The way forward

We had an outing to Table Mountain, the Two Oceans aquarium, and ended up for lunch at Lelapa Restaurant.

Now the workshop has come to an end. It was in some ways supposed to be a prototype workshop, or a showcase, and it has succeeded far beyond that. There are two main streams of participants interested in BOINC technology. First, those who study computer science and grids and may wish to contribute to BOINC or run it for scientists in their institutions, or to use it as a topic to teach various open source technologies and distributed computing. Secondly, the scientists who have models that may benefit from being ported to BOINC, or BOINC-ified. At this workshop the focus was on disease modelling, but any model or problem which lends itself to parallel computation could benefit. In fact, due to the immense resources available, some scientists may wish to hammer their model into such a shape --- the investment may turn out to be worth it. On the other hand, running a model on BOINC includes a large amount of administration too. It remains to be seen which of the many proposals put forward by the participants will (or should) come to fruition and benefit from BOINC.

Kudos to Ben and Francois who have been building the Africa@Home community for years, and I think have taken a major step forward in this workshop.

Thanks

I am really happy to be here. I enjoyed every day of this workshop even the hard labs days, the lectures was so interesting I learnt so much, thank you to all of you, it was a nice school.
Un coucou particulier a Viola, vous nous manquez par ici, merci pour l'agreable sortie.

Workshop's last day

It has been a very busy week learning BOINC and Volunteer Computing. Yet, we really enjoyed it! Today's program was especially exciting from a science perspective. We received a faculty member from SACEMA as a guest speaker. He made a presentation on researches being done there on epidemiological modelling. What made the program even more exciting was probably the participants presentations on how they planned to use the skills gained at the workshop in their country. There were prizes for the 10 best project/activity proposals. And guess what? Well , we had a live discussion with David Anderson right from Berkeley , California, with participants asking questions and guetting answers directly from he that created BOINC! And of course, we reeally loved the Africa@home T-Shirts handed to every participants.
Tomorrow we're taking a tour in downtown Cape Town and to the table mountain. Some say Cape town is the most beautiful African city, so let's see tomorrow.

Tutors ...

Hier jeudi c'etait le dernier jour de laboratoire et evidemment le plus dur, tout le monde a tenter et retenter de faire les exercices mais sans l'aide des tuteurs c'etait mission impossible, heureusement qu'ils etaient la.
Parlons un peu des tuteurs, par ordre alphabetique pour que personne ne se fache, ils sont tous tellement sympas et patients face a nos questions et interrogations. Donc tout d'abord Chris, il ne parle pas beaucoup mais il est vraiment present et son aide et efficace , quand j'etais demoralisee l'autre jour car je n'ai pas reussi a terminer les exos il m'a dit pour me remonter le moral que lui non plus n'avait pas tt terminer a ce moment c'etait bon a savoir. Passons a Christian, c'est le scandinave par excellence, pleines de bonnes manieres mais cote travail ca ne plaisante pas on devait vraiment faire tout par nous meme surout reflechir, quelques recommaandations(tres utiles) et puis on doit se debrouiller, ceci dit c'est une maniere efficace pour apprendre. Ensuite Daniel, je le connaissais avant on a ete a la meme Cern School of Computing a Helsinki http://csc.web.cern.ch/CSC/Default-old.asp, il est trop sympa et toujours souriant, il fait de magnifiquesphotos (visiter son blog) http://flickr.com/photos/teleyinex et surout il est engage ds les open sources, cote travail tres efficace et helpful. Ensuite vient Jan (joyeux anniversaire encore une fois , c'etait aujourd'hui) Jan veut me convertir a Ubuntu , on va voir d'ici a mardi le jour de mon depart, il est sympa et convaincant, il a pris de jolie photos au CapePoint http://users.aims.ac.za/~jan/photos/200707boinc/01capepoint/
Passons maintenant a Joris, ce grand gars avec les cheuveux tres long, il parait jeune mais ses connaissances sont impressionnantes, il est tres patient et toujours pret a nous aider et tout reexpliquer.
Maintenant Nicolas, c'est un reelle plaisir de le connaitre, il est tres calme et il m'inspire la serenite et je ne suis pas la seule a l'avoir remarquer, il dit qu'il n'y a pas de question stupide, il ramene toujours son fauteuil pour prendre tout son temps et tout nous expliquer, et ce qu'il fait comme travail est vraiment interessant.
Bien sur je ne quitterai pas ce post sans avoir parler de Ben et de Francois, alors...Ben que puis-je dire sur lui qui n'a pas encore etait dit, une grande presence, une grande culture, une personne a connaitre, tres dynamique et un excellant chef d'orchestre. Et maintenant Francois, j'ai adore ses presentations, un tres bon orateur et tres sympa aussi il vous mets tout de suite tres a l'aise, ravie d'avoir fais sa connaissance.
Je pense qu'en tres grande partie la reussite de cette ecole on la doit aux tuteurs: serieux , presents , tres competent et surtout sympas. Merci a vous tous j'etais contente de faire votre
connaissance.

Friday July 2007

Workshop Organizers and Volunteers
The workshop organizers and volunteers gave us a lot of their time and energy. The planning was very good and nothing was left to chance. The good thing was that every time a gap was detected in the background of the participants somebody rose to the challenge and prepared a presentation to increase the knowledge base of students. My thanks to Ben, Francoise, Jan, Nick, Daniel, Joris, Christian, Chris and Andy.

Monday 16th July 2007

Day one of the workshop
Meal times at AIMS represent a whole new dimension.
Breakfast at starts at 7:45 in the morning and it is a very good time to get to know people because early in the morning most people are very relaxed. One of the first people I got to know was Pervash whose is an Iranian resident in South Africa and working in Durban, she is one of the academicians who attended the workshop.

There workshop started with an overview of distributed and volunteer computing presented by Ben Segal and François Grey followed by a presentation of a climate modelling application to be which is to be ported to IBM World Community Grid. This morning session answered the question about the type of applications which would be suitable for Volunteer Computing.

The afternoon session was about the volunteer computing environment and credit system. Then we started the real hands on approach by creating a BOINC client attaching to a server and competing for credit!!!! This was a taste of the real BOINC experience.

AIMS A Participant Perspective

Jan talked about the history and what AIMS has achieved in the past few years. I want to write about the human side in AIMS. Walking into AIMS there is a feeling of warmth and comfort, it is a place in which everybody feels welcome irrespective of where they come from. I would like to take pay tribute to Igsaan whom we seldom see but who is responsible for the smooth running of the guest house. I would also like to mention the kitchen staff who are always smiling while performing their duties. May AIMS always be a home away from home to all scientists.