moving forward

Dear HPC web community group participant,

Since we now have a fairlly good size group to begin work in earnest, I want to get things going. To that end, we need to answer two basic questions. The first is, do we have the right people here? Are there others that you as a member of the HPC world can think of who should be represented in these discussions but are not? If so, I'd like to ask you to contact them and invite them to join us.  If you don't have a good way of contacting them directly, at least mention them to the group. Someone else here may have a contact there. If you do send out an invite, also let the rest of the group know, so we can avoid redundant requests. 

The other basic question is How do we move forward? I think the first thing we all need to do, if we haven't already, is start studying the existing APIs and thinking about how they differ from each other. What issues arise from differences between them? What features do we need to address in a standard?  I think it would be good to have some sort of meeting to discuss these issues once we've all taken a little time to study them. We can then start assigning individuals to work on particular issues.

Since the U.S. Department of Energy has recently put in place new restrictions on travel for the national labs, it appears that a face-to-face meet-up this year is unlikely to work out. (At the last meeting, we had thought we might set up a BOF at SC12.) We can, however, continue our series of virtual meetings. I would like to aim for a working meeting in the next month or so. If interested, please add yourself to the following doodle poll: http://doodle.com/mfrnmfys6gtwpibr . Note that the poll is a confidential one, so you won't be able to see others' replies. I've kept it very simple, to find out what broad time ranges are best for people.

As always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to ping me or the group.

Best,
-Annette

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Annette Greiner
Outreach, Software, and Programming Group
NERSC, LBNL
amgreiner@lbl.gov
510-495-2935