HPCC Meeting, Mar. 21, 2024

# HPCC Meeting, Mar. 21, 2024 The HPC Carpentries Task Force holds meetings on the first and third Thursday of each month, with two time slots intended to provide adequate coverage for our global constituency. These two meeting times provide the least-painful coverage for the six non-polar continents. Folks in Antarctica and aboard a space station are invited to join whichever is most convenient. :::danger This iteration is special, this is the window where the US has changed to summer time, but Europe has not. The earlier meeting is scheduled in CET, and the later one in EDT, so they have moved relative to each other! The shared Google Calendar is correct, as are the links below. ::: * [13:00 CET][earlier] — better for Africa, Asia, and Europe * [17:00 EDT][evening] — better for the Americas and Oceania A Google calendar has been set up to capture these events, available [online][gcal] and for [download][ical] for your calendar app. ## VTC: ___[Click here to join!][meet]___ Both meetings will use [Google Meet][meet]. You may also call in by [phone].  [meet]: https://meet.google.com/gez-aeui-jdx [phone]: https://tel.meet/gez-aeui-jdx?hs=5 [earlier]: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20240321T13&p1=187&msg=HPC+Meeting+1 [evening]: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20240321T17&p1=250&msg=HPC+Meeting+2 [last-meeting]: https://codimd.carpentries.org/KFETQm0yQC2JwjfMjeGjvw --- ## Agenda ### The Website Our main [website](https://hpc-carpentry.org) has gotten a bit stale over the past while. This agenda item is motivated in part by some work that Alan O'Cais already did getting the workshop list updated, but also it has come up at various times in recent meetings. The proposed task is to check in on progress on issues identified earlier, and possibly identify new ones. ### Workflow lesson development The workflow lesson has now been taught once! And there's a [giant PR](https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/hpc-workflows/pull/14) on it! It's currently in "draft" status pending a resolution of some attribution issues. There was a plan for this at the [last meeting][last-meeting], has this been executed? What are the other barriers to merging, and can we capture them in the PR? ### Conferences, Outreach We passed on the opportunity to sit down with some folks at ISC 24, due to bandwidth concerns. Janetta Steyn and Alan might try to put together an HPC-Carpentry-connected version of the *MiniHPC* set-up, possibly as a tutorial, combining hardware set-up and configuration for HPC Carpentry infrastructure with the EESSI software back-end. ### Workshops There are a few workshops in the offing. There are plans to do a workshop at LLNL the week of June 30, and probably a NIST workshop a week or two later. ### Bioinformatics On this issue, Benson provided Trevor and Andrew with introductions to the relevant principals, and possible areas of mutual interest are under discussion. The [bioinformatics lesson][genomics-workshop] could/should be adopted to run on an HPC/big data stack. Currently, each person uses a separate VM (Ubuntu 16.04). A cloud cluster would likely reduce cost as compute cores and memory can be released. For US department of agriculture, a number of people would benefit from a shell lesson as a separate portion before moving into bioinformatics portion. Having the software available in conda, modules, a singularity container and a guix container would enable the lesson to be taught in a portable manner. Many people in this audience use Nextflow, and the [Nextflow lesson][nextflow-lesson] would be a good fit for an HPC and Big Data Curriculum. Should reach out to the lesson developers. ### Speaking Invitation Scott Callaghan from the [SIGHPC Education](https://sighpceducation.acm.org/) chapter of the ACM has invited Andrew to give a talk about HPC Carpentry as part of their speaker series. A recent update suggested working with Juan Herrera from the EPCC on a joint conversation about producers and consumers of the content. Details to be hammered out soon, with an expectation that this will happen in late May or early June. ### Governance Carried over from last time, where due to time it didn't get a ton of traction. At the [last meeting][last-meeting], Andrew floated another crack at a narrative, involving governance "owning the story" of the project, and curriculum development as a kind of good-faith critic on behalf of the audience. This was not well-formed, but could perhaps be developed further. Feedback is welcome. --- ## 13:00 CET Session ### Participants - Andrew Reid (he/him), NIST - Craig Gross (he/him), MSU - Marc-André Hermanns (he/him), RTWH Aachen University - Jannetta Steyn (she/her), Newcastle University, UK - Toby Hodges (he/him), The Carpentries, DE Intro -- Marc-Andre Hermanns is in the HPC group in Aachen, and is in a mostly user-facing role, involved in education and training at various levels. Background in performance and analysis tools. Also involved with the [HPC Certification Forum](https://www.hpc-certification.org/) (came up in the context of a sidebar about ISC '24), they are interested in creating a [skill tree](https://www.hpc-certification.org/cs/map/) and cataloging what people need to know, and how to assess whether people actually know these things, and then try to map the skill tree elements to the existing training material, and identify gaps and overlaps in both directions. Brief discussion about the relationship between the Carpentries approach and certification -- we give people muscle memory and vocabulary, not the ability to pass exams or get certificats. But this can be a "running start" to a more formal process, and the existence of a skill tree would help us to identify next steps or gaps or overlaps in our content, to make that running start more robust. #### The Website Craig has created an issue on the main lesson page [[**Clarify core curriculum #79**]](https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-carpentry.github.io/issues/79), mostly on clarifying what the core curriculum is, which is done reasonably well on the README, but not so well on the front page. Maybe align with what the other lesson programs do. Also clarify what are the "main lessons", as well as the other material. [Library Carpentry does this reasonably well](https://librarycarpentry.org/lessons/). #### Workflow lesson Status is unclear. The gating issue was getting the attributions right for the included material, after which it could then be merged, and development could continue from that point. #### Conferences, outreach Our first idea is that Janetta and Alan might put together a MiniHPC and EasyBuild to stand up an HPC-Carpentry-capable cluster, and demonstrate how to do that. There has also been some activiites in the Carpentries Offline world, they are looking to dedicate some time to bring that material into the MiniHPC world. They will likely draft the proposal in Github or somewhere where things can be crowdsourced. Submisisons are open for a CarpentryConnect event in Germany in November, and also submission are open for the RSE conference in the UK. Toby H. is on the organizing committee of both of these, and strongly encourages us to submit to these. Nominal RSE deadline is May 1 AOE, CarpentryConnect deadline is April 2, but could be extended. CarpentryConnect is the the 12-14 of November. RSECon is in September,in NewCastle. Q from Janetta: Could the same abstract work for all three, RSE, CC, and SC? Types of submission for CCHD24: * Breakout discussion sessions will be 1.5 hours long and conducted in a round table or general discussion format. These discussions will be crucial in connecting participants based on shared interests and stimulating discussion on relevant topics. * Skill-up or training sessions will allow participants to develop new skills in a 1.5-hour or 3-hour session. In this session, you can share technical or transferable skills with others * Workshops are a way for you to pass on your ideas and expertise to other participants in a 1.5-hour or 3-hour session. You can reach out to larger numbers of people by conducting workshops on the topic that you find important and facilitate a positive learning environment for the attendees * Lightning talks and posters will allow you to present your work, idea, interest, etc., in short, 3 to 5-minute presentations or within a poster * Mini-collaboration drive and Curriculum Development Sessions (on Day 3): If you have an idea for a new lesson or if your lesson is in the early stages of development, feel free to submit the idea/lesson using the same form. There are two sessions scheduled, each lasting 1 hour and 30 minutes. https://carpentries.org/blog/2024/02/cchd24-call-for-proposals/ Toby recommends (at least) a submission for the curriculum development sessions. Marc-André wondered whether an update to the [Intro to HPC curriculum](https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/hpc-intro/) could be a potential topic for a mini-collaboration drive? RSE24 submission types: * Presentations * Panels * Interactive sessions (teaching, demonstration, collaboration/hackathons) * Posters https://rsecon24.society-rse.org/calls/submissions/ Hybrid attendance might work for CC. #### Workshops LLNL, week of June 3. NIST in mid-June. Michigan State might be able to do something in the summer. #### Bioinformatics Andrew and/or Trevor should follow up with the bio-informatics folks and find relevant areas of overlap. If this is about genomics data, as it seems to be, then it will probaby be embarassingly parallel, so it may be high-throughput as opposed to HPC. Responsible use of shared resources is in scope, but the more HPC-y interprocess communications issues may not apply. #### Speaking opportunities: SIGHPC Education Calls The news is that a probable co-speaker for the SIGHPC Education activity is Weronika Fillinger (at EPCC/Archer), the next step is for Andrew to figure this out and agree on a date. #### Governance Andrew has thought some more about the "owning the narrative" idea, it's not as compelling as initially hoped, but thinking about it more, it sort of circles back to the internal vs external split, which is maybe the answer. *What is owning the narrative?* i.e. "What we are doing?" "Why are we doing it?" "Who are wd doing it for?" Governance committee can ensure that our work align with and serve these narratives. The curriculum development committee would provide complementary balance by giving feedback to the governance committee whether there are gaps in the *narrative*. This committee also oversees the development of the lessons. Another dichotomy would be: inward-facing and outward-facing. What we are currently doing much at HPC carpentry meeting => inward facing. The outward-facing is interacting with stakeholders (instructors, learners, ...). ## 17:00 EDT Session ### Participants - Andrew Reid (he/him), NIST - Jane Herriman, LLNL - WIrawan Purwanto, ODU ### Workshops Jane H. was on the later call, pinged her about possible travel support. Jane seemed optimistic. ### Our Needs (HPC Carpentry) *Our current needs (at HPC Carpentry):* Find the pool of people who have access to novice learners. It will be great if we meet and appeal to such people at events such as CarpentryCon. ---  [gcal]: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/?cid=bWp0ZWh0ZmEycmVjZGZtNmZjdGUwMWVhdGNAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ [ical]: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/mjtehtfa2recdfm6fcte01eatc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics [minutes]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination/tree/main/minutes [website]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-carpentry.github.io [hpc-cluster]: https://cluster.hpc-carpentry.org  [coordination]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination [proposals]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination/labels/proposal [hpc-chapel]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-chapel [hpc-intro]: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/hpc-intro [hpc-parallel]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-parallel-novice [hpc-python]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-python [hpc-shell]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-shell [hpc-workflows]: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/hpc-workflows  [coordination-issues]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination/issues [hpc-chapel-issues]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-chapel/issues [hpc-intro-issues]: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/hpc-intro/issues [hpc-parallel-issues]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-parallel-novice/issues [hpc-python-issues]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-python/issues [hpc-shell-issues]: https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-shell/issues [hpc-workflows-issues]: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/hpc-workflows/issues  [genomics-workshop]: https://datacarpentry.org/genomics-workshop/ [nextflow-lesson]: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/workflows-nextflow/  [conduct]: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html [invite]: https://swc-slack-invite.herokuapp.com/ [ldh]: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/governance/lesson-program-policy.html#lesson-programs [license]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ [slack]: https://swcarpentry.slack.com :::info __Use of this service is restricted to members of The Carpentries community__. Users are expected to follow our __[Code of Conduct][conduct]__. All content is publicly available under the [Creative Commons Attribution License][license]. ::: :::danger __This server is not backed up!__ The Carpentries is not responsible for any data loss. :::