SBIR Phase II: Zulip threaded group chat

SBIR 第二阶段：Zulip 线程群聊

• 批准号: 1831273
• 负责人: Timothy Abbott
• 金额: $ 75万
• 依托单位: KANDRA LABS INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-15 至 2021-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1831273&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Zulip; threaded

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will result from group chat technology that enables knowledge workers to collaborate more effectively than ever before. It is the first tool built that empowers users to efficiently carry out both real-time and asynchronous conversations in the same system, with each user reading only those conversations that are important to him or her. In particular, the technology empowers teams to make decisions in virtual meetings that take place asynchronously over periods of hours or days. This is in contrast with existing group chat technology, where conversations usually end as soon as someone starts talking about something else. This ability to conduct long running, virtual meetings is invaluable for large teams that need to coordinate work across different locations and time zones. Large, distributed teams are fast becoming the norm for how organizations operate, as instant communication and globalization make such teams the workforce of the future. Coordinating the efforts of such teams is a huge pain point for companies, and this technology is a leap in the state of the art in this space.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project has three major research objectives: scaling the technology to teams of 10,000+ people; faithfully translating the user experience to mobile devices; and developing techniques for serving the needs of diverse deployments large and small. For scalability, one major area is "presence", telling each user who else is currently online. Presence data naturally grows with the number of pairs of users, therefore much faster than the number of users, and the company will need to develop algorithms to focus presence on significant connections between users. Among the unique challenges on mobile, the often-limited Internet connectivity demands algorithms that remember data previously fetched from the server to avoid asking for it again, carefully balanced with getting needed updates to never show out-of-date information to the user; the immediacy required for a great chat experience makes both horns of this dilemma especially sharp. Serving diverse deployments demands techniques for making software updates routine and seamless, a practice recently popularized in browsers and mobile apps but rarely accomplished to date in distributing server applications such as that described here.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II期项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将由小组聊天技术产生，这使知识工作者能够比以往任何时候都更有效。这是第一个构建的工具，它使用户能够在同一系统中有效地进行实时和异步对话，每个用户只读取对他或她很重要的对话。特别是，技术使团队在虚拟会议上做出决定，这些会议在数小时或几天内异步进行。这与现有的小组聊天技术形成鲜明对比的是，在某人开始谈论其他事情时，通常会尽快结束对话。对于需要在不同位置和时区进行协调工作的大型团队，这种进行长期运行的能力是无价的。随着即时的沟通和全球化使这些团队成为未来的劳动力，大型分布式团队正迅速成为组织运作方式的规范。协调此类团队的努力对于公司来说是一个巨大的痛苦点，这项技术是该空间中最新技术的飞跃。本小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II期项目具有三个主要的研究目标：将技术扩展到10,000多人的团队；忠实地将用户体验转换为移动设备；并开发用于满足大小部署需求的技术。为了可伸缩性，一个主要领域是“存在”，告诉每个其他用户当前在线的用户。在线数据自然会随着用户对数量而生长，因此比用户数量快得多，公司将需要开发算法以将其集中在用户之间的重要连接上。在移动设备上的独特挑战中，经常有限的Internet连接需要记住以前从服务器获取的数据，以避免再次要求它，并仔细地平衡了获得所需的更新以切勿向用户显示过时的信息；出色的聊天体验所需的即时性使这两个困境的两个角特别尖锐。服务多样化的部署需要进行软件更新常规和无缝的技术，这种做法最近在浏览器和移动应用程序中普及了，但迄今为止很少在分发诸如此处描述的服务器应用程序中成就。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识优点和广泛效果的评估来通过评估来进行评估，这是值得的。