Interview with a Community Advisor

Meet Lawrence Hardin
If you are a frequent visitor to World Community Grid's forums, you probably know Lawrence Hardin. Lawrence serves as one of seven World Community Grid Community Advisors. As such, Lawrence provides significant assistance to other members in the forums, answering a range of technical and project-related questions. Lawrence, like all the Community Advisors, is critical to the smooth functioning of World Community Grid, helping the official technical team ensure that the volunteer experience is both interesting, informative and trouble-free.

When not trolling the forums to help members with their questions, Lawrence, a retiree, has a great many hobbies, including computer genealogy and science fiction. Lawrence is a former First Lieutenant in the Air Defense Artillery of the U.S. Army. He also has extensive programming experience and even created a startup focused on computerized lab instruments using computer vision for geological analysis.

WCG: How did you first hear about World Community Grid?
LH: On the day it launched, I read an article on The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net) about World Community Grid, and I decided that the project sounded intriguing, so I signed up.

WCG: What intrigued you?
LH: The general science subject matter and the Advisory Board. The projects sounded really important, and knowing that the Advisory Board was choosing the projects assured me that they were of value to humanity, not just of value to an individual scientist. Also, IBM was backing it, and I have a lot of respect for IBM.

WCG: How did you go from member to Community Advisor?
LH: I started watching the Forums and began answering the questions that I could and found that I was enjoying the time I was spending there. I started with very simple questions – how to do things with the computer like installation issues. After awhile, I started reading up on the projects and the science, and I began to be able to answer questions about that too.

I guess I was helpful enough that World Community Grid asked me and several others to become Community Advisors. It wasn't going to add any more time to what I was already doing, so I thought: Why not?

WCG: What do you enjoy about being a Community Advisor?
LH: Well, what I like is when I can actually help with a problem; I like solving problems. I don't like when I can't solve them, but that's the way it goes!

WCG: How much time do you devote to the Forums?
LH: Let me see... I'd say 10 hours a week at least. I read through everything new that was posted every day and respond to as many people as I can.

WCG: You've gotten to know some of the volunteers through the Forums. What do you think about World Community Grid's volunteer community?
LH: I've got a lot of respect for them   especially those who are not Community Advisors but still invest time helping others within the Forums. There are a lot of members helping other members, and they've come up with great answers! And in general, this is a wonderful idea – a great, easy way to volunteer.

WCG: What do you think World Community Grid should focus on in the future?
LH: I think it's important to get the word out on World Community so that both volunteers and researchers know that this is available as a tool. Good research projects and lots of volunteers – that's probably the best way we can go for the moment.

WCG: Any parting advice you'd like to share with us?
LH: Don't believe any hot stock market rumors that you run into in the oil business.