itaps-parallel ITAPS bootcamp

[Lori A. Diachin]

Hi All,

Yes, Mark is correct.  The dates are firm as Oct 14-16 (Wed-Fri), 2009 
at Argonne National Lab.  Tim sent out the visitor registration 
information this morning for access to ANL.  Hopefully we'll be in the 
new building and Tim will send out a room number when it's available.

We will start at 1 pm on Wednesday and spend the first afternoon on the 
fields discussion.  I would like to have a round robin of presentations 
from the interested parties that focus on their ideas on:
  - What is a field, how is it represented and used?
  - What are the requirements of fields?

I anticipate 20-30 minutes per presentation and would like presentations 
from at least the following groups -
RPI, UBC, LLNL, ANL and PNL.   Others are certainly welcome to weigh in, 
just let me know.  We will follow the presentations with discussion to 
see if we can start to focus down on the requirements for ITAPS fields 
and the process we will use to move forward.  Again, I anticipate using 
something similar to what has worked in the past - a small subgroup 
creates the requirements document; that is discussed and agreed to, then 
interfaces can iteratively be defined; largely via telecon.  This 
discussion should conclude by noon on Thursday.

After lunch on Thursday, I'd like to do a similar set of activities for 
the software quality issues.  The primary concern here is how to ensure 
that the ITAPS "product" of interoperable software is robust and more 
automatically tested.  Right now, it's fairly ad hoc and could be 
working much better.  I would like to hear brief presentations from each 
site on the processes they use now, what works well, and what their 
thoughts are for improving our processes.  In particular, I'd like to 
hear from SNL, LLNL, ANL, UBC, RPI, and PNL at least; perhaps others.  
Again we will follow this with discussion and an 'agreed to' plan that 
we will implement over the course of the next 3 months or so.  

The meeting will be adjourned by noon on Friday so folks can get home 
for the weekend.

For those that cannot attend in person, I would like to have telecon 
facilities available for call-in.  Tim, can this be arranged?

Hope this helps clarify the bootcamp activities.  Please let me know if 
you have any questions.

Lori



Mark Miller wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Just following up on this. Do we have a location yet? It looks like a
> very coarse schedule is
>
> Wed: Fields
> Thu: Fields am, SQE pm
> Fri: SQE pm
>
> Would it make sense to maybe refine this agenda a bit? As for the Fields
> discussion, is the main purpose just to get our ideas/issues out on the
> table and sort of brainstorm?
>
> Mark
>
> On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 18:51 -0700, Lori A. Diachin wrote:
>   
>> Hi All,
>>
>> After learning that the September timeframe didn't work for many folks, I 
>> have rescheduled the bootcamp for October 14-16, 2009 (Wed-Friday).  We'll 
>> focus on Fields on Wed and perhaps part of Thursday and software on 
>> Thursday and Friday.  We will start at 9 am on Wed and conclude by noon on 
>> Friday so folks can get home for the weekend.
>>
>> Ideally we will hold the meeting at Argonne in Chicago - Tim, will this 
>> work for you?  If not, we'll determine an alternate location - but please 
>> save the dates.
>>
>> Lori
>>
>> At 10:44 AM 7/31/2009, Lori A. Diachin wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> We would like to hold a bootcamp in mid-September to discuss two primary 
>>> topics - Fields and Software processes; the dates will be Sept 9-Sept 11 
>>> (ending at noon) in Chicago which works for a significant subset of us - 
>>> and I'm hoping will work for most.  We plan to spend the first day, 
>>> Wednesday, on Fields where our goal is to find out what everyone thinks 
>>> about what a Field is, how it works, what its requirements are.  We will 
>>> have presentations in the morning (their length will depend on how many 
>>> are interested in talking) and we will spend the afternoon discussing, and 
>>> hopefully arriving at, a common terminology that we can use going 
>>> forward.  The second day and half will be spent on improving our software 
>>> engineering practices to ensure our software is more robust.
>>> As a team, we need to settle on a set of best practices and then implement 
>>> them.  Please come prepared with ideas about what you think would work 
>>> well for the ITAPS team to improve the automation of our software 
>>> build/test/documentation process.
>>>
>>> Please let me know ASAP if you can attend this meeting.  Based on a 
>>> conversation this morning I have Mark S., Tim and Carl all in agreement 
>>> with these dates.  For the fields discussion I would like to have Mark M 
>>> and Harold also present if at all possible (and others if interested).
>>> For the software discussion on Thursday and Friday morning, I would like 
>>> Mark M, Tim and/or Jason, Karen and/or Vitus, Ken and/or Luo, Xiaolin 
>>> and/or Ryan, and Harold if at all possible.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Lori
>>>       
>> =====================================================
>> Lori Freitag Diachin
>> Center for Applied Scientific Computing          Tel:  925-422-7130
>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory         Fax: 925-423-1173
>> P.O. Box 808, L-365                                      Email: 
>> diachin2 at llnl.gov
>> Livermore CA 94551
>> ===================================================== 
>>
>>