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Supercomputing booth/2010
Details
- Web site
- Dates: November 15-18, 2010
- Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
- Booth nr: 2013 (details)
- Booth personnel: Martin Savko, Peter Stefan, Daniel Johansson
Report
Participants
- Peter Stefan – NIIF
- Daniel Johansson – NSC/NDGF
- Martin Savko – UPJS/NorduGrid
Printed material
Three new posters were prepared (updated versions of the last year ones), those served as basis for leaflets. In addition posters outlining structure of NorduGrid collaboration left from the last year were brought by Peter and were used as well. Three sets of leaflets - downsized versions of posters - were printed out.
Booking and registration: Decision not to order network and to rely on the on-site wifi turned out to be unfortunate. The wifi on the exhibition floor was very sloppy, not working at all on the first day and very slow for the rest of the exhibition. It was barely possible to load simple web page into browser and it was never possible to load e.g. NorduGrid monitor web page or to run a live demos.
Giveaways
Pens and post-it notes left from the last year were brought and used. There was around 100 out of each. Pens were rather popular and there were none left after the first half of exhibition. Around 75% of post-it notes and around 50% of leaflets were distributed.
We had also EMI related give-aways - stickers with EMI logo and brochures - distributed by Giuseppina Salente. Those served well when somebody asked about role of ARC in EMI.
Preparations
Katarina did virtually all the preparations of the printed material. Peter took care of printing posters. Martin printed leaflets.
Transport of the booth material (pop-up display and posters) was taken care of by Peter, leaflets and give-aways were brought by Martin. EMI related give-aways were distributed by Guiseppina on site.
Peter and Martin had some hard time setting up the pop up display, which unfortunately came without the set-up instructions :-). Although it was intuitive for the most part, there were some unequivocal subtleties that we did not get right for the first time. We spent significant part of Monday working it out. Fortunately we had finally everything ready on time before exhibition opening gala on Monday evening.
The exhibition
The total number of visitors this year was around 65.
From my experience the exhibition naturally split into two periods. During the initial part of the exhibition majority of people stopped just for a very short visit. They usually had no pre information about ARC. To them I have tried to pass basic description of ARC as a general-purpose grid middleware and possible use cases. Stressing out nice features and successful users (NDGF).
The other group of those who stopped during the first two days were people knowledgeable of ARC or NorduGrid who just came to say hello and to ask what are the recent advances with ARC or how is it going with ARC in EMI.
During the final two days of exhibition the frequency of passers by dropped but those who did stop posed more technical questions and even discussed possibility to use ARC for their particular use cases. I had longer discussion with a lady from U.S. Naval academy and a student from Stanford. The discussion prompted some interest of them, they took the leaflets and seemed to be willing check out more info on the web. Both were pleased to find their LRMS among the supported ones.
The more highlighted NDGF appearance on one of the posters as important and rather successful ARC user and CERN's tier-1 centre was a good step. It prompted some attention among passers by more than once.
The lack of network caused some inconvenience, I could not show a meaningful live demos to stress/support the discussed points. But in retrospect there is maybe also positive side of it: I was forced to concentrate on consistent oral presentation using posters and leaflets.
In general I would say that exhibiting and talking to people during the conference was rather pleasant experience.
Booking booth for SC11
The next SC will take place 12-18.11 (exhibition 14-17.11) 2011 in Seattle, WA.
There was no “booth selection” meeting, known from past conferences, this year. The reasoning by organisers was that there will be less space available next year (approximately 20% less than this year), so they want to know real interest of exhibitors for space first, to decide whether some kind of space quotas would be needed.
Exhibitors were given a form to fill out and plan of exhibiting floor for the next year. I have checked the small research booth (10x10 foots) and specified four preferred locations based on estimated frequency of visitors around the place and with preference for the “corner” locations.
Ideas for the boot
I realised that we really do not have a suitable poster/leaflet for people stopping by with a typical question “So, what are you doing?”. One purely non-technical poster with basic description and simple marketing messages (like e.g. “NDGF uses ARC. Check how good they are!”) might be helpful.
Some of the visitors asked for a business card, which I did not have. I have used our post-it stack instead. But visit card might be more convenient option.
This year we did not have a beamer in our booth. Peter brought one but that was used in Hungarian competence centre booth.
The pop-up display served well for posters this time. I can imagine using it for beamer presentation as well (reshuffling posters, leaving space for a beamer ray). But having yet another independent surface , like e.g. aluminium tripod used in the past, would still be better.
Pictures
Front view on the booth
Side view on the booth
Another view on the booth from a larger perspective
Martin at the booth on the second day of exhibition
Peter at the booth on the last day of exhibition
Martin at the booth on the last day of exhibition
- Sc10 7.jpg
- Sc10 8.jpg
Actions
Read through the exhibitor info
| Action | Status/Deadline | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Find People | Done | |
| Passports, Visa etc | Done | |
| Submit Company Profile | ?? | |
| Pay for the booth | Done | We don't need to pay |
| Order Furniture | Done | |
| Order electricity | Done | Included but have sent the form |
| Order Network | Done | Decided to not to order, use wireless only |
| Tickets | Done | Booth personnel needs to register (and be aproved) |
| Hotel | Done | |
| Design Poster | Done | http://www.fys.uio.no/~katarzp/knowarc/ ; http://www.nordugrid.org/slides/arc-ce-poster-3.png |
| Design Leaflets | Done | Downsized posters |
| Print Posters | Done | Peter |
| Bring Posters | Done | Peter |
| Print Leaflets | Done | Martin |
| Prepare slide show | ||
| Prepare gadgets | Done (2009) | Send to Martin |
| Allocate notebooks | Done | |
| Borrow a beamer | ||
| Borrow tripod for posters | ||
| Poster fixation on curtains | Peter/NIIF investigates a poster wall | |
| Prepare scotch- and brown tape | Done | Bought in New Orleans |
| Prepare for evt GIN demos | ||
| Register booth personnel | Done | |
| Take socket adapter,power cord distributor | Done | |
| Hire a car | Not done | |
| Sticky tape, cutter, straight threshold profile, scissors | Done | |
| Drawing pins, tapes | Done | |
| Cell phone + charger | Done |
