Brief return

The NGS staff are all back from the EGEE conference in Barcelona where NGS received a fair amount of publicity thanks to a keynote presentation from David Wallom (our technical director), the exhibition stand and several posters and presentations from NGS staff.

You may think we would have time to catch our breath but it's not so. On Wednesday we are running a NGS roadshow event at the University of Glasgow where we have over 40 people attending from 4 different universities across the central belt of Scotland. We have some great speakers lined up for this event and more details can be seen on the event page.

Talking of events, there is still time to register for the NGS Innovation Forum. Registrations keep coming in and the closing date is the 13th of October so you haven't got long left! The break out sessions are proving to be really popular and it's a great way to meet up with researchers in similar areas to discuss issues etc. The registration link can be found here.

In non-event news the latest edition of the NGS newsletter is out now featuring articles on the NGS and GridPP working closer together, NGS roadshows, a spotlight on the Manchester team and much more. If there is anything you would like to see in the next edition of the newsletter or if you have a suggestion for a story then please contact the NGS (support@grid-support.ac.uk).

#egee - The NGS in the spotlight

Yesterday the NGS Technical Director, Dr David Wallom, gave a keynote address on the NGS to a pretty packed room here at the EGEE conference in Barcelona. David talked about the current state of the NGS and also where we were headed in the future given the move towards an EGI. He explained the resources that we offered our users and highlighted the large number of institutions who have signed up to become members of the NGS, realising the important of giving their researchers access to the most amount of resources. The range of research performed using NGS resources was also highlighted with David talking about many of our popular use case examples. There were lots of questions with many delegates taking the opportunity to quiz David as it is usually the other way round!

This was a great opportunity for the NGS to be showcased to a European (and further beyond) audience at an important event and we would like to thank the organisers for giving the NGS this opportunity.

If you would like to see the slides from Davids presentation they can be found here.

e-Science demos wanted!

As previously announced on this blog, the next EGEE conference will take place in Barcelona on the 21st – 25th September. The NGS is organising the UKI Federation exhibition stand where we will be exhibiting alongside OMII-UK, NeSC, GridPP and Grid-Ireland.

In a change to the previous EGEE meetings there won’t be a dedicated demo booth section, instead all demos will now take place on the exhibition stands. If you would like to give a demonstration of your e-science application on the UKI stand then please let us know! Contact Gillian (gillian.sinclair(at)manchester.ac.uk) at the NGS to discuss your demo etc.

EGEE 09 call for papers and registration is open!

The ever popular EGEE conference has announced a call for sessions for its next meeting in September in Barcelona. The event will be held on the 21-25th Sept with a theme of “Uniting our strengths to realise the sustainable European grid” and will mark the beginning of the end of the EGEE projects and the start of the transition to EGI.

Sessions are welcome from communities using the various e-infrastructures, the operations groups running the e-infrastructures and the software developers building the e-infrastructures, and the projects that are collaborating with the European e-infrastructures around the world.

Further details on how to submit a session for EGEE09 are provided here under the “submit a new abstract link”.

The EGEE09 Programme Committee will review the proposals in early June 2009 and publish a preliminary schedule shortly afterwards. A call for demos and posters will be made in June.

If you would like to attend the conference, registration is now open with early bird registration available until the 30th of June. To register please visit the registration page.