I'm writing this to invite you to CUG 2009 next year. But first let me congratulate CSC on an outstanding CUG 2008 conference. I was talking to Steve Scott about the CUG Night Out, and we decided that a new CUG tradition has been born. Those of you at the CUG Night Out who didn't return on the first bus got to experience the wonderful Bluegrass/Karelian band playing "Rocky Top”. Ah, it brought a tear to my eye. And Jeff Larkin and Jim Rogers were positively sobbing at a back table. (Frankly, it was a little embarrassing.)
So now we must play Rocky Top at every CUG! I can guarantee that we will hear it repeatedly at CUG 2009.*
CUG 2008 really is a hard act to follow. Helsinki is a great city, incredibly walkable with gorgeous architecture and scenery. The facilities were excellent, and the main hall even had great views of the seaside. But there is one thing I can promise for CUG 2009 that we didn't have so much in Helsinki.
We will be swimming in the Coke products! Coke at the breaks. Coke at dinner. Coke at lunch. Coke at breakfast. Jet lag? Have a Coke. Head ache? Have a Coke. Insomnia? Have a Coke!
Because we'll be in Atlanta, we'll have another advantage next year. Ten CUG member sites can fly to Atlanta in two hops, and the remaining thirty or so sites can go nonstop.
Our venue is the beautiful Omni at CNN Center, overlooking Centennial Olympic Park and easy walking distance from the New World of Coca-Cola museum (no joke) and the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest aquarium. With the Atlanta CityPass, you and your family can get a great deal for admission to these and other great attractions. A CityPass is just $69 this year. What's that, like ten Euros?
Finally, let me wrap up this note by describing our theme for CUG 2009. Interesting story. Some of you may remember Sherry Hempfling, the Local Arrangements Coordinator for CUG 2004. She and I were on a site visit to the Omni, having lunch at the Prime Meridian there in the lobby, talking about what our theme should be for 2009. We'll be installing our first petaflop Cray this year, so I was thinking "petaflops". Big-iron, mine-is-bigger-than-yours, chest-pounding petaflops!
Well it turns out Ted Turner was over at the bar having a mint julep. He overhears our conversation, turns around, and says, "Petaflops? What a petaflop? Sounds like some kind of..." And then he said something rude that I won't repeat here. So I start to explain what a petaflop is. Umpty gazillion floating-point operations per second, blah, blah, blah.
And then Wolf Blitzer walks by! He came down from CNN across the hall (to grab a Coke, of course). And he asks what's the big deal about these "petaflop" things. So I start telling him about the huge systems we're installing, the monstrously complicated software we have to write, the huge facilities we're building, the power, the cooling.
That's when I get this tap on the shoulder. Turns out Jimmy Carter was sitting behind me! True story! He was eating peanut-butter sandwiches with a couple of his Secret Service agents. So President Carter asks, "What do you do with all that stuff?"
And I say, "Mr. President, we compute the future. We design the next great superconductor, aircraft, and fusion-energy plant. We predict the efficiency of a biofuel, the track of an approaching hurricane, and the weather patterns that our grandchildren will encounter. We compute to know now, because we should not or must not wait."
And he says to me, "Son, that sounds pretty good. You should put it on a web page.” So we did.
Compute the future with us at CUG 2009!
Sincerely,
Local Arrangements Chair
* Peter Ungaro made me include the following disclaimer. (We all know he is just a lawyer at heart.) "Rocky Top will not actually be played at CUG 2009. Please do not go out and buy IBM just so you can avoid Rocky Top at future CUG meetings."
