MGHPCC @ Supercomputing19

December 12, 2019

This year, SC19, the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, was held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, November 17 - 22. MGHPCC representation included the Boston University Research Computing booth which spotlighted several of the compute-intensive projects it has housed at the Center while Northeast Cyberteam project lead Julie Ma led a Birds of a Feather session providing an update on Ask.CI, the Q&A Platform for Research Computing.

Boston University's booth at SC19 highlighting the rich diversity of projects supported by BU Research Computing Services and the multiple collaborative projects including the Northeast Storage Exchange (NESE), ATLAS NET2, Mass Open Cloud, the Northeast Cyber Team Program, Campus champions, CASC and CaRCC in which they are involved - image credit: Charles Jahnke

Launched in 2018, Ask.CI aggregates answers to a broad spectrum of questions that are commonly asked by the research computing community, creating a shared, archived, publicly-searchable knowledge base. "Establishing a Q&A site of this nature requires some tenacity," says Ma. "While Ask.CI has gained traction in the year since its launch, attracting nearly 150,000 page views, hundreds of contributors, and worldwide participation, we are always seeking ways to grow our audience."
With this in mind, Ask.CI recently introduced "locales", institution-specific subcategories where institutions/communities of practice can post FAQs relevant to their constituents. The BoF session provided representatives from Locales pilot participants Aaron Culich (University of California, Berkeley), Torey Battelle (Colorado School of Mines), John Goodhue (MGHPCC), Katia Oleinik and Jacob Pessin (Boston University), Vanessa Sochat (Stanford University), Dana Brunson (Internet2), Chris Hill (MIT), Thomas Cheatham III (University of Utah), and Zoe Braiterman (Open Web Applications Security Project, OWASP) an opportunity to share experiences and discuss future plans.
Story image courtesy J. Goodhue.