If I thought my journey to Sweden for the last ever EGEE user forum was stressful, little did I know about the return one! Thanks to a volcano it took me 3 days, 7 trains, 41 hours, 6 countries and 2 overnight stays to get home. Not doing that again in a hurry...
So updates from the NGS - not a great deal mainly because I've been away! However we do have a new user case study up on the website . Nick Malleson from the University of Leeds has been using NGS resources to model criminal patterns in Leeds. A really interesting and different use of NGS resources!
A quick reminder as well incase you haven't seen the announcements but the registration for our Communicating Science event will close on Wednesday afternoon so register soon if you want to attend!
Showing posts with label EGEE user forum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EGEE user forum. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Impact!
After a tad stressful journey I am now safely installed in Uppsala with the NGS / UKI Federation stand in full swing at the 5th EGEE User Forum. The conference is being held in Uppsala University which is the oldest university in the Nordic countries. The building we are in is stunning as I’m sure you have seen on some of the photos already posted on the GridCast blog.
Our hosts have looked after us very well so far with excellent organisation and efficiency. There is apparently about 300 people registered for the meeting and it does seem slightly quieter than previous meetings such as those held in Catania last year. However the UKI stand has been busy as always as it becomes a hub for meeting European colleagues and for people wanting to find out what the NGS and GridPP are up to in terms of the EGI.
YEsterday was the first day that I made it to sessions after spending most of Monday setting up the stand and staffing it. I attended the EGI-Inspire session to find out how the EGI is progressing and how the NGS can and will be interacting with this European wide initiative. It did fill in some blanks!
One topic that came up was how to measure success? What is the impact of the EGI on research? Preferably the user community should actively acknowledge the use of the resource but as I know from personal experience at the NGS this is something that we find very difficult to gather information on.
Our funding bodies are constantly asking us to demonstrate our impact and to show the effect that using our resources has on research productivity in the UK. We can only do this by getting information from our users such as the numbers of papers produced, presentations at conferences, posters produced etc. These are all excellent metrics that we are asked for but we find it very difficult to get the information out of our users! Unofrtunately if we can’t prove our impact, we can’t justify more funding. This is a problem that many organisations face and, as yet, no one has come up with a solution yet. Answers on a postcard please!
Our hosts have looked after us very well so far with excellent organisation and efficiency. There is apparently about 300 people registered for the meeting and it does seem slightly quieter than previous meetings such as those held in Catania last year. However the UKI stand has been busy as always as it becomes a hub for meeting European colleagues and for people wanting to find out what the NGS and GridPP are up to in terms of the EGI.
YEsterday was the first day that I made it to sessions after spending most of Monday setting up the stand and staffing it. I attended the EGI-Inspire session to find out how the EGI is progressing and how the NGS can and will be interacting with this European wide initiative. It did fill in some blanks!
One topic that came up was how to measure success? What is the impact of the EGI on research? Preferably the user community should actively acknowledge the use of the resource but as I know from personal experience at the NGS this is something that we find very difficult to gather information on.
Our funding bodies are constantly asking us to demonstrate our impact and to show the effect that using our resources has on research productivity in the UK. We can only do this by getting information from our users such as the numbers of papers produced, presentations at conferences, posters produced etc. These are all excellent metrics that we are asked for but we find it very difficult to get the information out of our users! Unofrtunately if we can’t prove our impact, we can’t justify more funding. This is a problem that many organisations face and, as yet, no one has come up with a solution yet. Answers on a postcard please!
Friday, 9 April 2010
Déjà vu? No just some duplication…
Next week I’ll be attending the last ever EGEE conference in the slightly chilly surroundings of Uppsala, Sweden. The NGS will be attending the event in good numbers with many staff attending as we are heavily involved in the EGEE successor, the EGI.
As usual we will have an exhibition stand in conjunction with several other UK e-science institutions including GridPP and NeSC. We have lots of examples of how researchers in the UK are using the grid in there every day research as well as details of what we’ve been working on here at the NGS. GridPP will have their Real-time monitor with them so you can see how the data from the LHC is being distributed and sent round the world as it happens.
I’m looking forward to the conference as its an exciting time of transition for the EGEE / EGI project. I feel that countries will start working even more closely together with EGI which can only benefit our researchers who are increasingly involved in international collaborations through European projects etc. The question is how do we get there? How do we work together more closely and more collaboratively? Hopefully some of these questions will be answered at the dedicated EGI sessions at the conference.
So all I have to do now is cross my fingers and hope that all the material for our stand arrives safe and sound in Sweden today, grab some Swedish Krona and work out how I will cope with a beer costing about £5.50 for a 50cl bottle when I usually pay £3!
Oh and I should explain the title of this post – I will be blogging about the conference as part of the GridCast team so my blogs will be reposted on their blog. Apologies if you see them twice!
As usual we will have an exhibition stand in conjunction with several other UK e-science institutions including GridPP and NeSC. We have lots of examples of how researchers in the UK are using the grid in there every day research as well as details of what we’ve been working on here at the NGS. GridPP will have their Real-time monitor with them so you can see how the data from the LHC is being distributed and sent round the world as it happens.
I’m looking forward to the conference as its an exciting time of transition for the EGEE / EGI project. I feel that countries will start working even more closely together with EGI which can only benefit our researchers who are increasingly involved in international collaborations through European projects etc. The question is how do we get there? How do we work together more closely and more collaboratively? Hopefully some of these questions will be answered at the dedicated EGI sessions at the conference.
So all I have to do now is cross my fingers and hope that all the material for our stand arrives safe and sound in Sweden today, grab some Swedish Krona and work out how I will cope with a beer costing about £5.50 for a 50cl bottle when I usually pay £3!
Oh and I should explain the title of this post – I will be blogging about the conference as part of the GridCast team so my blogs will be reposted on their blog. Apologies if you see them twice!
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Budapest Summer School
Joint EDGeS and EGEE Summer School on Grid Application Support
Budapest, Hungary, 29 June - 4 July 2009
The NGS partner site, University of Westminster, is helping to organise the Joint EDGeS and EGEE Summer School on Grid Application Support in Budapest this summer. They will also be using NGS resources during the tutorial sessions and will therefore be introducing the NGS to a much wider audience.
So what is the summer school about? Well EGEE is the largest service grid in Europe using the gLite grid middleware, BOINC is the most used volunteer desktop grid technology in the world and EDGeS integrates gLite based service grids with BOINC and XtremWeb based desktop grids.
In this way the EDGeS infrastructure is the largest potential grid infrastructure in the world. The subject of the summer school is to give insights to these technologies (gLite, BOINC, XtremWeb and EDGeS) as well as to tools and programming environments by which user can develop and run applications on this enhanced grid infrastructure.
More information on the summer school can be found on the website.
Budapest, Hungary, 29 June - 4 July 2009
The NGS partner site, University of Westminster, is helping to organise the Joint EDGeS and EGEE Summer School on Grid Application Support in Budapest this summer. They will also be using NGS resources during the tutorial sessions and will therefore be introducing the NGS to a much wider audience.
So what is the summer school about? Well EGEE is the largest service grid in Europe using the gLite grid middleware, BOINC is the most used volunteer desktop grid technology in the world and EDGeS integrates gLite based service grids with BOINC and XtremWeb based desktop grids.
In this way the EDGeS infrastructure is the largest potential grid infrastructure in the world. The subject of the summer school is to give insights to these technologies (gLite, BOINC, XtremWeb and EDGeS) as well as to tools and programming environments by which user can develop and run applications on this enhanced grid infrastructure.
More information on the summer school can be found on the website.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Day 3 in Catania
Yesterday I went to the computational chemistry session which consisted of 2 sessions each with 3 talks.
Compchem kicked off the proceedings – they are one of the EGEE VO’s (supported by several EGEE sites) and currently have over 60 users since they started at the end of 2004. Much like the NGS they also target user conferences in order to advertise their presence and the services they can offer the chemistry community. Again, like the NGS, they are perhaps restricted in which countries they can target and so attend European events. They also provide training for users to help them get up and running on the EGEE grid resources and to use popular software such as GAMESS, DL-Poly etc. It’s nice to see that in order to reach out to users that they have done case studies of previous research in order to highlight successes etc.
For me this presentation was the highlight of the first half of the computational chemistry session!
After the break I swapped sessions as it seemed that all the user orientated sessions ie those that actually featured real uses of grid technology, all clashed with each other.
The next session I went to was entitled “grid technology uptake by scientific communities and SME's”. As the user engagement person for the NGS I was obviously more interested in reaching out to the scientific communities rather than the SME's. There were a large number of rather short talks in the session although some of these had been cancelled.
Although Sicily might seem like a small island, it does have its own grid. The Sicilian grid consists of 200 cores, 2GB of f RAM per core, 250 TB storage and gLite 3.1 middleware. To manage the thorny issue of licensed software, they have a system to manager this as they have grid enabled their Flex server. It was fantastic to hear someone actually say that building infrastructure is a waste of time if you don't build a user base - hear, hear! I was very impressed to see that they have purpose built classrooms and training infrastructure in place to make sure that grid is seen as a common tool. Unsurprisingly they were able to show a direct correlation between training and usage of infrastructure.
Compchem kicked off the proceedings – they are one of the EGEE VO’s (supported by several EGEE sites) and currently have over 60 users since they started at the end of 2004. Much like the NGS they also target user conferences in order to advertise their presence and the services they can offer the chemistry community. Again, like the NGS, they are perhaps restricted in which countries they can target and so attend European events. They also provide training for users to help them get up and running on the EGEE grid resources and to use popular software such as GAMESS, DL-Poly etc. It’s nice to see that in order to reach out to users that they have done case studies of previous research in order to highlight successes etc.
For me this presentation was the highlight of the first half of the computational chemistry session!
After the break I swapped sessions as it seemed that all the user orientated sessions ie those that actually featured real uses of grid technology, all clashed with each other.
The next session I went to was entitled “grid technology uptake by scientific communities and SME's”. As the user engagement person for the NGS I was obviously more interested in reaching out to the scientific communities rather than the SME's. There were a large number of rather short talks in the session although some of these had been cancelled.
Although Sicily might seem like a small island, it does have its own grid. The Sicilian grid consists of 200 cores, 2GB of f RAM per core, 250 TB storage and gLite 3.1 middleware. To manage the thorny issue of licensed software, they have a system to manager this as they have grid enabled their Flex server. It was fantastic to hear someone actually say that building infrastructure is a waste of time if you don't build a user base - hear, hear! I was very impressed to see that they have purpose built classrooms and training infrastructure in place to make sure that grid is seen as a common tool. Unsurprisingly they were able to show a direct correlation between training and usage of infrastructure.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Day 2, off and running :)
Day two has just started with a very interesting keynote given by Stefano Nativi, about the application of standards within the Earth Sciences Community. He showed how they are planning on using real grid platforms for things such as civil protection and interconnection of Earth science applications and resources.
The other 'big' news is that a location has been chosen for the EGI Host Site. in the end Amsterdam has been chosen which personally was always my favorite. This follows on from the 'workshop' yesterday where the EGI was presented to the community which included the internal structure, NGI requirements and a very hazy thing on how much it will cost everyone!
The other 'big' news is that a location has been chosen for the EGI Host Site. in the end Amsterdam has been chosen which personally was always my favorite. This follows on from the 'workshop' yesterday where the EGI was presented to the community which included the internal structure, NGI requirements and a very hazy thing on how much it will cost everyone!
Monday, 2 March 2009
Hello From Catania
The NGS staff are all here in Catania, Sicily at the EGEE User Forum / OGF 25 / OGF-Europe event. Several of us are currently on the UK and Ireland Federation stand so if you’re here pop by and see us.
Unfortunately most of the NGS material is “still in transit” thanks to the couriers but apparently it should appear today… Fingers crossed. However we do have some very nice NGS t-shirts in several styles to give away! The presentations have started and many sessions are currently underway although apparently many people are only travelling over today.
The weather here is gorgeous at the moment and the lunch being served outside has made the most of this. Coffee and tea has just been served so it’s time to investigate the tea situation. As a non-coffee drinker in Italy, it can sometimes be a struggle!
Unfortunately most of the NGS material is “still in transit” thanks to the couriers but apparently it should appear today… Fingers crossed. However we do have some very nice NGS t-shirts in several styles to give away! The presentations have started and many sessions are currently underway although apparently many people are only travelling over today.
The weather here is gorgeous at the moment and the lunch being served outside has made the most of this. Coffee and tea has just been served so it’s time to investigate the tea situation. As a non-coffee drinker in Italy, it can sometimes be a struggle!
Thursday, 26 February 2009
All set for Sicily
Preparations are well underway and indeed almost complete for the NGS presence at OGF25 / EGEE User Forum event next week in Catania, Sicily.
The NGS has organised the UK and Ireland Federation stand which is number B08 and located just outside the Michelangelo meeting room. Several UK and Irish organisations will be represented on the stand including GridPP, OMII-UK, NeSC, Grid-Ireland and the NGS.
Several NGS staff and associated staff will be present at the conference and will be helping to staff the UKI exhibition stand over the week. If there is anyone in particular you would like to speak to then please drop by and we can arrange a meeting. Staff present includes NGS directors, technical staff, helpdesk manager, liaison officer and many more!
Now that all remains to be done is hope that the packages for the exhibition stand arrive safe and sound and to pack the suitcase!
The NGS has organised the UK and Ireland Federation stand which is number B08 and located just outside the Michelangelo meeting room. Several UK and Irish organisations will be represented on the stand including GridPP, OMII-UK, NeSC, Grid-Ireland and the NGS.
Several NGS staff and associated staff will be present at the conference and will be helping to staff the UKI exhibition stand over the week. If there is anyone in particular you would like to speak to then please drop by and we can arrange a meeting. Staff present includes NGS directors, technical staff, helpdesk manager, liaison officer and many more!
Now that all remains to be done is hope that the packages for the exhibition stand arrive safe and sound and to pack the suitcase!
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