CUG.Log

Noordwijk CUG SUMMIT 2000 Report

First of all, I have to excuse Simon de Leeuw and Kees Nieuwenhuis, who were the Local Arrangements Chairs of the CUG last year, for not attending this CUG conference in Indian Wells. Kees has accepted another job, and Simon has so many responsibilities and tasks that sometimes it is just physically impossible to be at several locations. The reason he is not here is that we started an international course on computational physics, in co-operation with the Louisiana State University last year. This week is the last week of this course, and the American students are visiting Delft. They have to finish their exercises and give their final presentations and get their marks. As you understand, Simon has to be with them, and, therefore, he asked me to represent him. I am sure you understand that this does not bother me at all! To be here, in this wonderful area of America, with its nice weather, and last but not least, to meet you all again, it is rather a pleasure. I have to admit that I was looking forward to it.

Okay, I will start with the evaluation of CUG SUMMIT 2000. Gary Jensen made the first and most important step to start the whole operation and made a reservation for the CUG conference in Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk. I think he made the best choice he could. The hotel has a magnificent view of the dunes and sea. Besides, it has a helpful and co-operative staff, despite turnovers in personnel. As a disadvantage, you could say that the governmental rate per diem was unavailable, so a number of participants stayed elsewhere.

Kees Nieuwenhuis, who was the director of SARA, heard from Simon that HPaC would be the LAC of the CUG 2000 and, after discussing the possibilities, they decided that SARA and HPaC, as the only two CUG sites in the Netherlands, will take the responsibility to organize the CUG together and will both be the hosts of the CUG conference in Noordwijk. So a team had to be formed, and a delegation from it traveled to Minneapolis, where we met the Board, Bob Winget, and Liz Stadler. This was really a good idea because it is nicer and easier to co-operate when you have met each other. We had the opportunity to discuss the budget and other important issues with the Board, the LAC of Minneapolis, and, of course, with Bob Winget. It was nice to taste the atmosphere of the conference, which was very social and co-operative, and to meet people who were always willing to give us the information we needed. Besides getting information and discussing issues, we also had the possibility to promote "our" conference. A movie was made, and we had some materials to introduce The Netherlands, Sara, and HPaC to the CUG attendees. We tried to convince them that they should attend this meeting because it would be a great event.

We choose "poldercomputing" as the theme of the conference because a big part of The Netherlands lies beneath sea level, and high tech computing plays an important role in solving problems in this area. We also chose the guest speakers based on this topic. Another item that played an important role was that the Board introduced the extension SUMMIT to the CUG conference. And, yes, we as LAC agreed, this SUMMIT, the top, was our main goal: to organize a nice conference. We wanted to provide an atmosphere where the CUG members would have interesting meetings and discussions, without worrying about anything except the issues concerning high tech computing. We tried to do our utmost to meet these goals. As far as we know (considering the conference, the responses and remarks from the evaluation forms), you may say that we succeeded. We would have liked to offer you a week full of sunshine and less wind and rain, but, unfortunately, the weather conditions lay beyond our power.

We also had a great team: we shared enthusiasm, and it was nice to meet each other each month to discuss the progress of our efforts to organize the whole event as well as we could.

The possibilities of the night out were discussed and drawn up. We decided we would like to show you our polders by making cruise through it. We thought it an advantage to have all the people together on the boat so that everybody had the opportunity to make friends among colleagues over a glass of wine or beer and nice food. But not everybody has the same ideas, as I learned from the evaluation forms: one person decided not to go because he did not like to be trapped for so many hours!

During the preparations, it appeared that it was possible that SGI and Cray would not be together in a company anymore. This was really bad news because it seemed to have important consequences for the conference, not only for the organization of the program but also financially. The vendors of SGI and Cray were not allowed to join each other's sessions anymore. The Board found a solution in dividing the conference in an SGI and a Cray part, with a "hugging day" on Wednesday. Therefore, Wednesday was the best day for the traditional night out. This also implied there would be an SGI reception and a Cray reception, instead of one big reception, and that the Newcomer's luncheon would be cancelled. Instead of it, tables were reserved for the Newcomers, where they could meet the Board and other CUG delegates. This policy worked nicely, but an important consequence was that there were fewer people who attended the whole meeting. Some might even have decided not to join the CUG meeting at all. The result was that there were fewer participants and, hence, less income. It is known that a European conference always has fewer attendees than American ones, but this time attendance was lower than usual. We counted on 250 participants, but the total number of attendees was 215. Owing to this situation, we did not succeed to make a profit from this conference. We managed, however, to stay within the budget approved by the Board. The CUG SUMMIT 2000 was sponsored by the Dutch Foundation for Computing Facilities and the Stichting Signaal Museum, which held an exposition of a selection of their collection of old mechanical calculators and computers during the conference.

We really had a nice time organizing the local arrangements of the conference and the conference itself, although sometimes we worried that enough people might not attend the conference. But, as I said before, we loved the experience of organizing this event. We know that most of the participants had a great conference. So, our job is done, and the last thing I want to say is thanks to the Board and all the people who helped us during the preparations and the conference itself. There is especially one person I would like to thank, and that is Bob Winget. He was the one we could always rely on for help. Thank you very much, Bob; you were great! I want to wish this LAC a lot of success during this week. What I have seen so far is very promising.

Maria Roodenburg
Holland LAC
m.roodenburg@tn.tudelft.nl