From: "Hansberger, Jeffrey T Dr CIV USA USAMC"
Subject: Whole of Society community of interest INVITATION - Sept 28, 2009
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 15:54:36 -0400
Cc: Tim Bacon

You may previously have been invited to join in the “whole of society” community of interest related to crises response and providing expertise across agencies and countries to handle complex problems. Many of you registered your interest and noted your relevant expertise, projects and associations on the “catalyst” data base for the community that is being created by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

The next stage is to provide a “Virtual Collaboration Environment” (VCE) to support this community and its activities that could be useful in crisis situations. The VCE consists of a web portal for community knowledge sharing and communication, and access to persistent 3D meeting spaces in a virtual world. The projects are supported by USJFCOM and the Army Research Laboratory to encourage multi-agency and multi-national responses in crisis situations.

A short initial event (2 hours) is being planned in the VCE for September 28th, 2009 (11:00 am to 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4) to have the VCE team describe the overall program, to update the community on progress with the CMU Catalyst survey and data base, to show an exposition of tools of relevance to the community, especially for emerging and powerful modeling and simulation tools that the community may use, and also to look at the next steps. The VCE team consists of the University of Edinburgh, University of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon University, and Perigean Technologies, LLC.

Experimentation and a number of scenario driven exercises in the VCE will follow later in 2009, and we hope some members of the community might be interested to participate in those.

We encourage you now to register at http://openvce.net/event-woscr-viws-1a

The meeting will occur virtually so no physical travel is necessary. You may attend through the 3D environment (Second Life, http://openvce.net/slstart) or through other means that we have established. You do not need a virtual world (Second Life) avatar to sign up, though you can connect your avatar to the OpenVCE.net account to access useful facilities when you have such an avatar. VCE is designed to accommodate issues with access related to installing programs and/or firewalls, and therefore access will be possible to events even without running virtual world software.

Information on the WoSCR Community

The basic rationale for this effort is the recognized need for a holistic understanding of the complex forces in society that comprise the political, economic, and cultural environment. This enhanced level of comprehension can lead to more coherent actions and better focused efforts to achieve objectives. A lack of such knowledge can produce unnecessary levels of violence, increased destruction of human life and the means to support it, and a potential worsening of already bad situations.

Our vision is a virtual enterprise of area specialists and practitioners collaboratively networked by tools and technologies to create a trusted relationship that assists organizations in planning, preparation, and execution of their missions. This network will enable the efficient exchange of information in pursuit of shared goals, interests, missions, or processes between members of academia, industry, government, and private entities.

Catalyst Project questionnaire at Catalyst Project

     https://primus.casos.cs.cmu.edu/catweb

Virtual Collaboration Environment

     http://openvce.net

This research collection and assessment effort is being led by Tim Bacon at USJFCOM/J9 and Dr. Jeff Hansberger ARL/USJFCOM. Please contact us with any questions. I thank you for your time and interest.