30 years of CUG

This year in Helsinki marked the 30th anniversary of the Cray User Group. The occasion was celebrated with a special cake during the Cray Social. The very first CUG was held in Los Alamos in the Spring of 1978 and the ambitious planners managed two conferences per year through the Fall of 1996. Over the thirty years, CUG has held 50 Conferences plus three product workshops. In those early days, the planning cycle for the next Conference began approximately two weeks after the close of a conference.

Conferences were scheduled at least two years (4 conferences) into the future and rotated among North America, Europe and Asia. One tradition that went away when the Conference frequency dropped to just once a year was the Thursday afternoon Program Meeting. This meeting was open to all attendees and was a brainstorming session to come up with a conference theme for the conference a year out.  The sessions became fairly rowdy as insane suggestions passed around the room but in the end it always provided a usable theme that both the site and the planners could agree to.

In Stuttgart, Spring 1998, CUG member sites agreed to scale meeting back to "at least one per year". This change allowed CUG to host topical workshops, regional meetings and even a second full blown Conference without another membership vote. Just about that time, SGI bought out Cray Research, Inc. and the first topical workshop was held in Denver focusing on the Origin 2000; later workshops focused on the T3E and the SV1.  Under pressure from SGI to change the name of the organization - for somewhat obvious reasons - the Board of Directors agreed to change the Conference name to the CUG SUMMIT and held SUMMITs for several years.

Then SGI sold the T3E portion of the company to Cray, Inc. and the Board spent the next several years trying to hold CUG together while supporting both vendors. For those years the Conferences adapted to a format of two days for each vendor and experimented with the middle day.  One year CUG held a full day of CUG business meeting, SIG meetings and plenary talks where both vendors were present. Another year, the middle day excluded all vendors. In 2002, the Board worked with SGI executives to spin off the SGI user group activities from CUG. Two Board members, whose sites housed SGI equipment, worked with SGI to start up a new user group. CUG members without Cray equipment at the time of the split were grandfathered into CUG for up to two years. In 2003, Columbus marked the return to "Classic CUG" as the T-shirts proclaimed as CUG was back to supporting only a single vendor.

Although CUG is closely associated with Cray, Inc. and supports member sites that operate and use Cray systems, it is a separate entity incorporated in the state of Delaware. CUG is governed by a Board of Directors, voted in by the membership, as if it were a nonprofit corporation. Basically, conferences are run in an attempt to break even financially and the organization targets a bank account that would survive one totally failed conference.

CUG is run by volunteers who are financially supported by their organizations. Members of the Board of Directors attend three Board meeting per year. The Fall meeting is co-located with Cray (usually in Seattle but has been in Minneapolis and once in Vancouver), the other two board meetings are at the CUG Conference site. The first is in winter and reviews the preparations for the Conference; the second is prior to and following the Conference.  SIG and Focus chairs can do much of their work from their own site, traveling only to the Conference. CUG always needs new volunteers and it is a very rewarding experience. If you would like to be more involved, approach a Board member to discuss the kinds of things  that interest you. Most CUG volunteers first get involved through self-nomination - get involved!!

Barbara Horner-Miller

Outgoing Past President