[daip] forwarded message from Amy L. Shelton

[Eric Greisen]

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From: "Amy L. Shelton" <ashelton at nrao.edu>
To: <ashelton at nrao.edu>, "Jon Romney" <jromney at aoc.nrao.edu>,
        <bbutler at nrao.edu>, <jmcmulli at nrao.edu>, <gvanmoor at nrao.edu>,
        <nradziwi at nrao.edu>, <rprestag at nrao.edu>, <julvesta at nrao.edu>,
        <mmckinno at nrao.edu>, <ghunt at nrao.edu>, <pmargani at nrao.edu>,
        <cwalker at nrao.edu>, <wbrisken at aoc.nrao.edu>, <egreisen at nrao.edu>,
        "Brian Glendenning" <bglenden at aoc.nrao.edu>, <kgolap at nrao.edu>,
        <bsahr at nrao.edu>, <mmcleod at nrao.edu>, <mlacasse at nrao.edu>,
        <mmccarty at nrao.edu>
Cc: <pjewell at nrao.edu>, <efomalon at nrao.edu>
Subject: RE: NRAO-wide Software Conference Proposal
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:31:40 -0400

Hi all,

I would like to thank everyone for their responses as to their availability
for an NRAO-wide software engineer's conference.  For those just added to
this mailing list, we have been working on organizing a software engineering
conference to be held this summer in Socorro at the AOC.  The intent of the
conference is to bring as many NRAO software engineers as possible together
to share information and exchange ideas.  Our last NRAO-wide software
conference was back in 1999 and focused on real-time software.  We would
like to extend the subject area of this conference to include more topics of
interest in software engineering at the NRAO.  To that end, our initial
proposal includes both presentations and birds of a feather (BOF) sessions.
You will read more about the proposed agenda later in this e-mail.

After consolidating all of the various responses as to conference dates, the
August dates (8th, 9th, and 10th) have won.  We have made some informal
inquiries at the AOC and it appears that various room facilities are also
available on those dates.

We have created a workspace to facilitate the organization of the
conference. Because this is an NRAO-wide endeavor and requires input from
all sites, we are coordinating the details of the conference via the wiki.
The strawman agenda proposal can be found at:

https://wiki.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/Conference2006

Let me give everyone an overview and a context for our strawman agenda.
Nicole Radziwill has agreed to give the opening remarks and kick off the
conference with an e2e presentation.  Because e2e is a topic of concern to
all of the NRAO, it is a logical topic to cover first.  After this
introduction, there will be a series of project talks.  There is a list of
projects on the wiki page.  If I have embarrassed myself by forgetting a
project, please chastise me appropriately and add it to the page.  Our
motivation for suggesting these types of talks is to give all the attendees
a summary of each NRAO project from a software engineer's point of view.
During these talks, it would also be good to introduce/recognize the
attending members of each of the projects.  Because we may have attendance
conflicts or other reasons, the representative giving the project talk does
not necessarily have to be the "leader" of the group/project.  To supplement
the project talks, we suggest that there be individual or group talks.
Instead of ~30 people each giving 10 minute talks, one or more
representatives from each project should talk about some aspect of their
work in detail for no longer than 30 minutes total (~20 minutes for
presentation and ~10 minutes for Q/A). For projects with multiple software
engineering subgroups, it might be nice to have each subgroup have a talk.
We have allocated 12 slots for this type of talk and propose that we
allocate the slots proportionally to the number of software engineers
employed by that group.  To allow for more free-flow idea exchange, we
suggest that we hold BOFs.  Each BOF session will have a moderator whose
responsibilities include moderating the session as well as summarizing and
recording the content of the discussion for posterity and presentation
during the closing remarks session.  The strawman agenda has all BOFs
suggested to date (my apologies if we forgot any).  Please feel free to add
to this list.  Assuming everyone is in favor of having the BOFs, we ask that
if you'd be interested in moderating a BOF to please add your name to the
"moderator" bullet item. If you want to participate in a BOF, add your name
to the "participant" bullet item.  We can then use this list to judge the
interest level for each topic.  When it comes to scheduling, we'll have to
hold BOFs in parallel in multiple rooms to fit everything in.  The end of
the conference is marked by a closing remarks section.  After 2.5 days of
talks and discussions, we should open up the floor for a general discussion
of things learned and ideas sparked. A good starting point for such
discussions is to have the BOF moderators present summaries of the
issues/ideas generated at each BOF session.  Finally (as out of towners
ourselves), we suggest a VLA tour.

There are a number of items yet to be addressed.  Before tackling things
such as who is giving what talks and which conferences rooms are hosting
what BOFs, I would like to iterate on a skeleton agenda until we reach a
reasonable consensus.  At this time, please limit your criticisms and
suggestions to the format of the conference rather than on the
implementation details.  With that said, there is a section on the wiki page
named "To Do List" which can serve as a repository for all issues that will
have to be eventually addressed.  If you have an issue which is not related
to nailing down the skeleton agenda, I encourage you to add it to the "to
do" list so that we do not forget to address it.

Here are some areas for debate - just to get the ball rolling...

What do you think about the length of the conference day?  Maybe we should
start earlier?  Go later?  Just right?  Do we have enough breaks?  Maybe we
don't like just a few people giving individual/group talks?  Maybe everyone
should get a chance to talk for 10 minutes?  Do we have too much time for
BOFs?  Not enough?  Just right?

I look forward to iterating toward an agenda about which we can all be
excited.  Please forward the strawman agenda and email to anyone who may be
interested in attending.

Have a great weekend!
Amy Shelton
Interim Green Bank Software Development Division Head
304-456-2277
ashelton at nrao.edu

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