A very rich programme of workshops follows the main conference on 2 and 3 October, 2008. Space is limited; it is strongly advised to register early.
Thursday 2 October 2008
Full day workshops
Full day workshops run from 9:00 to 17:00 except where otherwise noted.
Workshop 1: SEE Grid IV: Building interoperable information communities for an Environmentally Sustainable Australia: Common Problems, Common Solutions
The Solid Earth and Environment Grid Community (SEE Grid) is an established international Community of Practice. It brings together people in the earth, environmental and computing sciences to address the issues of transparent access to data and knowledge about the earth. The aim is to enhance our ability to explore for and sustainably manage our natural and mineral resources. The community was an outcome from the SEE Grid I Conference in 2003 and now includes representatives from organisations devoted to open standards and data exchange including State and Commonwealth agencies, Academia and international organisations.
Workshop 2: WASP: Australian Scientific/GPU Stream Computing Workshop
Graphics processing unit (GPUs) are a powerful and cost-effective platform for high performance parallel computing; particularity for computational intensive data parallel applications. The aim of this forum is to introduce and discuss the scientific applicability of GPUs to computational science in Australia. It will target academics and researchers across all areas of computational science and bring together representatives from the industry who will demonstrate in tutorial sessions the GPU hardware, programming tools, and GPU computing techniques.
Workshop 3: AAF: What you need to know
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by the AAF Project. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
This workshop will provide an overview of the Australian Access Federation (AAF) and will discuss what universities need to do to join the federation.
Morning half day workshops
Morning workshops run from 9:00 to 12:30. Lunch following the workshop at 12:30 is included.
Workshop 4: ARCS Collaboration Tools and Support
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by ARCS. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) has been supporting a wide range of Collaboration Services and Tools which have been allowing researchers, groups and research communities to share ideas and collaborate across organisational boundaries. This workshop will give an introduction into a number of web based and real-time collaboration tools and services which researchers may find useful for day-to-day collaboration with members of a research team located within an institution or across institutions. Attendees will be shown how a number of these tools work with strong emphasis placed on how these tools can help facilitate communication and collaboration. Attendees will have the opportunity to try out a number of examples themselves, and interact with the workshop staff to discuss how their own use cases could benefit from the tools and services which can be provided.
Workshop 5: ANDS: Seeding the Australian Data Commons
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by the ANDS Establishment Project. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
To ensure that the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) provides a useful resource for researchers, it will need to be able to provide access to valued data sets and collections from the inception of its services. One of the four key ANDS Programs is that of “Seeding the Commons”. The goal of the program is to make as much content available through ANDS as possible, as early as possible. The intent is to improve the capture of data across the research sector to create a critical mass of baseline data through the Commons such that the value of the NCRIS investment in the Commons can be realised by researchers almost immediately. The strategy is that the most valued research data be captured first. This workshop will seek input from participants to inform this critical process. Through participation, attendees will gain access to the opportunity to influence the implementation of this important national strategy.
Afternoon half day workshops
Afternoon workshops run from 13:30 to 17:00. Lunch prior to the workshop at 12:30 is included.
Workshop 6: The ARCS Data Fabric
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by ARCS. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
The Australian Research Collaboration Services (ARCS) Data Fabric is an easy to use way for researchers or groups of researchers to store and share their data. End users will be able to easily and transparently obtain access to a minimal quantity of storage resources without needing to invest financially or technically. It supports either the command line or GUI interfaces. Web interfaces will be available as well. Researchers wishing to purchase additional storage or storage features may do so as well and this will be available as part of the ARCS data fabric. This workshop will cover an introduction to the data fabric, what it is, how to gain access to it and policies for using it.
Workshop 7: ANDS: Developing eResearch Capabilities
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by the ANDS Establishment Project. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
There presently exists a gap between the possibilities presented by the eResearch agenda and the realities of eResearch practice. Development of institutional capability to support eResearch includes having the right people, expert and available knowledge, well-defined business processes, excellent facilities and equipment, functional information and communication technologies, and established accountability and governance. This workshop will focus on the ways and means to develop people and their expertise to support eResearch. It will seek input from participants to inform the proposed ANDS Building Capabilities Program as to how it can best assist Australian universities and research bodies to improve individual capabilities.
Friday 3 October 2008
Full day workshops
Full day workshops run from 9:00 to 17:00 except where otherwise noted.
Workshop 8: Geoinformatics for Geochemistry
This short course is presented by Kerstin Lehnert, a featured speaker at the conference. It includes a hands-on component. The course is intended to help interested researchers and students develop knowledge and expertise about data management in Geochemistry, the use of the data systems PetDB, SedDB, EarthChem. The course will provide a blend of education opportunities in the use of geochemical databases with background knowledge about Geoinformatics, relational databases, and data reporting.
Workshop 9: eResearch in the Arts, Humanities and Cultural Heritage
This workshop aims to stimulate discussions between the UK and Australasian arts, humanities and cultural heritage communities about the use of e-Research infrastructures, services, technologies and methodologies. In recent years, several grass-roots initiatives in the UK culminated in a national e-Science programme for the arts and humanities. Early adopters are experimenting and systematically investigating what e-Research could mean for practitioners as diverse as musicologists, archaeologists or archivists of cultural heritage data. The workshop will compare, explore links and develop synergies between these activities and the emerging agenda for arts, humanities and cultural heritage e-Research in Australasia.
Morning half day workshops
Morning workshops run from 9:00 to 12:30. Lunch following the workshop at 12:30 is included.
Workshop 10: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technology for eResearch
Employing the power of the world-wide web to foster online, collaborative, communities and to organise far-flung, information resources is a notion underpinning both eResearch, and the global ‘social networking’ movement. The research use of tools like ‘blogging’ or ‘wikis’ has grown phenomenally, successfully demonstrating the strength of this idea. We present here, as a half-day workshop, a next step in eResearch infrastructure, harnessing what has been called ‘Web 2.0’ technology for extremely rapid development of user interfaces to data, information, and knowledge resources. This will be a hands-on workshop to explore and demonstrate building a working, production level user interface using the Web 2.0 Extjs framework.
Workshop 11: Using the ARCS National Grid
Registration fees for this workshop are being met by ARCS. There is no cost to attend; however space is limited.
The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) provides national eResearch infrastructure for supporting Australian researchers. The ARCS Systems Services team is responsible for hosting eResearch applications and supporting infrastructure for the ARCS National Grid. There are a wide range of high-performance computing resources available to Australian researchers and all are slightly different. The ARCS National Grid provides a standard interface for efficiently transferring data and securely launching jobs at these resources. This workshop will provide researchers and eResearch software developers with in depth explanations, hands-on experience (for those with their own laptops) and demonstrations of the tools and services supported by the ARCS National Grid, and how researchers can use them. Attendees will see how easy it can be to run jobs on remote HPC systems connected to the grid. They will also learn how a custom GUI interface can be developed for their own applications.
Afternoon half day workshops
Afternoon workshops run from 13:30 to 17:00. Lunch prior to the workshop at 12:30 is included.
Workshop 12: SimpleSAMLphp
This hands-on workshop will introduce the attendees to a new kid on the block of federation technology that allows for quick deployment of federated access services, based on SAML 2.0 and PHP. SimpleSAMLphp has been key to the quick progression of the Andalusian federation in Spain and allows for bridging diverse federating mechanisms such as Shibboleth 1.3 and 2, SAML 2.0, even OpenID. SimpleSAMLphp allows for simple and easy integration of PHP applications into federated environments, but can also integrate non PHP ones through Authmemcookie.
Workshop 13: NCRIS NCI and the National Facility
Registration for this workshop is at 50% of the normal rate for a half-day workshop as the other 50% is being met by the National Facility.
The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) component of NCRIS 5.16, Platforms for Collaboration, provides access to peak computing facilities and comprehensive computational support for researchers throughout Australia. These computational resources are located in the National Facility at ANU. This workshop will give an introduction to different aspects of the National Facility including how to apply for access, an overview of the hardware and software that is available, training courses for users, the handling of large data sets and visualization of computational output.