The 2018 BOINC Workshop

A workshop on BOINC and volunteer computing will be held 24-27 July 2018 at the University of Oxford.

The objective of this workshop is to share information about BOINC and projects using it, through presentations and informal discussions, in an open and friendly atmosphere. The workshop aims to stimulate new developments and activities related to volunteer computing, and to guide the future development of BOINC.

The workshop is for researchers, scientists and developers with significant experience or interest in BOINC. Possible topics include:

• Privacy, security, and EU-GDPR
• The BOINC community software development process
• VM and Docker applications
• Integration with hubs, clouds, grids, and desktop grids
• Multi-user projects and remote job submission
• Integration with virtual currency and game-playing systems

Participants are invited to present and discuss their work in a 20-30 minute talk. Slides will be published on the web, but there will be no papers or proceedings.

Registration

The workshop is free but attendance is limited. If you are interested in attending, or have any questions, please contact David Anderson, indicating your areas of interest.

Venue

The workshop will be held at

Oxford e-Research Centre
Department of Engineering Science
University of Oxford
7 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QG.

[Information on transportation and lodging]

Schedule

Tuesday 24 July

• 9:00 - 9:30: Welcome
• 9:30 - 13:00: talks

Lunch

• 14:00 - 18:00: talks

Wednesday 25 July

• 9:00 - 10:00: Kevin Reed: EU-GDPR and other security and privacy issues
• 10:00 - 11:00: David Anderson: Summary of new features
• 11:00 - 12:00: Christian Beer, Keith Uplinger: automated build and test progress; cmake

Lunch

• 14:00 - 15:00: Community-based software development: progress and issues (group discussion led by Kevin Reed).
• 15:00 - 16:00: Perspectives of the volunteer community (group discussion led by Richard Haselgrove).
• 16:00 - 18:00: Discussion of future BOINC development; project "wish lists".

Thursday 26 July

• 9:00 - 9:30: Choose breakout session topics
• 9:30 - 12:00: Breakout sessions; identify hackfest ideas
• 12:00 - 13:00: Presentations from breakout sessions

Lunch

• 14:00-18:00: Hackfest (small-group tutorial or development activities)

Friday 27 July

• 9:00 - 17:00: unstructured discussion and community-building activities

Possible hackfest topics

• How to upgrade server code when you have mods
• Credit
• Unit and end-to-end tests.
• OpenCL apps on Android
• Tutorial on porting apps to Android.
• Tutorial on deploying VM apps.
• Improve diagnostic tools for VM apps.
• Discuss how to reduce client impact; e.g. figure out how to suspend computing while a movie is playing.
• Brainstorm on the Android GUI.
• Login with Google/Facebook?

Attendees (tentative)