Conference season approaches...

It's gone slightly quieter for me now that the SeIUCCR e-infrastructure summer school is safely under way.  30 students are now ensconced in Coesner’s House in Abingdon where they are learning about the wonders of e-infrastructure and how it can help their research.  As I type they will have just finished a “hands on” session on the NGS and how to run jobs on our resources.

One event is underway but we still have two to go.  Next week sees many of the NGS staff at the EGI Technical Forum in Lyon.  The NGS in conjunction with GridPP is the UK National Grid Infrastructure (UK NGI) and in turn the UK NGI is part of EGI (European Grid Infrastructure).

It’s a very active meeting for many NGS staff due to the level of involvement we have in this major project.  As well as meetings, there will also be presentations in several sessions from NGS staff.  I’ve been asked to give a presentation on the NGS roadshows as EGI are developing their own roadshows – well they say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery!  As always the UK NGI will have a stand at the event where people can talk to us further about our activities, meet staff and obtain information.  If you are attending the EGI Technical Forum then drop by and see us.

The week following the EGI conference, many of us will be in York for the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting.  Registration for this is open until the 19th of September so if you want to go, make sure you register soon!  Again the NGS will have an exhibition stand along with GridPP at the event.  The exhibition stand will be a hive of activity as there will be several demos taking place here.  The demos are –

• Applying for UK e-Science Certificates using the new CA Certificate tool
• Taverna Server: Towards enabling long running workflows on the NGS

Some of our users will be actively taking part in the conference with demos and presentations not to mention NGS staff giving presentations and posters as well.

A major activity at AHM is a workshop organised by SeIUCCR which is a collaboration between the NGS and the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI).    The workshop is entitled  "Meet the Champions" and will take place on the Tuesday 13:30-16:30.

The workshop is an opportunity to meet researchers that have been promoting and leading research over the past decade of e-Science; find out about their work and how they utilise e-Infrastructure, and learn how you can interact with them.  Specifically the "Champions" to meet are members of the Community Champions network from the SeIUCCR (Supporting e-Infrastructure Uptake through Community Champions) project; the NGS Campus Champions and the Software Sustainability Institute Agents Network.

There will also be 2 key presentations -

• Scott Lathrop is Blue Waters Technical Program Manager for Education and TeraGrid Area Director for Education, Outreach and Training.  Scott's talk is entitled "Engaging Campuses in XSEDE".  XSEDE is the successor to TeraGrid.  Scott will be talking about the XSEDE Campus Champions programme and also the Campus Bridging programme for XSEDE.
• Steve Brewer is Chief Community Officer of EGI, the European Grid Infrastructure and he will be talking about Community Engagement in Europe.

And if you thought that was enough there will also be a panel session on the question "Why should researchers use e-Infrastructure?".

For the full details of all the NGS activities at the forthcoming AHM meeting please see the news article on the NGS website.

Hopefully we'll see some of you at some point over the next two weeks!