Friday 24 October 2008

And it's closed

Registration for the National Grid Service Innovation Forum has now closed and I'm pleased to announce that we have 118 people attending over the two days. We are really pleased with the numbers that have registered and it's shaping up to be a great event. If you aren't able to attend, don't worry as colleagues from the Centre for e-Science at the University of Lancaster will be filming the presentations at the event so you can catch all the presentations at your leisure!

The latest fortnightly news bulletin from the NGS was released today and contained information about new software additions on the NGS including Gaussian 3, PC-GAMESS / Firefly 7.1.C and the expansion of the bioinformatics database provision. If you would like to receive a short fortnightly update by email from the NGS, you can subscribe here.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

NGS Innovation Forum '08 - places are going fast!

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the NGS. Many of us attended the EGEE conference in Istanbul where, as well as the conference, we were also involved in EGI and other project meetings. Thankfully most of us had arranged to stay on couple of days so we could actually see something of Istanbul rather than the inside of the conference centre!

The presentations from the workshop I organised on Dissemination and Outreach can now be found online and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my speakers Sy Holsinger from Trust-IT Services and Vicky Huang from AGSC. During EGEE '08 I also got what I call "podded" as I was filmed for a podcast during which I talked about the NGS. I haven't actually been brave enough to watch it yet but if anyone is interested it can be found here.

On return from the conference it was straight back into preparations for the NGS Innovation Forum which is quickly approaching. If you have no idea what I'm talking about then all the information can be found on our website. The agenda is almost finalised and we have a fantastic line up of speakers talking about the latest developments for users at the NGS, use case scenarios for NGS resources and where the NGS is heading in the future. Registrations are coming in thick and fast so if you are thinking about coming along, register soon!