These are going to be odd notes: a mixture of what I thought was said, conversations held between the meeting and posting, and my understanding of the where we are trying to go. Please augment and reduce it as appropriate. I may have been too aggressive in pruning what was said.

On the call: Andrew Fitz Gibbon, Charlie Peck, Johan Berntsson, John Hengeveld, Mic Bowman, Tom Murphy, Wilf Pinfold

Next senate meeting: Jan 30, 2009 in SciSim at Kepler (193, 191, 45)

Future meetings: will be in world, at above coordinates. We will augment this with the conference call as well. If sound can be added before the meeting, then we won’t need the conference call part. Stay tuned.

Presence at OpenSimulator birthday party: We are focusing efforts on establishing a presence at the Jan 29th OpenSimulator second birthday party; http://lbsa71.net/2009/01/21/opensim-turns-two/

• Our goal is to have SciSim on the Hypergrid (http://lbsa71.net/2009/01/21/working-with-the-hypergrid/)
• Mic is going to ask friends such as UC Irivine to link to us on the HyperGrid
• Our goal is to have an Earlham server on the SciSim with interesting assets, demonstrating the SciSim with geographically dispersed members
  • Mic mentioned several dynamic existing science demonstrations: pendulum and others. Many, if not all originated from Johan. We are looking to get these on the Earlham server
  • Johan has the molecules ready for live gromacs data. Charlie will provide this on the Earlham server
  • We will put the science games we have been working on in the Earlham cluster
  • Mic mentioned we can use assets from SciSim, buildings, furniture, etc. He also mentioned a packaging/export tool whose name I missed
  • Contra Costa will use the Earlham server for the Feb event.
    • Contra Costa goal’s for SC09 time frame were inspired by Mic’s Mt St Helen
    • Contra Costa SC09 goal is the Pt Reyes Genesis project with estimated team of ~20 students working this semester to create a representation of Point Reyes National Seashore on a Contra Costa OpenSim server. Teams of graphic artists and programmers will be formed to represent the geographic, atmospheric, flora and fauna of Point Reyes.

SciSim Senate discussion:

• I will get the senate rules from SciLands in SL and post them on the SciSim site for us to adjust to our needs. There will likely be little change since the goals of both Senates are quite similar
• SciSim is grid of 10,000 x 10,000 spots which gives us a lot of flexibility in constructing our organization
  • A new candidate member can certainly create their own independent opensim server to develop
  • They can request SciSim membership and agree to our code of behavior. We will assign them a 5×5 subgrid which is surrounded by permanently undeveloped land. This ensures their server stability affects no-one but themselves, but gives them the ability to interact in SciSim
  • This will be a “good thing” for our laptop SciSims which come and go.
  • With agreement of neighbors, they can petition to relocate their 5×5 subgrid to connect with the SciLands mainland, a sort of Rife's Raft

Latest OpenSim package: Mic is just getting latest OpenSim package up (062?), which Earlham will use to set up their server. There are some network links that mic will need to send via email to complete the plumbing

Preconfigured SciSim module: that came up after the meeting

• Charlie and team were going to do all the plumbing for their OpenSim server in VirtualBox and distribute it to Contra Costa as a file
• We realized we may be onto something larger. Our team currently maintains a Bootable Cluster CD which allows for bringing up a windows lab into a fully functioinal computational cluster within minutes. It is a liveCD, in that you get a Linux environment without having to maintain it.
• OpenSim on Virtual Box may allow us to maintain one configured/administered version of SciSim compatible OpenSim, greatly simplifying bringing new groups onto the grid. Stay tuned

These are the action items that surfaced during the meeting

1. Everyone: create an account (http://sciencesim.com/wiki/doku.php/gettingstarted), enter the world and ask to make my avatar your friend (everyone needs friends). I will give you a landmark to the senate site.
2. Tom Murphy: set up a first draft of code of conduct for our review for next meeting
3. Charlie Peck: locate gromacs data to drive Johan’s simulation. Longr term it is going to be how do we allow users to drive the simulation with their data or with a collection of canned data sets.
4. Earlham team: get OpenSim plumbed up and on SciGrid. Lets also document the process since we will be repeating many times to populate SciSim
5. Mic Bowman: clarify name of packaging/migration tool for assets
6. Mic Bowman: Arrange for links on HypreGrid to SciSim.
7. Mic Bowman and Johan Berntsson: get pendulum, protein folding, and other cool science examples not already on SciSim to Earlham for inclusion on their server

                                             ... Tom Murphy