Educational Outreach & Stakeholder Role Evolution in a Cyberinfrastructure Project

Abstract

Over the last several years, a growing body of work has examined the nature of large-scale virtual organizations for data-intensive cooperative science. These projects, known as Cyberinfrastructures (CI) in the United States, are established realms of inquiry for the eScience and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) communities. Scholarship in these communities extends technology focused inquiries to investigate the sociotechnical concerns to such infrastructure creation and maintenance. In this paper we present findings from our qualitative study of a federated cyberinfrastructure organization known as GENI. We contribute to this body of scholarship by investigating how stakeholders in the GENI project position existing, and newly created, resources for use in educational settings. We examine how stakeholders acquaint new potential stakeholders with this CI in order to draw them into the community, and the ways in which stakeholder's roles evolve over time. Our findings illustrate several ways stakeholders leverage and align existing relationships and resources to expand the CI project's user base. Finally, this paper suggests avenues of further inquiry and implications for organizing future CI projects.