# NeIC all-hands and conference 2024

:::info
- This document: https://hackmd.io/@coderefinery/neic-conference-2024
:::

Let's collect notes here ...

## Building a digital twin platform for biodiversity (S. Sharma. TNO, NL)

- https://biodt.eu/
- data interoperability is main challenge

## NeIC future

- Working on a proposal for a NeIC project focusig on easier moving of data and compute and quotas across Nordics
- To be kicked-off soon: Nordic AI forum
- Several charactecistics of NeIC, what were they?
- 1. implementer of projects and activities
- 2.
- 3. cometencee, expert network and capicity building
- 4. nordic perspective vs national perspective
- How can CR provide more competence to within NeIC?
- on Tuesday we sholud tell the audience: a) advertise our workshop to you audiences b) run local rooms if needed c) invite us to help improve other courses

## Summary from group work on NeIC future

- reason to preserve: Nordic context and knowing each other
- important to keep the brand/name
- joint funding should come from national providers
- NeIC provides also lots of "boring" but essential fabric for cross-border collaboration (mailing lists, Indico, issue tracking (?), chat, meetings, management framework)
- key asset: trust between partners
- Comparison was given how GEANT started (as a taskforce with mandate from providers). However, NeIC is organizationally further than just a task force.
- Align with strategic objectives of national providers. (If not, you get new projects but don't reduce other work, so that you have no time).
- Another key asset is to have the network of potential collaborators.
- If overall budget is reduced, try a COST-model of supporting projects and initiatives (travel and meeting money).
- One way to define future NeIC: what are the minimum needs for an organization operating NT1? It would be nice if such a follow-up entity could apply for funding.

## Project meeting
- goals?
- blog posts. purpose?
- to have something written
- who should be
- who to outreach to?
- course lists
- ECTS credits
- carefully define who we target (e.g. nordics? europe? EU/Africa?)
- First we should get Nordics/Baltics right
- What does work well? Aalto and Swedish newsletter
- Needs to be a list of having jobs to do (who contacts what universities?)
- RD: distributed ECTS, e.g. Aalto staff only promises to do it for Finland but make it easy for other countries to do it themselves
- Creating the understanding for cold emails (who is this? something for profit? it's for free, is it a scam?) This needs careful work
- What do they need to see now?
- when is next workshop
- Make it easy to embed in their cirriculum (e.g. NL)
- No need to do our registrations
- When we explain "what is this workshop" we consider this
- this is not some for-profit thing or scam
- Easy to find chat
- Easy to join chat
- sponsors on a side column
- To do
- plan workshop these and these dates. Link goes to the newsletter. See old workshop for the general plan which will probably be the same
- link to newsletter
- Under "CodeRefinery provides" have a link for each of the categories
- Update top paragraph of website (but keep first paragraph)
- Say we are publicly funded, give list of our universities
- make RSH look less abandoned

## To discuss (combined notes)
- Of the ways CodeRefinery has been presented in this conference, does it match up with what we think it is?
- RD: it has said things about competence building, but we don't quite provide competence to other people at the level of doing NeIC projects. Is this an opportunity?
- RB: indeed NeIC would like more cross-project collaboration and cross-project competence building. We haven't prioritized it because we were lacking resources to even provide the necessary competence building to our "main" customers which I have seen being the researchers and students. We have however done competence building "by osmosis" to people and organizations working with us on events. Many of our methods have colored off to national and local methods.
- Project-oriented lesson versions
- A new page in existing lessons about how to apply it to a project?

## Cybersecurity Evolution: Innovations, Trends, and Future Frontiers - Dr Hisham Kholidy


- Can the New York WDI be a possible avenue for coderefinery to help out with education and upskilling, provided there are synergies and a specific usecase?

# Containers Talks

Lumi container "hacks":
- to install some software which needs user namespaces etc b/c it creates users/groups:
- replace useradd/groupadd etc by Fake executables, that do nothing. The groups will not be created but they are commonly not necessary to actually use the libraries..
- ```
for f in /usr/bin/useradd /usr/bin/addgroup /usr/bin/chgrp: do
rm -rf $f
ln -s /bin/true $f

- Install MPICH but when running the container override by binding the host MPICH into the container.
    - Find the MPICH pathes on lumi by using a straced script and parse the outputs.
    - Check MPICH bindings work with a CHECK_MPI script. and first run the test using the container.