The S-Lab Conference (York)

Visit to the University of York with a few hours of general discussion about shared interests e.g. service performance and monitoring, student systems, timetabling, research MIS and the migration to Google Apps for staff and students which is going very well.  We also talked about some of the shared applications like Blackboard and e-learning generally.  We then went on a visit to a newly refurbished space adjoining the Library which has been made available for a wide variety of group and individual learning, teaching and research activity - I haven't heard the term "research hotel" before. The furniture and use of light (atrium and wells) was very impressive:

It was good to see the University of Bradford was leading the 2012 S-Lab conference taking place in the National Science Learning Centre.  I attended an hour's pre-conference session by Iceotope (one of the corporate sponsors and nice to see a new British company with innovative engineering coming out of Sheffield).  The following sessions were mainly focused on high performance computing and the potential for various different approaches to deliver performance and energy efficiency - great examples from Leeds and Leicester among others from the audience.  Plenty of big brains in the room today (and mine wasn't one of them).