WeNMR developers workshop, Utrecht, NL
I was invited to take part in the WeNMR developers workshop held in the headquarters of this consortium at Utrecht, Netherlands. WeNMR was the first Virtual Research Community (VRC) to engage with EGI.eu, and soon after they became the largest community in the area of Life Sciences.
WeNMR is a project funded under the 7th framework of European Comission. The project aims high “to establish an e-Infrastructure based global virtual research community for structural biology in the life sciences”. It builds on the established eNMR e-Infrastructure and will consolidate the operation of current services by means of a science gateway. WeNMR VRC connects researchers worldwide providing access to information and grid service portals.
The workshop targeted the consortium partners involved in the development of the WeNMR ecosystem. The agenda was ‘rather open’ and the number of topics addressed was almost overwhelming showing how pro-active this community is. Just to name a few key subjects: web portal branding, cloud and virtualization opportunities, dissemination channels, international collaborations (SBGrid, Taiwan, …), grid technology transfer (consultation, application porting, development), workflow technology, managing web portals access vs grid/robot certificates, EGI UMD release, amongst others.
I was thrilled to witness how this community is able to maintain coherency in the provided services. At the same time the WeNMR developers showed will and skills to embrace ‘bleeding edge technology’ while rationalizing their action plans to not disrupt existing services and in turn not disturb end users work. EGI User Community Support team (UCST) reinforced the bonds established with WeNMR through the VRC Memorandum of Understanding, and our technical support services were acknowledged.
You can find the UCST presentation at this workshop here.
