All-hands meeting 2023

23 Jan 2023, 15:00 → 26 Jan 2023, 13:00 Europe/Copenhagen

Gudbrandsgard hotel Kvitfjell

The NeIC All-hands meeting (AHM) is an annual event at NeIC where people working in NeIC's activities come together across projects and teams. The aim of these events is to give the personnel a chance to get to know other people working on e-infrastructure in the Nordics so that we can connect and learn from each other. The AHMs are traditionally held in a wintery location in Norway where it is possible not only to learn new and hear interesting presentations, but to enjoy several outdoor and indoor activities together with colleagues.

All NeIC personnel, affiliate coordinators as well as board, provider forum, steering group and reference group members are cordially invited to join the AHM. NeIC will book and cover all participants' accommodation and meals during the event and bus transportation to and from Oslo airport. See the page 'Travel and practical information' for details.

If you are engaged in a NeIC project and not sure whether you should participate, please contact your team leader. 

Registration to AHM23 opens on 14 November and closes on 12 December.

Monday, 23 January

Practicalities: Registration

1 Registration

PM-PO meeting

A meeting for NeIC Project Managers and Project Owners.

Poster session

2 Poster session

On the first day of the meeting, we will have a session where each NeIC project and activity presents their work in a poster. Participants are free and encouraged to walk from one interesting poster wall to another, stop to ask questions, learn more and engage in discussion with colleagues across activities. There will also be coffee and some snacks served during the session.

Questions we would like the poster to answer:

Something about the project activities, goals and people
What are you working on that should be relevant to all e-infrastructure projects?
What will be your legacy in 10 years?
What are your most challenging problems? (PESTLE?)
What in the project are you most proud of?
What problem will have been tackled and solved when the project ends?
What will still not be solved after the project ends? What is the reason for this: is it due to politics, missing technology, time limitations, etc?

The posters will be printed out by the Administrative coordinator. Please send the file via email to Mari Arnesen (mari.arnesen@nordforsk.org) by January 09. The projects are also free to bring with them any other posters or leaflets they may have from before.

Please note that the posters will not be shared outside the participants of the event unless the project explicitly asks for this.

Poster format:

Will be printed in A0
pdf
3mm bleed and crop marks
Colorprofile: CMYK

Questions for the "public" to answer:

While enjoying the posters we want the participants to think about ideas for current NeIC projects for fun and profit, ensuring sustainability in other people's projects. We will provide a board and pieces of paper so that you can write your comments and stick them on the board to share with others.

On Wednesday, we have dedicated some time in the morning to go through any interesting discussions, ideas and answers to tough questions.

Opening

3 Welcome Talk by Gudmund Høst

Dinner

Tuesday, 24 January

Keynote: Nicolò Dell’Unto on Photogrammetry

4 Keynote - Nicolò Dell'Unto on Photogrammetry

Supercomputing the Past, the Use of 3D Visualization Technology in Support of Archaeological Practice

In the last two decades, visualisation and recording technologies have strongly affected how scholars perceive and interact with archaeological information. Specifically, introducing new visualisation techniques and devices has allowed researchers to experience new ways of simulating the past, creating the conditions to discuss recent theoretical frames and address further research questions. Despite archaeologists and cultural heritage specialists only beginning to realise the potential of these applications in the heritage sector, experiments in 3D visualisation have demonstrated how three-dimensional data provide practitioners of the cultural heritage sector with more efficient tools to analyse and interpret the past.

This talk will discuss the potential, limits and future developments of 3D visualisation systems as media for analysing and discussing archaeological interpretations.

Biography

Nicolò Dell’Unto is a professor of archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University. He studied archaeology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. Upon completing his Master, he had a joint appointment as a research assistant at the Institute for Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage, ITABC-CNR, Italy. There, he took part in several international projects for 3D documentation and visualisation of archaeological sites through digital techniques. Later, he obtained a PhD in technologies and management of cultural heritage at the Institute for Advanced Studies, IMT Lucca, Italy. He also worked as a post-doc and lecturer at the University of California Merced before his current position as Professor at Lund University. Dell’Unto is a visiting Professor at the Department of Collection Management at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.

Ski break

5 Ski and lunch break

Time for enjoying the lovely outdoors in the way you prefer. You can go for a walk, cross-country skiing or alpine skiing - or stay inside and enjoy the spa. It's up to you!

If you signed up for the cross-country ski-course, that is today at 11:00.

Lunch

Parallel Workshops

6 Workshop - Research software development practice - part 1

Research Software Development Practice

Jake Muff, CSC - Maiken Pedersen, UiO - Matias Jääskeläinen, CSC - Samantha Wittke CSC, Radovan Bast, UiT, Richard Darst, Aalto University.

The goal of this workshop is that in the style of show-and-tell one learns about different ways of using research software development practices related to DevOps and continuous integration from members of the NeIC community.

During the workshop we will hear from 3 contributors on 3 different topics, getting to know how they use Software development and Continuous integration in their job and how it helps them solve problems. The contributors will also bring up unsolved problems or unfinished solutions and engage the audience to solve these and discuss.

We hope that during the workshop you will find out how software development practices can be related to DevOps with hands-on examples to improve your skills. Be prepared to ask questions, discuss and contribute to the workshop

The current contributors and topics can be found here: https://notes.coderefinery.org/AHM23-DevOpsWS?view

Speakers: Jake Muff (CSC - IT Center for Science), Mr Matias Jääskeläinen (CSC – IT Center For Science LTD.), Radovan Bast, Samantha Wittke

7 Workshop - FAIR

In this workshop we will give an overview of the Metadata Manager implemented at UiO on the Educloud Research platform.

We will present the current implemented solution, and show use-cases from researchers piloting the service, in addition to hear what they say related to the challenges they have when it comes to FAIR-ifying their research data, and in what way the Metadata Manager has helped.

The second part of the workshop will be a demonstration of the solution, using the photographs taken during this AHM for the photogrammetry workshop.

What about the future? Could this solution be expanded further through a development project in a Nordic or European context. We invite NeIC to join us for a debate on possible future prospects.

We ask the participants to take some photos during the meeting that could be used in the FAIR demo. They can be uploaded here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y0tj8-HoD0xlMNrs4hiNrTbgq_1FnzEA?usp=sharing

Speakers: Anne Schad Bergsaker (University of Oslo), Gard Thomassen (University of Oslo)

8 Workshop - Photogrammetry - part 1

Creating 3D models in the field. In this workshop you will be guided through the steps for creating 3D-models of real-world objects.

Participants will take photographs of some object in or around the hotel, and we will attempt to use these in the workshop.

We ask the participants to upload the photos here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y0tj8-HoD0xlMNrs4hiNrTbgq_1FnzEA?usp=sharing and they will be of use in the FAIR workshop too.

Speaker: Prof. Nicolo Dell'Unto (Lund University)

9 Workshop - Vocabularies - part 1

Machine-actionable vocabularies and data definitions—why they matter and how to make your own

Just as dictionaries and glossaries sometimes help you avoid misunderstandings in everyday communications, data dictionaries and data definitions can be used to make systems interoperable. In the spectrum of human-to-system-to-human communications you will find ways of systematically organizing knowledge for subsequent retrieval using “controlled vocabularies”—that is, sets of predefined, authorized terms that have been selected by some governing principles. Controlled vocabularies are used ubiquitously, from systematically recording data for a single research study, to serving as the source of acceptable terms in form fields, to enabling large-scale indexing of inventories, medical literature and research outputs.

During this workshop, you will:

• Learn why you might want to take your vocabularies to the next level, what it means to make them machine-actionable, and how to govern them in simple scenarios
• Practice creating, sharing and using vocabularies following recipes that illustrate the general principles and can scale to real-world applications

Speaker: Womar Nyberg Åkerström (NBIS)

16:45 Coffee and waffle break

Parallel Workshops

10 Workshop - Research software development practice - part 2

11 Workshop - Joint Vocabularies and FAIR workshop - part 2

12 Workshop - Photogrammetry - part 2

19:00 Break

Dinner

Wednesday, 25 January

Keynote: Magnus Sahlgren on Large Language Models

13 Keynote: Magnus Sahlgren on Large Language Models

GPT-SW3: building the first large generative language model for the Nordic languages

This talk gives an overview over the process of building the first large generative language model for the Nordic languages. We cover the motivation for building the model, as well as challenges and opportunities with data and compute. We also give examples of applications of the model, and discuss future directions for building and deploying large language models for smaller languages.

Sahlgren is known for this work on Random indexing applied to distributional semantics published through research projects at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and later at Gavagai AB, the research company he co-founded in 2008. Sahlgren's dissertation The Word-Space Model was awarded the prize for the most prominent scholarly achievement of 2006 at the Stockholm University Faculty of Humanities.

Biography

Magnus Sahlgren is Head of Research for Natural Language Understanding at AI Sweden. Sahlgren has a PhD in computational linguistics, and his research lies at the intersection between computational linguistics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. He is primarily known for his work on computational models of meaning, and he is currently driving the initiative to train large language models for the Nordic languages. Sahlgren has previously held positions at the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Stockholm university, and he is the co-founder of the language technology company Gavagai AB.

Poster session feedback and conclusions

Project meetings: NICEST2

Ski break

14 Ski and lunch break

Time for enjoying the lovely outdoors in the way you prefer. You can go for a walk, cross-country skiing or alpine skiing - or stay inside and enjoy the spa. It's up to you!

If you signed up for the alpine ski-course, that is today at 11:00.

Lunch

Social and creative activities

15 Contact improvisation dance intro

Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities.

The workshop will give a small taste of contact improvisation with some basic exercises and then we will end with a small jam. then we will end with a small jam.

Speaker: Johan Viklund (NBIS, SE)

16 Human bowling

Human bowling (outdoors)

We split up in teams, and each team sends one person on a round sledge towards a formation of soft cones. After the contest we enjoy mulled wine around a bonfire.

17 Paint a masterpiece

Practice your creative skills with colleagues during a painting session. We will choose a famous piece of art and invite you to paint your own interpretation of the motive. You don’t need to have any experience with painting to join and we will bring the supplies. Please note that there is no instructor. You will of course get to bring home your masterpiece as a memory of the all-hands meeting 2023.

18 To beer or meta-beer—A study of the being of brews (+other beverages)

Bring a selection of your favourite (or local) beverages to the NeIC AHM and share some facts about what makes it what it is. Trade beverages, have a chat, dip your toes into the ontology of beer (philosophy), or contribute to the NeIC ontology of beer (information science).

Speaker: Womar Nyberg Åkerström (NBIS)

19 Wire-art

Unleash your creative self! In this session you will get to create art using steel wire and pliers.

Speaker: Anders Sjöström (Lund University)

17:00 Coffee and waffle break

Board games

20 Board games

After the organised social and creative activities there will be different board games available in the common areas. Take this time before dinner to enjoy a round of games. We encourage you to bring your favorite board game to Kvitfjell to play with your NeIC colleagues.

19:30 Break

Dinner

Thursday, 26 January

Practicalities

21 Practical Announcements

Project meetings

22 Project Meetings: CodeRefinery

23 Project Meetings: Heilsa Tryggvedottir

24 Project meetings: Nordic Microdata Database

25 Project Meetings: Nordic WLCG tier 1 facility

26 Project Meetings: NordIQuEst

27 Project meetings: Puhuri

12:00 Lunch