From scrumb at ogf.org Mon Mar 10 09:24:37 2008
From: scrumb at ogf.org (Steve Crumb)
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:24:37 -0500
Subject: OGF23 Call for Participation
Message-ID: <00e301c882ba$78d9b280$6601a8c0@SRCLAPTOP>
Apologies to any who receive multiple copies of this call.
OGF23/OGF-Europe Call for Participation
Session proposals are being accepted through 11 April, 2008 for OGF23,
OGF-Europe's first international event, co-hosted by the Barcelona
Supercomputing Center (http://www.bsc.es/) in Barcelona, Spain, June 2-6,
2008. OGF Event Programs seek to strengthen existing industrial and
eScience communities within OGF, provide a forum to foster new relationships
and collaborations based on common interests, and develop best practices and
technical specifications related to distributed systems and grids. With the
launch of the EU-funded, OGF-Europe project (http://www.ogfeurope.eu),
topic-specific community outreach seminars emphasizing best practices,
workshops analyzing grid user requirements, and tutorials transferring
practical skills will take place as part of this event. Additionally, the
BEinGRID project ( http://www.beingrid.com) will
co-locate its Industry Days event where updates and demonstrations of
eighteen business experiments with grids will be presented. More details on
the call for participation and an online submission form may be found at:
http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php.
In addition to OGF's chartered groups and Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions,
the Program Committee is soliciting proposals for content that support its
mission of accelerating grid adoption in both research and industry. While
the Program Committee will consider all proposed content related to grid
technology and usage, they are particularly seeking content related to the
following topics:
OGF Specification Adoption
OGF23 will continue OGF's emphasis on grid specification adoption with a
multi-session track showcasing implementations of OGF specifications.
Demonstrations and implementation experiences are encouraged as part of
these sessions.
Digital Repositories
Under the remit of the OGF-Europe project, funded by the European
Commission, OGF-Europe will hold a Community Outreach Seminar that explores
how digital repositories in research, government, and commercial settings
are successful leveraging grid technologies and infrastructures.
Data Management in a Grid Environment
As a follow-up to the full-day workshop held at OGF22 on data movement and
management, OGF is soliciting further proposals for sessions that discuss
practical approaches and best practices around managing data in either an
eScience or a commercial setting.
Best Practices
In addition to developing grid specifications that lead to interoperable
grid software, OGF also produces Best Practice documents that define a
particular challenge found in deploying or managing grids and grid
applications and then suggest a functional solution (e.g., practice) that
solves the identified challenge.
Related Community Content
As with traditional OGF event programs, the OGF23 Program Committee welcomes
submissions of all types (case studies, technology updates, panels,
tutorials, etc.). Individuals or organizations proposing workshops will
contribute to a publishable "Post-Event report" compiled by OGF-Europe and
distributed to major stakeholders giving an overview summary report of the
outcomes and findings of the workshop. In addition to the explicit
solicitations above, additional topics of interest include but are not
limited to:
* Achieving scalability and availability in a grid environment
* Application development/deployment in a grid environment
* Earth modeling and geospatial applications using grids
* High Performance Technical Computing and grids
* Virtualization, cloud computing, and grids
* Exploiting grid technologies for inter-organizational collaborations
* Simplifying management complexity of grids
* Small-medium enterprise (SME) adoption of grids
* Technology Enhanced Learning & Virtual Learning Tools
* Digital Content & Digital Rights Management - Applications &
Technologies
* Medical applications using grids
* Telecommunications & Optical Networks
* Networked and Virtual Organizations
* Collaborative Working Environments
* Transportation & grids
* Energy & grids
Tutorials
OGF and OGF-Europe is soliciting proposals for multiple half-day or full-day
tutorials, which differ from workshops and other community content in that
they are extremely hands-on activities with a clear expectation of knowledge
and skill transfer. Tutorial topics may include: developing grid services;
deploying grid tools; building grid applications; managing grid
infrastructures; and other topics where skills can be taught and transferred
to tutorial participants. Tutorials may also be targeted to decision makers
such as managers or architects exploring grid technologies for the first
time. In this case, a tutorial may include overviews of benefits, costs of
deployment, timeframes and manpower requirements, and other useful
information for organizations wishing to leverage grids.
Online Submission Site (
http://ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php) is available from 10 March through 11 April,
2008. The Call for Participation submission deadline is 11 April, 2008.
Notifications will be sent by 21 April, 2008.
Program Committee
Wolfgang Gentzsch (Chair), D-Grid, DE
Kento Aida, National Institute of Informatics JP
Robert Fogel, Intel, US
Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, US
Fabrizio Gagliardi, Microsoft, US
Matti Heikkurinen, Emergence Tech, The e-Infrastructures Reflection Group
Support Programme 2 , FI
Rajkumar Buyya, U of Melbourne, AU
Domenico Laforenza, Italian National Research Council, Institute of
Information Science and Technology, IT
Erwin Laure, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Enabling
Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE), CH
Sarah Pearce, Queen Mary University London, GridTalk, UK
Morris Riedel, Forschungszentrum-Juelich, DE
Bruno Schulze, National Laboratory for Scientific Computing - LNCC, BR
Yoshio Tanaka, National Institute for Industrial Science and Technology
(AIST), JP
Lee Hing Yan, NGO (National Grid Office) Singapore
For OGF23 Registration and Lodging information please visit:
http://www.ogf.org/OGF23.
Steve Crumb
Executive Director, Open Grid Forum
scrumb at ogf.org
+1 312-895-5931 (office)
+1 630-915-3324 (cell)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/ogf-sponsors/attachments/20080310/f286ddeb/attachment.html
From scrumb at ogf.org Mon Mar 10 21:19:28 2008
From: scrumb at ogf.org (Steve Crumb)
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:19:28 -0500
Subject: An Open Letter to the OGF Community
Message-ID: <017d01c8831e$55e5a4f0$6601a8c0@SRCLAPTOP>
March 10, 2008
To The OGF Community.
>From time to time, all organizations need to take stock of their current
situation and reevaluate their priorities. As many of you have no doubt
noticed, while the OGF community has been relatively stable, and one could
argue more productive than ever, some of the primary sponsor organizations
have been shifting priorities. This helped motivate your board of directors
to task a "tiger team" with answering the following questions:
. Who are the stakeholders in the OGF, i.e. what is the community?
. Why do they build/support/supply Grids?
. What are their greatest pain points?
. Who do they go to overcome these pain points?
. How do our existing efforts map onto the community's priorities?
We felt that answering questions such as these would help us understand
where we are as an organization and where we should be going. The net result
of this effort was shared with the community at the second Town Hall meeting
at OGF22, but we also wish to inform the entire community through this
letter.
The good news is that it is clear that our core community, rooted in
eScience and technical computing, is vibrant and healthy. Core attendance
and participation in the OGF events and in most chartered groups is stable
and has been for some time. A GFSG decision a few years ago to nurture
standards that were felt to be high priorities of the community is bearing
fruit, as evidenced by HPC Basic Profile et al. However, we are finding it
difficult to continue to attract and retain organizational members and the
associated decrease in funding is having a negative impact on our overall
financial well being and our ability to continue to support our community
activities.
Seeing this trend, a stakeholder survey was commissioned and the results
showed that there is a gap in interests between the core working base of our
community and our traditional hardware and software platform sponsors.
Generally, our core workers look to their own organizations or communities
of interest for solutions to their grid challenges. This makes them a less
attractive target for vendors wishing to sell their products and services.
The survey also indicated that end users do tend to look to vendors for
solutions, but that they rarely view OGF as a place to work on their
problems.
It is this last point that is the most telling, forcing us to develop our
priorities based on the real value being produced within the working core of
our community. Specifically, that we are a community that comes together
because we share some set of common problems or experiences with respect to
grid technologies. We share our experiences to help each other solve our
problems. The community is what we are and we welcome all who want to
participate, whether they are academics, high performance computing
specialists, enterprise end users, platform hardware and software vendors,
funding agencies, partner standards organizations and so forth. But the
output of the community must be driven by the needs of the community, with
prioritization determined by the community.
The survey has also helped us understand many of the existing community's
requirements more clearly. As a result, the GFSG has highlighted the
standards efforts that are of most important to our community. We intend to
help shepherd and nurture the development of those standards and to
evangelize the value of the standards we have already created to the broader
community, many of whom may be outside of the OGF today but who should find
value in our work and who we can encourage to join us and participate. We
also need a clear path forward for our non-standards based community
activities. As a next step, we expect a group of senior OGF volunteers to
add more detail to this in the weeks ahead.
With clear community driven goals we then have the opportunity to
restructure to enable maximum success. As a volunteer organization it is
imperative that our structure is light-weight, minimizing the effort
required to co-ordinate activities, efficient and representative of our
community. Returning to the work and priorities of the community is urgent,
as is determining a sustainable financial model as sponsor members reduce
funding. This means that the community must take more responsibility for
its own sustenance. We have three levers that are under our direct
control: membership fees, event fees/costs and staffing/organizational
costs. We will be examining all of these in the coming weeks and months to
arrive at organizational and financial structures that are sustainable. As
a first step we have already reduced our staffing by 20%. Additionally, we
are increasing the full-week event fees by $140 per person, starting with
OGF23 in Barcelona. We have not taken this step lightly, however we have
not increased fees in the last 3 years, even though costs have risen. These
two steps will help with our financial well being, without the need to
further reduce our staffing and place more of a logistics and administrative
burden on our community.
So that is the state of the OGF, your community, your organization. After a
period of introspection, we think we have a clearer idea of who we are as a
community and our purpose in meeting and working together. As we move
forward we need to refine our structure to support our purpose and we need
to modify our financial structure to make us more self sustaining and
independent. We hope you feel as positive and committed to this
organization as we do. Our core community has been stable and productive
for a long period of time and these efforts are designed to ensure that this
state of affairs continues for the foreseeable future.
Best Regards,
Paul Strong, Acting Chairman of the Board, OGF
Craig Lee, President, OGF
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/ogf-sponsors/attachments/20080310/9138f8cc/attachment-0001.html
From scrumb at ogf.org Wed Mar 26 10:35:16 2008
From: scrumb at ogf.org (Steve Crumb)
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:35:16 -0500
Subject: OGF23 Opportunities
Message-ID: <00f301c88f56$fe0b6c20$6601a8c0@SRCLAPTOP>
OGF Organizational Members,
Plans are well under way for the next OGF event (OGF23), this time in
Barcelona Spain on 2-6 June, 2008. For those of you who experienced OGF20
in Manchester (or at least heard about its success), I think you will
recognize this event as a unique opportunity to engage with a larger
audience on a continent where grids are riding significant momentum due to
years of funding (in both research and commercial settings) at the national
and regional levels.
Attached you will find a sponsor prospectus for OGF23. This event actually
combines several different audiences into a single event with an expected
attendance of about 500. In addition to OGF's global community, you can
expect to see a significant influx of commerical grid users and builders
because of a strategic co-location with the EU-funded BEinGRID project and
their two-day "Industry Days" event. During this event, the project will
present and demonstrate the results of over a dozen "business experiments"
with grids being deployed in numerous commercial settings. Additionally, we
expect a growing number of other EU-funded projects that leverage grids to
deliver applications such as digital repositories for eHealth and a number
of others.
Also launching at OGF23 is the EU-funded OGF-Europe project, which provides
OGF a number of very focused activities around the mobilization of end-user
communities that are exploring grid adoption. OGF-Europe will also be
holding workshops and tutorials at OGF23, making the week full of exciting
content and useful networking. In fact, if you wish to propose content for
this event, the Call for Participation is still open until 11 April and can
be found at: http://www.ogf.org/OGF23/cfp.php. We welcome your proposals.
I do wish to make you aware that the scope of our exhibition activities is
somewhat limited due to the size of the venue. As indicated in the
prospectus, we have less than ten spaces to work with and I know demand will
be high for these. This is why we are offering not only the display space,
but also numerous other sponsorship opportunities for your to consider for
increasing visibility. Please take some time today to explore the
prospectus and let me know if you have questions or wish to discuss any
options. Let me say again that the prospectus is open to numerous
constituencies like BEinGRID's participating organizations as well as
numerous EU-funded projects in Europe. We hope you can find just the right
option in the attached prospectus.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Steve Crumb
Executive Director, Open Grid Forum
scrumb at ogf.org
+1 312-895-5931 (office)
+1 630-915-3324 (cell)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/ogf-sponsors/attachments/20080326/2728448f/attachment-0001.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OGF23_SPONSOR PROSPECTUS.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 628609 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/ogf-sponsors/attachments/20080326/2728448f/attachment-0001.pdf