Warm Fronts and High Pressure Systems: Overcoming Geographic Dispersion in a Meteorological Cyberinfrastructure Project

Linked environments for atmospheric discovery (LEAD) is a US National Science Foundation multi-disciplinary project designing Cyberinfrastructure for mesoscale meteorology. This ethnographic case study, supplemented with survey data, illustrates the unique management challenges faced by large, geographically-dispersed teams using distance technologies. Like many cyberinfrastructure development projects, LEAD had no common institutional affiliation, simply shared funding. We explore how participants struggled to blend people and expertise across multiple institutions. LEAD relied heavily on technologies to support interaction, but these overshadowed the true core of their success: the team members' collaboration history and interpersonal skills. Nevertheless, competing institutional goals and agendas constantly aggravated the burden of keeping the project team motivated and aligned. Our results suggest that the fate of cyberinfrastructure projects, unlike those in centrally managed corporations or loosely coupled collaboratories, may rely more on members' willingness to exert the effort required to build and maintain long distance relationships