Grid Vision - the Vision and the Mission

• The need to promote the modern computing environments and e-infrastructure for a wide variety of public:
  • Educated computer and computer-bound scientists
  • Scientists in areas which will greatly enhance their research by using modern e-infrastructure
  • Scientists and non-scientists which could use the Grid
  • Economy subjects not following modern e-infrastructure development
  • Students of computer science and associated areas
  • Students of variety of scientific fields which will have to use the e-infrastructures in their scientific and technical work
  • High-school pupils, to encourage their professional orientation
  • Elementary school pupils, as a generic knowledge development on modern e-infrastructure and e-Science
  • General public, to raise public awareness and public support

It is very important that the Grid ideas and different levels of e-Science and e-Infrastructure knowledge is disseminated not only to scientists and trainees, but to the general public as well. Only by properly informing the general public can long term sustainability, independent of government changes and other political issues (as we saw in the SEE-GRID project, this may be a substantial problem for certain countries). The general public has to be informed about the visions of computer science and application development, and to see how it will benefit from it (e.g. e-Society development, e-Government and democratic enhancements, compute on demand for general public...).

It is the view of Grid Vision that the training has to be inextricably linked with Dissemination, Promotion and Outreach, as the same material, specifically the one developed for e-Learning, can be used for dissemination and promotion, and the dissemination and promotion is a basic ingredient of any successful training of individuals which do not yet know they would like to be thought in the field of e-Science and Grids.

Grid Vision is developing a completely new approach towards the area of dissemination and promotion of e-Science, through the use of interactive WEB based 'interactive television' type broadcasting, and a very tight cooperation with national televisions. This 'Grid Vision' web-site (http://gridvision.irb.hr/), a preliminary effort for now, will be built in such an interactive way, so that it would actually enable the users to 'feel' the Grid-like structure of the visual materials.

It is important to note that several scientific areas (e.g. vulcanology, zoology, botanics, speleology, archeology, ethnography and ethnology, space exploration etc.) have reached a very wide audience by the production of popular scientific films, which are entertaining and educational, and, most importantly, they, on one side, inform the knowledgeable public about new possibilities for their own scientific and other endeavours, and simultaneously rise the awareness of future students and scholars about interesting fields of professional occupation. It is the view of Grid Vision that computer science, specifically supported by the development of complex Grid infrastructures, has to be promoted in a way which is acceptable to general public, as well as other mentioned target audiences.

Another important fact about this type of promotion is that it can be also a source of financial input (e.g. TV rights etc.) for the support of further such dissemination, promotion and training activities, which is a very important fact leading to self-sustainability.