NOBUGS '97 workshop

[Tim Mooney]

                       NOBUGS 1997
                    December 10-12, 1997
                    Argonne National Lab

        Call for Papers, Posters, and Demonstrations

The Advanced Photon Source and the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source will
host the second international NOBUGS (New Opportunities for Better User
Group Software) workshop at Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago,
IL, USA.  We invite you to submit papers on software, techniques, and
standards for use at synchrotron-radiation and neutron-scattering
facilities.  Specific topics of interest include the following:

	Software for instrument control and data acquisition

	Scientific data-analysis and visualization software

	Emerging standards and applications of scientific data formats

	Data-storage, compression, and retrieval techniques

	Future directions in software development, algorithms,
	standardization, and sharing.

As this is to be a workshop, demonstrations are particularly
desirable.


Background
----------
NOBUGS originated as a workshop sponsored jointly by ESRF and ILL to
[paraphrasing...] review existing software tools for data
acquisition and analysis, and to encourage convergence and sharing as
ways of minimizing development effort while improving the quality and
uniformity of user interfaces.

For more detailed background information, see the following URL's
http://www.esrf.fr/computing/nobugs/nobugs_top.html (ESRF/ILL)
http://www.dl.ac.uk/SRS/FCIS/nobugs.html (Daresbury)


Agenda
------
A tentative (straw-person) agenda follows.  The final agenda will be
determined from the abstracts submitted, and will be published on the
Web before the workshop.

	Day 1: The state of the field
	-----
	Morning plenary session: Facility reports
	We intend this session to focus on the big ideas that distinguish
	various development efforts, and suggest that speakers save the
	details for poster/demonstration sessions.  Also, we request that
	speakers in this session look over each other's abstracts
	(on the Web) before the workshop, so that useful comparisons
	can be made.

	Afternoon plenary session: 
	Talks describing (and demonstrating, if possible) the novel features
	of existing, proven software.

	Poster/demonstration session.

	Possible evening session of vendor presentations, informal
	demonstrations, and tutorials.

	Day 2: Technical details
	-----
	Half-hour talks  (20-minute presentation; 10-minute discussion) on
	subjects small enough to permit in-depth treatment.  Talks should
	describe existing software or systems under active development, but
	not systems merely in the planning stages.

	Morning parallel sessions:

		Control & data acquisition (SR & Neutron)
		Analysis and standards (SR & Neutron)

	Afternoon parallel sessions:

		SR applications
		Neutron applications

	Poster/demonstration session.

	Workshop banquet.

	Day 3: The future
	-----
	Half-hour talks on unproven systems under active development, ideas
	for new developments, new directions, etc.  We hope to attract
	a few talks on genuinely hare-brained ideas with credible
	potential to influence future developments.  We intend to set
	aside time for discussion, and we may schedule several parallel
	sessions simply to get small enough audiences that discussion will
	be practical.  Active working groups may program private
	sessions during this time.

Information for all attendees
-----------------------------
The workshop will be held on Dec. 10-12, 1997, at Argonne's conference
facilities on the Advanced Photon Source site.  We have reserved a
block of rooms at the Argonne Guest House (see
http://www.aps.anl.gov/travel/anlghhome.html), a hotel located about a
block away from the auditorium.

There is a Web page for this workshop at the URL
"http://www.aps.anl.gov/XFD/bcda/nobugs/". If you plan to attend,
please complete the registration form on the Web page.

There is an email listserver for NOBUGS generally, maintained by Bill Pulford
(ESRF).  To subscribe, send a message to listproc at esrf.fr with the
message body of the form
	SUBSCRIBE NOBUGS <your email address>
To post a message to everyone on the mailing list, send email to
	nobugs at esrf.fr


Information for authors
-----------------------
Deadlines:
Oct. 20, 1997 - Submission of abstracts to be considered for oral presentation
              - Requests for hardware and software support for demonstrations
Nov. 10, 1997 - Submission of abstracts for poster sessions
Nov. 17, 1997 - Registration for workshop
Nov. 24, 1997 - Acceptance notification to authors
Dec. 12, 1997 - Electronic submission of all papers/posters.

Abstracts:
There is a form for submitting abstracts on the workshop's Web page.
Please submit via this form if you can.  If the form doesn't work for
you, please submit the requested information by email.

Papers:
The proceedings will be published on the Web, so papers should
preferably be in HTML format.  If this is not possible, please e-mail
the paper in ASCII text format.  Some general hints:

	A short list of key words, preferably with "meta" tags, should be
	included.

	All artwork must be cited in the text, be numbered, and have captions. 
	Artwork should be in GIF or JPEG format.  (Other Web-compatible
	multimedia may also acceptable.)

	Whenever appropriate, references to URL or FTP locations for the
	software and documentation should be included.

	Any number of non-reference URLs for directly relevant sites of
	interest may be included.

	Postscript is acceptable for the published version of poster
	presentations.

	To keep us all sane, please include the word NOBUGS in the subject
	section of your e-mail.

Demonstrations:
If you would like to do an on-line demonstration of your software, we
will make our best effort to support your needs. We can provide the following
hardware:

   Sun Workstation/Solaris 2.5 with CDE
   NCD X-terminal with CDE
   Macintosh
   PC/Win95

Other architectures may be supported on request.

If you wish to bring a PC with your software already installed, we will
have a limited number of 19" multisync monitors available.

If you bring your own computer, we can provide a 10 Mbit/sec ethernet
connection via 10BaseT, Thin Ethernet, or AUI port.

If you need any commercial software that you will not bring with (e.g.,
IDL), please contact us to see if we can support your need.

In order to have the best chance for us to support your on-line demo,
and so that we can gauge the number of systems we need to have on
hand, we are requesting preliminary notification of your hardware and
software needs no later than October 13, 1997.

Travel funds:
We intend to provide some travel funds to invited speakers.  The
amounts have not yet been determined.

Organization
------------
Organizing committee:
	Ray Osborn
	Tim Mooney
	Julie Wulf
	Mark Rivers
	John Hammonds
	Jon Tischler
	Tom Worlton
	Bakul Banerjee
	Dave Wallis

Advisory Committee:
This committee should be representative of the communities involved, and
it should undertake to discover the best work in the field and bring it
to the attention of the local organizers.  The advisory committee
should also advocate for the workshop, and disseminate information
about it.  If you know of someone who should be on this committee,
please send us a message.

Workshop secretary:
Julie Wulf (jmwulf at aps.anl.gov)

-------------------------------------------------------

Please feel free to forward this announcement appropriately.


Dr. Tim Mooney (mooney at aps.anl.gov) (630) 252-5417
Beamline Controls & Data Acquisition
Experimental Facilities Division
Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory

Dr. Ray Osborn                 Tel: +1 (630) 252-9011
Materials Science Division     Fax: +1 (630) 252-7777
Argonne National Laboratory    E-mail: ROsborn at anl.gov