There were dragons ...
Mon 15 Sep 2008
It is mid September which can mean only one thing the collaboration is in overdrive with meetings, festivals and conferences. In the last fortnight GridPP has been all over the UK; Swansea, Liverpool, Edinburgh and London with no less than 6 different events and a major EGEE conference less than a week away in Istanbul.
The beginning of the madness brought proper wet Welsh weather and GridPP to Swansea for the 21st GridPP collaboration meeting. A week before LHC switch on meant that the weather failed to put a dampener on the excitement of what the next few months will bring. The last seven years have been very successful, GridPP has grown from nothing more than the need for a UK particle physics to a fully fledged operational Grid infrastructure providing resources for researchers both at home and abroad. However the community has not grown complacent and the catch phrase for the week was "Here be Dragons". In the next six months the LHC will start taking data, finally the Grid will be doing what it was designed for and that will be the true test of the hard work and determination that has been put into the project.
This was the first meeting since the beginning of GridPP3 in April and started on the Tuesday with the Management board having a face to face meeting and ending with the Deployment board having a full day together on the Friday, the core discussions were on the Wednesday and Thursday with input from over 50 members of the collaboration. The tone for the two days was of quiet confidence but tempered with the "known unknowns and unknown unknowns". The next meeting is six months after the LHC switch on and will hopefully be celebrating months of successful data taking and processing on the Grid.
Last week brought the LHC turn on and related events across the globe but first GridPP were in Liverpool for the BA Festival of Science. Organised in conjunction with the National Grid Service, the event on Monday 8th of September was four talks on Grid computing in the UK and the science being done on them. There was representation from particle physics, cancer research and Imense Ltd as an example of knowledge transfer. David Wallom of the NGS rounded off the session which was very well attended and generated a lot of interest and questions from the audience.
As the annual UK e-Science all hands meeting began in Edinburgh the collaboration's attention shifted to the Scottish capital and the opportunity to network and discuss the future of the discipline of e-Science. GridPP were there as an arm of STFC with Astrogrid and RAL on the same stand. All hands had a lot of contributions from GridPP this year outside the stand, with two posters, numerous talks and providing the chair for one of the sessions. The change in venue seemed to attract new blood and there were a lot of people interested in learning more about GridPP. On the Wednesday the stand revolved around the live feed coming from CERN and the LHC switch on, this kept the stand busy for the entire day with people looking for updates and was great publicity for STFC and the work GridPP does.
GridPP didn't just show live webcasts from CERN for the LHC switch on but was at two high profile events to celebrate the culmination of two decades work. The first began at 7am in the Central Hall in Westminster and had reporters and scientists from all over the UK waiting with bated breath as CERN started injecting beams. The Real Time Monitor was on show along with various members of the collaboration talking about the UK's contribution to the LHC computing challenge and sightings have been made on Sky News, the BBC Six o'clock news and more. The second event was back over the border in Scotland with Pete Clarke and Dave Britton representing GridPP at an event in the Scottish parliament building Holyrood. Mostly aimed at ministers of the Scottish parliament it was a chance to interact with policy makers on this auspicious day and explain the excitement for the physics community.
Even as the LHC was starting its second day of operation and All Hands was winding down GridPP was on the move again and returning to Liverpool for another event at the BA Festival. A slightly more informal event, James Jackson of Bristol University with some help from Mark Leese of Daresbury Laboratory spoke at an event hosted by The Alchemist Cafe in the Piazza cafe near the Metropolitan Cathedral. Using nothing more than some hastily scribbled notes James explained to the gathered masses in the middle of the cafe the Grid, the LHC and the future of scientific computing. This event was aimed at a very general audience and there seemed to someone from every walk of life there and even attracted the BA's Chief Executive Dr Roland Jackson. It was a resounding success with lots of questions being asked and notes being taken, it almost overran its 7pm finish but just wrapped up in time.
It has been a busy fortnight and next week sees GridPP, and a lot of its members, journey to Istanbul for EGEE '08. It will be hard to miss GridPP with representation on the UK & Ireland federation stand, talks from various members and even sessions being organised by some. Thankfully October is a bit quieter just as data is expected to come flooding in from the LHC.
The presentations and notes from GridPP21 be found here: http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/gridpp21
GridPP22, the next all collaboration meeting is currently planned for early March in University College London.
The BA Festival of Science 2009 is in the University of Surrey, Guildford next September, if you have any suggestions for a Grid related event/exhibition at this world renowned event please contact Neasan O'Neill (n.oneill@qmul.ac.uk)
Next years UK e-Science All Hands Meeting is moving again and will be in Oxford in December 2009. GridPP's contributions to the meeting can be found on the Posters and Talks pages.
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