The 8th IDGF Workshop will be held August 17, 2011, 14h-18h in Hannover, Germany. This workshop is organized by the International Desktop Grid Federation and by SZTAKI for the European chapter. It is co-located with the 7th BOINC Workshop that will take place on August 18-19. This workshop is focused around the Desktop Grids for eScience Roadmap - a new version has just been published - and a panel session on issues and opportunities in Desktop Grids. The workshop will provide a platform for scientific users, Desktop Grid operators, system administrators and application developers to exchange experiences about Desktop Grids and related technology. More information and a registration form are available at http://desktopgridfederation.org/8th-idgf-workshop.
 

DEGISCO has released a new edition of the  Desktop Grids for eScience Road Map on July 11, 2011. The document is comprised of two parts. The first part constitutes a bird view of all the relevant topics to be considered when setting up a Desktop Grid infrastructure. This management part is addressed to political stakeholders and the general public. The second part offers a detailed and step-by-step description in five chapters of all the challenges and issues to be solved including relevant links to background information and practical examples. This technical part is aimed at Desktop Grid operators, scientific users, the academic user community, legal experts, and volunteer computing organisations. The Road map documents are available in the IDGF download section.

IDGF recently has welcomed Laurea University of Applied Sciences as a member organisation. Since 2007, the LaureaSID Networks laboratory located in Espoo, Finland has been doing applied R&D in the field of volunteer based desktop grids. These efforts ultimately led to the development of the world's largest volunteer based desktop grid for rendering 3D graphics: Renderfarm.fi. In 2011 the service was chosen to be one of the winners of the "E-science and Technology" category in the UN, Unesco and Internet Society backed World Summit Award. Laurea UAS is currently a member of the EU FP7 SCI-BUS (SCientific gateway Based User Support) project consortium, aiming - among other things - to further develop both the desktop grid based rendering of 3D graphics and any related user experience.

Do not forget to register for the Distributed Computer Infrastructure Summerschool in July in Budapest. It featurs a complete EDGI technology day. But you learn also about DEGISCO Desktop Grids, EMI middleware and StratusLab Clouds.

The International Desktop Grid Federation is now in existence since one year. In this week we reached two important milestones: we now have more than 25 organisations and more than 100 persons that are member. So a lively community around Desktop Grids and related technologies is increasingly emerging. You could become member 102 if you join today.