The last EGEE conference is taking place in Barcelona this week before the third phase of the project comes to an end. The next phase of the European grid will be designed to be self-sustaining and not depend directly on the European Commission for its funds. The last conference on the project is focussing on this transition, with most of the work done on this infrastructure being presented, along with partner projects. One of the interesting themes that is being discussed is the something that may seem like bland terminology around what "infrastructure" really means.

We are in the process of developing the Certificate Authority for the purposes of securing and identifying hosts and individuals in the computing infrastructure that we are developing in South Africa. In order to be able to collaborate with international researchers, and interoperate with other infrastructure, the certificates issued by this CA need to be trusted by other CA's. This is done through accreditation of our CA to the EU Grid Policy Management Authority (EUGridPMA - http://www.eugridpma.org/ ).

From the CHPC : the announcement of this year's conference in Johannesburg.

We are pleased to invite you to the CHPC National Meeting 2009 and 5th BELIEF Symposium to be held during the period 7-9 December2009 at the Sandton International Convention Centre. For more information and registration, visit http://www.chpcconf.co.za .

The event is hosted by the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and Bringing Europe’s eLectronic Infrastructure to Expanding Frontiers - Phase II (BELIEF II).

The Exchange Programme to advance e-Infrastructures and Know-How (EPIKH) has recently started with funding from the European Commission's FP7. EPIKH consists of 23 partners of which 7 are from the EU and 2 in South Africa and will run for 4 years.

The strategic aims of the EPIKH project are to:

• Reinforce the impact of e-Infrastructures in scientific research defining and delivering stimulating programme of educational events, including Grid Schools and High Performance Computing courses;

• Broaden the engagement in e-Science activities and collaborations both geographically and across disciplines.

These ambitious goals translate into the following specific actions:

1. Spreading the knowledge about the "Grid Paradigm" to all potential users: both system administrators and application developers through an extensive training programme;

2. Easing the access of the trained people to the e-Infrastructures existing in the areas of action of the project;
3. Fostering the establishment of scientific collaborations among the countries/continents involved in the project.

Cross posting : Meraka recently interviewed for their intraweb Tarirai Chani, who is working on the development of the SAGrid CA and its accreditation to EUGridPMA. Read all about it at
www.sagrid.ac.za

So, it's a shameless plug, but we are in the news this week at "Feature - SAGrid: A view from the coordinator’s chair" note... sagrid.ac.za will soon be up with the new website...

Bruce Becker of the Meraka Institute in Pretoria is the Coordinator for planning the upcoming South Africa Grid initiative — which will draw upon the resources of South Africa’s Center for High Performance Computing and the country’s high-speed network, SANREN. Here, he gives an update of the status of the project.

As part of the effort of extending the capacity and relevance and of the South African National Compute Grid, we would like to call for expressions of interest to collaborate on the preparation of a proposal to the call of the EU-ACP Science and Technology Programme. This programme is funded from the 33 million euros of the European Development Fund (EDF) and covers 5 thematic areas :
* Health care
* Environmental research
* Energy
* Transport
* Agriculture and agro-industry
* Sustainable trade

Yet another - unfortunately badly informed - article on the LHC startup from an ITWeb "Staff Writer". It is commendable to take information from the correct sources (Lyn Evans for the LHC), but how does a South African magazine not interview local experts, actually working on these experiments ? The interest internationally surpassed 9/11, at least in Europe, and it seems that South African media has completely lost the plot when it comes to the science and technical aspects. This could have been entirely avoided if they had just contacted us, and it's not like we have been trying to keep a low profile. Statements such as

SA is not formally involved in the programme, although a number of local computer scientists and physicists have contributed to the development of the LHC and the grid computing net that will carry the data collected.

Just to mention that the material and presentations from the recent OSG school held at Wits is now online :

• programme : http://neo.phys.wits.ac.za/gridschool/GridSchoolSA/programme.html

• After school : http://neo.phys.wits.ac.za/gridschool/GridSchoolSA/afterschool.html

  All queries to Martin Cook (email address found here)

  Bruce

Wrapup of the South African National Compute Grid Meeting in Cape Town, 25/07 - 01/08.

Here is a wrapup of the training, deployment and strategy meeting we recently held in Cape Town. It was held hot on the heels of a short grid school in Johannesburg which I also attended. The organisers of the OSG school at Wits were very kind to have given us a lot of time to present the plans we are implementing and there was a lot of very constructive discussion.