CERN meets Facebook

Social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Google+ and Facebook are on the rise. In particular, the life of youngsters revolves more and more around these sites as they facilitate communication, networking and the exchange of niceties. Who does not today already have an account registered with one of them? A Facebook profile can contain photos, listings of hobbies, job information, preferences…

 

The on-going effort to externalise some of CERN's computing resources continues, and in order to promote a unified interface for personal information, CERN has decided to establish a partnership with Facebook starting on 1stApril. "CERN is a public and trustworthy international organisation, and as such, our staff and users have nothing to hide from the general public," said Alexi Spiner (IT), project leader responsible for this migration:

* The computer profiles of all CERN users will be integrated into the Facebook portal;
* In addition, we will also integrate CERN maps, office addresses, phone numbers and the photo used for your CERN access card;
* Each Staff Member will have his/her supervisor added to his/her contact list automatically, in order to facilitate communication between CERN users;
* If you have publications registered with CERN CDS, arXiv.org or Inspire/Spires, these will automatically be added to your new profile;
* If you own a personal CERN web site, we will convert all its information stored to your new profile;
* If you store personal photos, music files or videos on AFS or DFS, we will automatically link them with your new profile, and advertise them to your peers;
* Possibilities to integrate Dropbox or iCloud data will be available;
* Finally, INDICO meetings with CERN participants and calendar entries in your Outlook Inbox will also be integrated into the Facebook “Timeline” feature of your new profile.

Currently, we are also investigating whether your contractual information, MARS assessment, medical records and UNIQA claims, can be migrated into your Facebook profile and whether your Facebook account can be used for using CERN computing facilities like LXPLUS, LXBATCH or for Grid job submissions.

The migration will start on 1stApril starting with the IT department, and subsequently all other departments at CERN. Migration will not affect your data, just share them better. Once your profile has been created, you will receive an e-mail with access data to your profile so you can check its accuracy and do further fine-tuning or add contents. A training course will be available soon.


For details, please check our web site at http://cern.ch/meets-facebook. Please contact meet.facebook@cern.ch for questions and suggestions.

P.S. If you are worried about privacy or confidentiality aspects, please check the new CERN Data Protection Policy (in draft; see here).