University's Y2K preparation paid off

By Ruth Gerstner

"Measured celebration" is how Jim Davis described the mood of the University's Y2K task force a week into the New Year. Davis, interim chief information officer, and other members of the team that prepared Ohio State to deal with the computer problems anticipated when the calendar rolled over from 1999 to 2000 are feeling good about how well the first phases of the Y2K conversion went. But, they're also aware that the job isn't completed.

"We came through the first week very, very well," Davis said. "We are finding that we were well-prepared. There have been some glitches, but they've been small and they've been repaired quickly."

While he believes the global Y2K crisis was overstated in some ways, Davis said that Ohio State responded appropriately and responsibly.

"We were particularly pleased that the OSU community as well as the Columbus community overall responded with appropriate reason. The survivalist hype was not called for, yet this was a real problem that needed to be dealt with in a systematic manner.

"Without the Y2K preparations made by Ohio State and by the University's utility suppliers, there would have been significant disruptions to core functions -- payroll, BuckID, and some medical systems to name a few," he said.

Davis said that delaying winter quarter classes for two days was "a very good decision even though things went well." The extra days allowed the computing staff to thoroughly test all academic and administrative systems and resolve the widely scattered problems without having users on line at the same time.

Davis praised the work of Dan Allen, Ohio State's Y2K director, along with Don Denny and Becky without having users on line at the same time.

Davis praised the work of Dan Allen, Ohio State's Y2K director, along with Don Denny and Becky Hatfield, the task force and the area coordinators who are responsible for Y2K compliance in about 400 key areas of the University. A number of individuals across the OSU campuses stepped up to make this a non-event.

"I'm not aware of any other time that the University has come together to deal in such a coordinated manner with a single issue," he said. "Our ability to do this in a coherent fashion is what made it successful."

In addition to the UTS staff and unit computer specialists, Davis and Allen said that the staffs and leadership of UNITS, University Police, the Medical Center, Physical Facilities, and Housing, Food Services and Event Centers were especially helpful in preparing for Y2K.

As the clock ticked down on 1999, hundreds of University employees were stationed on the various campuses and hundreds of others were on call in case they were needed to deal with emergencies. No emergencies arose, however, and by 2 a.m., coordinators of all most-critical processes had reported that those operations were functioning normally.

On Jan. 1 and 2, the administrative transactions (ARMS, BRUTUS, Accounts Payable and several others) that had been shut down as a precaution were tested and brought back on line. On Jan. 3 and 4, testing continued on the large number of processes throughout the University. Few problems were encountered, and those were quickly rectified. When classes resumed on Jan. 5, students, faculty and staff found very little evidence that anything had happened.

Allen emphasized that continued vigilance is needed. "Sixty-five percent of the world's Y2K problems have not yet been identified," he said. "Mostly they are related to date calculations in software programs, and everyone needs to be alert and do reasonableness checks."

That means looking extra carefully at computer-generated data to see if it seems to make sense. While $90,000 late fees for videos are an obvious and easily corrected example of Y2K woes, others could be more subtle and disruptive.

"Other concerns include viruses, deferred maintenance and noncompliant materials still on the market," Allen said. According to the Gartner Group, a computer consulting firm, at least 20 new computer viruses tied to Y2K have been identified around the world. Allen stressed that the University needs to keep anti-virus security measures in place. Some Y2K problems have been simply postponed and will need to be dealt with in the future. And there are vendors with backstocks of noncompliant materials still for sale to the unwary.

Y2K preparations have also produced positive side effects. "This effort has re-emphasized the importance of standardizing hardware and software and keeping it current in order to minimize support problems," Allen said. "We have developed good contingency plans and we need to keep them up to date."

Ohio institutions designated as national Internet2 evaluation center

By Emily Caldwell

Ohio's educational institutions and some corporate partners are making their mark on the national Internet2 project with the recent designation of a statewide consortium as the national base for development and testing of new network technologies used by Internet2.

As part of an announcement Tuesday of the formation of ITEC-Ohio (Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center), Ohio State surgeons demonstrated advancements in interactive technology that allowed physicians at the Rhodes State Office Tower downtown to collaborate with surgeons performing a laparoscopic hernia repair at the Medical Center.

Ohio State's Department of Surgery has contributed to the Internet2 project twice before, with the first live interactive surgery transmitted to Washington, D.C., last February and a demonstration of telemedicine in rural settings in May when a procedure performed in Columbus was transmitted to North Dakota State University.

"Ultimately, we're working toward real-time distance consultation for physicians," said Jerry Johnson, research scientist in the Department of Surgery. The department uses a new standard of Internet video -- H.323 technology -- using a camera equipped with built-in motion sensitivity that can lock onto a subject by locating the source of the sound in the room.

Telemedicine, videoconferencing, digital libraries, distance learning and virtual laboratories are among the many applications of more advanced technology that will accompany continuing development of Internet2.

Ohio State is one of 160 universities participating in the national project, a collaborative effort to develop advanced Internet technology and applications important to the research and education missions of higher education. Universities are working with partners in industry and government to enable applications that are not possible with the technology underlying today's Internet.

As a project of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), Internet2 is not a single separate network. Instead, it joins member network application and engineering development efforts together with many advanced campus, regional and national networks.

In Ohio, the testing and evaluation center will be led by OARnet, the networking division of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), and a consortium of universities and industry. OARnet provides all Internet2 connectivity for the state of Ohio as well as Internet access to most of Ohio's colleges, universities, libraries, state and local government agencies, and related technology-based organizations. OARnet, OSC and Ohio State led the effort to establish the statewide consortium and compete nationally for designation as the testing and evaluation center site, said Robert Dixon, senior research engineer in Ohio State's Office of the Chief Information Officer and senior system developer and engineer for OARnet.

The technologies tested and refined by ITEC-Ohio will be made available as quickly as possible to the public.

"We might be the first step or we might be the last step before a technology is made more widely available -- it will vary," Dixon said. "We'll work with them, make them work well, and then by osmosis, people with access to these new technologies will use them more and more. Videoconferencing, for example, is used a lot. And we'll get to the point where everyone will be able to make video telephone calls from the PCs on their desks. These technologies will become ubiquitous."

Dixon's leadership has allowed Ohio State to take a lead role in the development and deployment of the H.323 video technology through Ohio State's Advanced Computing and Connectivity Technology Laboratory. The lab features cutting-edge technologies such as multiple-location video conferencing, shared electronic whiteboards, wireless connectivity and the latest in Internet telephony.

During the medical demonstration, guests included Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Roderick G.W. Chu; Glenn Brown, Gov. Taft's science and technology adviser; and Douglas Van Houweling, president and CEO of UCAID. The event included live participation by OSC Director Charles Bender from Germany via Internet videoconferencing. Scott Melvin, director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery, moderated questions downtown while Steven Steinberg, professor of surgery, performed the procedure on campus.

Ohio State also will play a lead role in ensuring network security of Internet2. Clifford Collins, associate director for enterprise networking in University Technology Services, has been appointed chair of the Internet2 Security Working Group.

In addition to OSU, OARnet and OSC, the consortium includes Ohio, Wright State, Kent State and Case Western Reserve universities; the universities of Akron, Cincinnati and Dayton; the Air Force Institute of Technology; Ohio Learning Network; Ohio-LINK; and corporate partners Qwest and Battelle/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Thurber playwright brings Eudora Welty's memoirs, stories to the Ohio State stage

By Susan Wittstock

Eudora Welty's prose is so vivid it can jump right off the page. So it's not such a leap to think it could jump off a stage, literally, as it does for an upcoming Ohio State production.

Eudora Welty: Mississippi Stories is a stage adaptation of two of Welty's most acclaimed works. The show consists of two parts: an excerpt from Welty's memoir One Writer's Beginnings, written when she was 75 years old, and the humorous short story Why I Live at the P.O. Performances will be Feb. 10-12, 16-19 and 23-26 in Roy Bowen Theatre.

Thurber Playwright in Residence Gloria Baxter penned the play in a narrative theater style.

By Jo McCulty

Thurber Playwright in Residence Gloria Baxter

"I take a prose text, usually a short story, and adapt it for theater maintaining the integrity of the text," she said. "I don't rewrite it; I present the prose."

The Thurber residency is a shared position with OSU and the Thurber House, former home of author, cartoonist and humorist James Thurber. Baxter, professor of drama at the University of Memphis, is directing Mississippi Stories and teaching an Ohio State course on playwriting this quarter. While in Columbus, she will live on the third floor of the Thurber House and will give at least one reading and talk as part of her residency.

Mississippi Stories was originally created because Baxter was contacted in 1994 by the American Embassy in Paris. The French were inaugurating the Eudora Welty Interdisciplinary Research Center on North American Women Writers in Dijon, France, and wanted a presentation in Welty's honor.

"The first piece is really autobiographical, about the childhood influences that gave Eudora her voice. The second piece is really famous, and she read it almost more than any of her stories," Baxter said. "It's really a wonderful comparison because in the first piece she wrote about all the talk -- the ladies gossiping -- and the second piece is how she used it in her fiction."

Baxter cast the ensemble with five roles in each play. The actresses playing the younger and older Eudora roles will perform in both pieces.

"Hopefully, that will help the audience to develop connections between the first and the second pieces," Baxter said.

Baxter's approach to turning prose into theater is to make a line-by-line analysis of the literature. "Which line has the most actual potential for movement? You've got to be very selective. You have to work for its essence. The challenge is finding the precise, most evocative choice and figuring out how to present it physically," she said.

Baxter finds this style of theater very rewarding. "I love the theater. It gives voice and presence to the words," she said. "The characters become very vivid and real, and you are always aware that the actor is storyteller and aware that the audience is a participant."

It was at Northwestern University, where Baxter earned a master of arts in performance studies in 1965, that she first became familiar with narrative theater under the influence of a professor, Robert Breen.

"He called it chamber theater and always assumed that you'd do it in a minimalist style," she said. "Over 30 years I've taken this form in a new direction, integrating rhythm. He was very influential.

"I probably loved it because my first great love in literature was novels, and the whole idea of being able to bring to the stage the language, to be able to stage Faulkner's language or Welty's language, was wonderful."

Baxter has traveled throughout the United States, Europe and Asia with her plays, including an adaptation of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and an original one-woman show, Sarah Bernhardt.

Baxter's most recent project was an adaptation of the creative nonfiction novel Refuge: an Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams, which premiered at the University of Memphis in 1997. Unlike Mississippi Stories, which Baxter describes as "minimalistic," Refuge was a three-hour production, with 500 light and sound cues helping to depict the Great Salt Lake and wilderness of Utah.

Baxter admits it isn't always easy to be a playwright in the age of technology, but she remains undaunted.

"I think it is a very challenging time," she said. "The big question on everyone's tongue is at a time when most young theater-goers are in love with television and film, what is the future of theater?

"One answer is spectacle. Wow them to get them to come."

But she prefers the second answer.

"The second is just to have the freshness of storytelling. You have to be there."

For ticket information, call 292-2295. Shadows fall across the Chadwick Arboretum labyrinth. According to tradition, walking the labyrinth is a metaphor for a spiritual journey -- going toward the center, concerns are released; following the same path out after reflection in the center, people are granted power to act.

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