D4Science VRE Management Training Event

On 30 April 2009, the 1st training event for D4Science VRE Managers was organized at FAO in Rome, Italy.

A VRE is a new concept for organizing content, applications and work-flow in a Virtual Research Environment, enabled by the D4Science grid technology. It allows users to collect and manage their information, share it with other users, and collaboratively create reports or other information objects using an e-Infrastructure.

This e-Infrastructure is easy to set up and maintain, and even users without an information science background can be trained as VRE Managers. Content is added to the e-Infrastructure as data-collections by a data manager, and this requires some information technology (IT) skills. The VRE Manager is responsible for managing the VRE users, and the visual design. The VRE user does not need any special skills, and can typically start using the VRE after a few hours of familiarizing with the user interface.

The training was new to both the developers of the infrastructure and the trainees, and also served the purpose of testing and developing additional training materials. Participants from FAO, WorldFish and ESA were trained by staff from CERN, ISTI-CNR, and the University of Athens.

The sessions started at a technical level, explaining the unique features that the grid technology offers for identifying and managing information. It then continued with an overview of the user-management and the operations a VRE manager must perform to add and edit users, and the visual design of a VRE. Finally, the possibilities for searching and organizing information at user level were explained, and the trainees were given some time to apply changes to a VRE.