Catania, we'll never forget you

The conference was co-located with OGF25 and the 2nd OGF Europe International event and the opportunities for discussion within the Grid community, coupled with its location, meant the event had a strong UK and Ireland presence at the event.

The big news from the conference however was the announcement of the location of the headquarters for the successor to EGEE, the European Grid Initiative. From a shortlist of 3 the eventual winners was Amsterdam, John Gordon from GridPP was the chair of the search committee and was delighted "An effective European Grid Infrastructure is vital for the work of international collaborations and the EGI Design Study has put together a feasible plan to build such an infrastructure and I am happy we have selected the best location for the headquarters of the organisation. It is important to select the right place as we hope this structure will persist for many years. "

The EGI announcement was not the only newsworthy point of the meeting. On the Wednesday BalticGrid II and EGEE signed an MoU which has been in discussion for a long time now. Ake Edlund of BalticGrid explained "More than just a MoU, this document involves a work plan and concrete targets with names and dates."

The user forum is an opportunity for the numerous applications using EGEE to present their work during the week whether that was in talks, posters or demonstrations. This year had a wider breadth of research presented then previously from flood monitoring and chemistry to preservation of cultural heritage and medical imaging. There was even a presentation on running a Grid site on Amazon's cloud service. These applications cover so many areas and are of interest to so many people it was not too surprising to see the ASTRA project's work on reviving ancient instruments making headlines across the globe, including a full page article in The Times.

Of course with the UKI still contributing a large amount of the resources to the EGEE infrastructure various members from across the federation were seen popping up in sessions, with posters and of course on the UKI stand in the exhibition area.