off labels on load or preferential loading of data and user notices to know what to do. The last thing we discussed was who owned data and what happens when you pubish papers with GE images and supply online KMLs. Google have written a guideline specifically for this and is available at: http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html

Google Android

Google is doing a series of talks and workshops over the semester as well as a recruiting drive, I attended a technology talk about Google Android, a collaborative agreement between the manufacturers, developers and marketers to provide an open handset tool for information sharing and access. Android is a part of this, built on a Linux kernel and with swappable components, the technology looks solid and exciting for mobile developers, especially with the SDK being released within the next few months (Beta is available). Check it out at:
http://code.google.com/android/

In the coming months there is a workshop on Google Earth and an initiative to create scientific applications for it revolving around data visualisation and communication. They have working groups in both Weather and Global Climate Change as well as economics, astronomy, urban planning and science education.