HPCS 2013 - Visualization everywhere???

Visualization was pretty prominent at HPCS in general this year. I think we all know the only way to make sense out of complex data, in particular "big data", is to use visualization in some form. Almost all speakers at the conference talked about visualization on one form or another...

I took the WestGrid Visualization Roadshow on tour to HPCS 2013 this week. Held a day long workshop on Monday, teaching introductory Paraview. Good attendance and lots of interest...

Also chaired a Visualization BOF on Tuesday. Again, pretty good turnout, with most of the interest around how to support visualization effectively. The problem at most Compute Canada sites is that there is no dedicated support person for visualization. Visualization support, like any support, takes time - and most analysts support visualization off the side of their desk.  Not sure how to change that without money, people, and commitment from above...

I also did a couple of ad-hoc remote visualization demonstrations at HPCS as well - people were interested in seeing how well it worked. Nothing like a demo without planning, but it all worked. Connected the GPU nodes on parallel.westgrid.ca to my laptop, via wireless, in Ottawa. Remote visualization worked very well - I think we might have some remote visualization users from the East on parallel soon 8-)

HPCS 2013 - Ottawa

Attending the HPCS 2013 conference in Ottawa, lots of interesting talks with a focus on the importance of big data in science and the community. One of the most interesting was from the CIO from the City of Chicago, talking about their open data initiative. Check out this map to see an example of their open data interface (Crime Data from 2012). Very impressive.

Other very interesting talks on the computation and data in weather predicition, high energy physics, astronomy, brain imaging, and next generation genomics. Interesting thing is that although these research projects are "data intensive" in many of them the data is prediceted to grow significantly in the future. Look out when the Square Kilometer Array comes on line!!!

Check out the HPCS 2013 program for details...