There have been some major teething problems with the wireless and wired connections here at AHM / IEEE. Thankfully they seem to have been fixed so here is the blog post I wrote yesterday!
This morning I was in the User Engagement session for two main reasons. User engagement is one of the main purposes of my job and the second reason is that I was giving a presentation during this session!
The session kicked off with Alistair Sutcliffe from Manchester talking about user engagement with health informatics. He specifically talked about user tool development and the involvement the eventual users had in the development process. Next up was a fellow NGS staff member Kevin Haines who gave a more technical focused talk on how users can access NGS resources using SSH enabled clients. Good publicity for the NGS again.
I was next up and you couldn’t really get a more different presentation from Kevins! My talk focused on the outreach methods that I use at the NGS to tell people about the NGS and the methods we use for gathering feedback from our users etc. I covered topics such as our popular roadshows where we go out to institutions and give presentations to potential users, our new Campus Champions scheme, innovation forum, our new website, the Communities service which was launched last week and our annual user survey. A lot to cover in 20 mins but I made it! There were a lot of good questions at the end which asked for more detail and I got to talk for longer about a subject that I get really enthusiastic about!
After lunch (better than yesterday!) I attended the social sciences and humanities session returning to my first job in grid computing many moons ago. Peter Halfpenny from the University of Manchester talked about the e-social science agenda. Peter started off with describing NCeSS and its objectives and the initial lack of demand for grid computing by social scientists. Things however have moved on and social scientists are no longer frightened of the grid. However now looking to the future the social scientists are now asking questions about the sustainability of the tools that have been produced. Who will look after these tools, who will look after them and who will support them? These questions need to be answered and people are looking towards the funding bodies.
So tonight is the conference dinner in the centre of Oxford and a chance to catch up with all those colleagues that I’ve not yet had a chance to chat to and there are quite a few! It’s almost the end of day 2 and it seems to have gone pretty quickly already.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Monday, 7 December 2009
AHM kicks off
It’s been a hectic day so far at AHM - the first thing I had to do today as soon as I walked in the venue was to find a presentation for someone to use as they were standing in for a NGS user who was ill. Luckily thanks to our shiny new website a suitable presentation was found and they made their slot with minutes to spare. A huge thank you to Shiv and Dave F for stepping in at the last minute with a presentation on using the NGS for in-silico drug screening.
The exhibition area where the NGS has a booth has been particularly busy. We had our first demo this afternoon on the NGS booth and I am pleased to say that it was extremely busy. Photos will follow tomorrow to prove this! The UI/WMS demo was given by Jonathan Churchill and was very popular with people staying way past the demo slot to ask more questions and find out more. More information on the user interface / work management system (UI/WMS) can be found on the NGS website.
This evening brings the poster session and the journey back into Oxford to find and check into our accommodation for the week.
The exhibition area where the NGS has a booth has been particularly busy. We had our first demo this afternoon on the NGS booth and I am pleased to say that it was extremely busy. Photos will follow tomorrow to prove this! The UI/WMS demo was given by Jonathan Churchill and was very popular with people staying way past the demo slot to ask more questions and find out more. More information on the user interface / work management system (UI/WMS) can be found on the NGS website.
This evening brings the poster session and the journey back into Oxford to find and check into our accommodation for the week.
Friday, 4 December 2009
Busy
It’s all been a bit busy here at the NGS this week as many of us are off to the AHM and e-science conference in Oxford next week. The NGS will be sharing a large double stand with our colleagues at GridPP so it should be fun!
We have some demos on the stand so be sure to pop past and see what’s going on. We have demos of the new UI/WMS, the Digital Library and SARoNGS on which we would really like your feedback.
The NGS will also be hosting a Birds of a Feather meeting on the Monday night 4.30pm - 6pm on the topic of "Services to support EU projects through the NGS" so come along!
So the stand rota is done, the leaflets are packed, the posters are printed, the stand presentation is almost done and the only thing that’s left now is to write my own talk that I’m giving on Tuesday!
I’ll be at both conferences so I’ll be in Oxford Monday – Friday – I hope it’s a good one as that’s a long stretch!
If you can’t make the conferences you can keep up to date through the wonders of blogging. Various NGS staff should be blogging from the events and myself and Claire will also be blogging for the GridCast team along with Manisha (from GridTalk) and Neasan from GridPP.
We have some demos on the stand so be sure to pop past and see what’s going on. We have demos of the new UI/WMS, the Digital Library and SARoNGS on which we would really like your feedback.
The NGS will also be hosting a Birds of a Feather meeting on the Monday night 4.30pm - 6pm on the topic of "Services to support EU projects through the NGS" so come along!
So the stand rota is done, the leaflets are packed, the posters are printed, the stand presentation is almost done and the only thing that’s left now is to write my own talk that I’m giving on Tuesday!
I’ll be at both conferences so I’ll be in Oxford Monday – Friday – I hope it’s a good one as that’s a long stretch!
If you can’t make the conferences you can keep up to date through the wonders of blogging. Various NGS staff should be blogging from the events and myself and Claire will also be blogging for the GridCast team along with Manisha (from GridTalk) and Neasan from GridPP.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Open call for Hector
EPSRC are piloting a new access class for the HECToR service called 'Direct Access' (Class 1b) where users can request significant amounts (>1,000,000 AUs) of computing resource only for a period of up to six months.
The Direct Access mechanism will provide successful applicants with discretionary access to the HECToR system in order to provide resource to cover activities such as:
* Bridging access between grant applications,
* Resource to trial application developments at scale,
* Provide preliminary results in aid of grant applications via Responsive Mode or to a Call for Proposals;
There is no deadline for submission, however:
* the proposals will be assessed by a Resource Allocation Panel (RAP) which will meet every four months (February 2010, June 2010 and October 2010)
* the deadline for applications being submitted to the Panel will be three weeks before the Panel meeting.
More information can be found on the EPSRC website.
The Direct Access mechanism will provide successful applicants with discretionary access to the HECToR system in order to provide resource to cover activities such as:
* Bridging access between grant applications,
* Resource to trial application developments at scale,
* Provide preliminary results in aid of grant applications via Responsive Mode or to a Call for Proposals;
There is no deadline for submission, however:
* the proposals will be assessed by a Resource Allocation Panel (RAP) which will meet every four months (February 2010, June 2010 and October 2010)
* the deadline for applications being submitted to the Panel will be three weeks before the Panel meeting.
More information can be found on the EPSRC website.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Make the most of the NGS
We are keen to make sure that everyone is aware of the new tool recently developed and released by the NGS.
The NGS UI/WMS service is now in full production allowing NGS users to exploit all sites on the NGS including the partner resources.
Since going into pre-production in October, the UI has been upgraded and extensive stress testing has been undertaken with 1000's of jobs run through the service. The UI now also checks your certificate proxy when logging in and corrects for many common proxy problems hopefully making your life easier!
The documentation has also been extensively updated on the new NGS web site and the NGS wiki. The majority of scientific application documentation pages now have examples of running the applications via the UI-WMS. Some of these are fleshed out in tutorials on the NGS wiki, linked from the main tutorials above), with more tutorials and examples in the pipeline.
If you have any questions or problems using the service, please mail the NGS helpdesk at support(at)grid-support.ac.uk.
The NGS UI/WMS service is now in full production allowing NGS users to exploit all sites on the NGS including the partner resources.
Since going into pre-production in October, the UI has been upgraded and extensive stress testing has been undertaken with 1000's of jobs run through the service. The UI now also checks your certificate proxy when logging in and corrects for many common proxy problems hopefully making your life easier!
The documentation has also been extensively updated on the new NGS web site and the NGS wiki. The majority of scientific application documentation pages now have examples of running the applications via the UI-WMS. Some of these are fleshed out in tutorials on the NGS wiki, linked from the main tutorials above), with more tutorials and examples in the pipeline.
If you have any questions or problems using the service, please mail the NGS helpdesk at support(at)grid-support.ac.uk.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Got an opinion - then share it!
If, by some amazing feat, you haven't seen the announcements for the NGS user survey that is out now then here is another one!
The NGS user survey targets all registered users of the NGS and queries how they use the NGS, which parts of the NGS they use, if you are aware of all the services and outreach methods from the NGS and also gives NGS users the opportunity to have their research publicised as use case examples of NGS research.
Oh and all completed surveys will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three Amazon vouchers. Perfect timing for the festive shopping and sale season!
If you'd like to feedback on your experience of using the NGS then please visit the 2009 user survey.
The NGS user survey targets all registered users of the NGS and queries how they use the NGS, which parts of the NGS they use, if you are aware of all the services and outreach methods from the NGS and also gives NGS users the opportunity to have their research publicised as use case examples of NGS research.
Oh and all completed surveys will be entered into a prize draw to win one of three Amazon vouchers. Perfect timing for the festive shopping and sale season!
If you'd like to feedback on your experience of using the NGS then please visit the 2009 user survey.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Everyone's calling
There seems to have been a rash of "Calls for Papers" recently - everyone planning for 2010 I guess! They are up on the new NGS website if you want more information but in short we have EGEE User forum in Uppsala, Sweden, OGF28 in Munich, Germany and ISGC in Taiwan.
The NGS is also beginning to plan for 2010 as we are already dealing with roadshow requests for next Easter and looking attending a range of events and conferences next year. If there is an event you know of either through attending or organising then please let us know about it!
We are also keen to hear from people who are presenting work that was done using NGS resources. The new website has a much better area for showcasing research performed on the NGS and I would like to make the most of this. If you have anything you'd like to tell us about or share with us then please contact me through the NGS helpdesk (support(@)grid-support.ac.uk).
The NGS is also beginning to plan for 2010 as we are already dealing with roadshow requests for next Easter and looking attending a range of events and conferences next year. If there is an event you know of either through attending or organising then please let us know about it!
We are also keen to hear from people who are presenting work that was done using NGS resources. The new website has a much better area for showcasing research performed on the NGS and I would like to make the most of this. If you have anything you'd like to tell us about or share with us then please contact me through the NGS helpdesk (support(@)grid-support.ac.uk).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
