Debian Med sprint meeting in Southport
After the success of the last Debian Med sprint meeting in Lübeck we were granted the opportunity to organise a similar event in early 2012. This page assists in planning the event and records outcomes of the meeting.
The main organiser is Tim Booth (tbooth_ceh.ac.uk), the lead NEBC Bio-Linux developer.
Location/Date/Capacity
The sprint will run from the 27th-29th January 2012 (Friday to Sunday). The main part of event will begin on Saturday morning. Friday is reserved for a tutorial on FPGA computing.
The venue will be the Dukes Folly Hotel Southport, UK. This is an independent hotel that will provide a similar atmosphere to the one we enjoyed in Lübeck-Travemünde, and we will have the place to ourselves for the duration. The hotel has only 17 bedrooms, but to accommodate up to 30 of us working in the daytime will not be a problem. For overspill, other hotels are nearby - see below. For after hours, our hotel has a fully licensed bar and Southport is also well supplied with places to eat and drink. Unfortunately, the famous funfair will not be open at this time of year.
Signing up/Cost
Update: On 14th December 2011 Tim contacted all attendees to confirm dates and room requirements. If you replied to this mail and are showing as "confirmed" in the table below then you have a room reserved in the hotel. If not, you need to contact Tim and say what you need.
Please add your name and other details to the table below. You will be contacted nearer the time to confirm details, so please check you have given a valid e-mail address and arrival/leaving dates. This table will be passed directly to the hotel to confirm reservations. If you have any special requirements you should contact the hotel directly on +44 1704 533355 - they are very friendly!
There is a flat rate per person of £35 per night for bed and breakfast. On the Saturday and Sunday the hotel will provide refreshments plus a full buffet lunch for £10 per person. So if you are staying for three nights the total cost to pay will be £125. For dinner each night and for lunch on the Friday/Monday we will make our own arrangements.
Getting to Southport
The Hotel is not far from the main rail station in Southport - less than 1km. (Click the thumbnail map for a larger version.)
There are three international airports nearby:
Manchester Airport - trains run hourly direct from Manchester Airport Station to Southport, taking around 90 minutes
Liverpool John Lennon Airport - short bus or taxi ride into Liverpool, then trains run half-hourly to Southport
Blackpool Airport - is technically the closest, but there is no direct transport link to Southport, only a bus service via Preston.
For all public transport journeys in the UK, you should check http://www.transportdirect.info.
Overspill accommodation
If we end up filling the hotel, people may want to consider:
Talbot Hotel - Just around the corner, cheap. No on-line booking available.
Rosedale Hotel - Small hotel opposite Talbot. No on-line booking available.
Brittania Prince of Wales Hotel - Large hotel nearer to station. Headline prices are high but promotional offers may reduce the cost to under ~£43 per night. See website for bookings.
Attendees
No |
Name |
Organisation (Interests) |
Living in |
Arrival at |
Departure at |
Booked room |
Travelling details |
|
1 |
Steffen Möller |
<moeller> |
U Lübeck (Debian) |
Lübeck (D) |
Thu 26.1.2012 |
Mon 30.1.2012 |
confirmed 14/12 |
|
2 |
Andreas Tille |
<tille> |
Debian |
Wernigerode (D) |
Thu 26.1.2012 |
Mon 30.1.2012 |
confirmed 14/12 |
BE869 Southampton -> Manchester 16:30 |
3 |
Tim Booth |
tbooth_ceh.ac.uk |
NERC (Bio-Linux) |
Wallingford (UK) |
Late Thursday |
Monday |
confirmed |
Car or Rail from Oxford |
4 |
Alan Williams |
prerw_cs.man.ac.uk |
U Manchester (Taverna) |
Manchester (UK) |
Friday |
Monday |
Confirmed 14/12 |
From Manchester with Stuart+Quyen |
5 |
Pjotr Prins |
pre.public01thebird.nl |
Debian/BioLinux |
Wageningen (NL) |
|
|
No accommodation needed |
|
6 |
Tony J. Travis |
ajt_minke.ukfsn.org |
U Aberdeen (Bio-Linux) |
Aberdeen (UK) |
Thu |
Monday |
confirmed 15/12 |
|
7 |
Olivier Sallou |
pre.sur_irisa.fr |
U Rennes 1 |
Rennes (FR) |
Friday |
Monday |
confirmed 18/12 |
|
8 |
Piero Fariselli |
pre.sur_unibo.it |
U Bologna (1D->2.5D) |
Bologna (IT) |
|
|
|
|
9 |
Stefan Baumgart |
presur_sciengines.com |
?SciEngines |
Kiel (D) |
Thu |
|
|
|
10 |
Daniel Siebert |
|
?SciEngines |
Kiel (D) |
Thu |
|
|
|
11 |
Ivo Maintz |
pre.sur_biologie.hu-berlin.de |
HU (Sys Biol) |
Berlin (D) |
Thur |
Mon |
confirmed 07/11 |
|
12 |
Laszlo Kajan |
lsur_rostlab.org |
Rostlab (1D->2.5D) |
Munich (D) |
Thu 26.01.12 |
Mon 30.01.12 |
confirmed 19/12 |
|
13 |
William Spooner |
|
Eagle Genomics |
Babraham (UK) |
|
|
|
|
14 |
Jim Procter |
jsur_compbio.dundee.ac.uk |
U Dundee (Jalview,java in debian, osgi) |
Dundee (UK) |
Thu 26.01.12 |
Mon 30.01.12 |
confirmed 20/12 |
|
15 |
Sascha Steinbiss |
sur_zbh.uni-hamburg.de |
U Hamburg |
Hamburg (D) |
Friday |
Monday |
|
|
16 |
Stuart Owen |
|
U Manchester (Seek) |
Manchester (UK) |
Friday Eve |
Monday |
confirmed 14/12 |
From Manchester with Alan+Quyen |
17 |
Brian Thomason |
pre.sur_eucalyptus.com |
Eucalyptus (cloud) |
Santa Barbara (US) |
Friday |
Monday |
confirmed 14/12 |
|
18 |
H. Soon Gweon |
hyugew_ceh |
Bio-Linux |
Wallingford (UK) |
Late Thursday |
Monday |
confirmed 20/12 |
Travelling with Tim from Oxford |
19 |
Quyen Nguyen |
pre.sur_h-its.org |
HITS (Seek) |
Heidelberg (D) |
Friday |
Monday |
confirmed 14/12 |
From Manchester with Alan+Stuart |
20 |
Martin Steghöfer |
msteghofer_cistib.upf.edu |
CISTIB/Gimias (workflows) |
Barcelona (E) |
Fri 27.01.12 |
Sun 29.01.12 |
not yet |
|
21 |
Matus Kalas |
pre.sur_bccs.uib.no |
U Bergen |
Bergen (N) |
|
|
not yet |
|
Sponsorship
Without wanting to taint the non-corporate volunteer nature of Debian, attending these events is expensive. We thank Debian for supporting the travel of its developers and all the employing institutions for their support. And quite some participants pay the travel from their private pockets. Sponsors for food and travel are welcome.
Agenda
The meeting addresses the following topics over Saturday and Sunday - please add yours. Work and discussions will happen in parallel in the same room. The schedule is determined on Friday evening when most of us are expected to have arrived on site.
As a special feature, just like with bigger conferences, only better, this year brings us a 'hands-on' tutorial on FPGA computing for application acceleration. It is planned to take up all of Friday and this way only enriches and not disturbs the remainder of the meeting. Respective attendees are expected to arrive already on Thursday.
- How do we see Debian Med changed / do we actively change Debian Med with what we learn from
- Interaction of with Ubuntu (MOTU) maintainers
- Interaction with bioinformatics research groups
- having their work packaged by us
- packaging it themselves
- packaging their third party tools
- Interaction with service groups in academia and industry
- Review of latest developments
Cloud computing progress - priority tools for Cloud (eg. Cloudman)
- BOINC
- GPU / FPGA application acceleration
- Workflows
- Infrastructure with Taverna and Galaxy
- Can we find ways to present such more visibly?
- What packages are missing in Debian to render new kinds of workflows a reality with Debian?
getData / BioMaj
- first packages using it
- better integration with above workflows
- other further developments?!?
- Review of what came up on the mailing list
- Renaming of user-executable files to fully comply with Debian Policy for scientific packages (like omitting .pl suffix)
Schedule
- Thursday: Arrival of participants / trainers for FPGA tutorial
- Friday:
- 9-19: FPGA tutorial, breaks for coffee and lunch as it fits
- 19-21: dinner
- 21-22: icebreaking 7-15min talk series: how Debian helps today and after this sprint
- Laszlo and Piero: structure prediction
- Stuart and Ivo: system biology
- tba: alignments
- tba: workflows
- 23-24: discussions and planning of synchronisation points on Sat/Sun
- Saturday/Sunday: roundtable work, planning, discussion and writing
- unplanned discussions over breakfast
- teams start whenever breakfast ends
- joint lunch
- coffee+tea+biscuits?
- joint dinner
- more teamwork
- Monday: joint breakfast and group travel to airports
Related meetings
It's worth noting for those not in the know that there is some symbiosis between this sprint event and the annual BOSC Codefest which is held before the ISMB conference. Though the meetings are quite different in focus, they have recently engaged many of the same people and projects.
See also
Other upcoming Debian sprints
Debian Med developer's portal