HEP Software Foundation Startup Team Meeting notes Jun 8 2015

Agenda

Pere: AIDA presentation went OK. Some isolated HSF criticism, positive on average. No useful critical messages.
Michel: meeting at IN2P3 last week, presented HSF, IN2P3 is very supportive, foresee more involvement from France.
Startup meeting timeslot - will revisit next week when people have filled the doodle. Will first add more slots earlier in the day to the doodle. It was noted that we meet at the time we do in order to convenience West Coasters, who are not frequent attendees these days!

Liz: Brett presented last week, Pere will present tomorrow. Then will hear from some Fermilab activities including accelerator. Then CMS, which should complete the tour. Will then look at the options, pros and cons, Venn diagram of coverage. There are only a few that cover ~everything. Probably won’t be able to take one thing off the shelf, likely will be building from the elements.
Benedict: need to do an assessment once we’ve looked at all the elements.
Liz: word on switching to mailing list hasn’t reached everyone. Significant overhead for mailing list, or at least that’s the perception. So will continue to post to github also to cover everyone. Will have another go at sending list signup instructions.

Dario: asked by Fermilab people to extend the interactive shell example to arbitrary environments, so people can play and familiarize. Found several tools on web to do this. ssh from browser to sandbox VM with training materials. python.org has one, asked them (Gilles Thomas) if the code is available for the javascript interface they have. They responded favorably. So we just need to provide the sandbox eg. via Docker to be able to ssh to a useful environment. Still in the explorations phase. Ongoing contact with Rob Kutschke.
Andrea: python.org facility looks good.
Pere: tackling this in ROOT also, ROOT as a Service. Access to scripts, data etc. More related to a particular project. Very challenging to set up a general live infrastructure, eg. like a live service to run G4, not in scope of training.
Dario: not talking about live infrastructure, agree that is out of scope. Intent is for documenting and tutoring.
Pere: have to move carefully in this new area, be sure that what is done is useful. Tackle it slowly.
Dario: agree.
Torre: Meeting before iFB? Dario: not sure, very busy time. Will try to organize before next week.

Pere: mentioned the AIDA interactions.
Benedikt: will be a guinea pig for AIDA project. Also a Gaudi meeting is coming up, will see if we can get agreement to make Gaudi an HSF project.
Michel: aidaTT may be interested in being an HSF project.

revised draft from Andrew
Brett submitted an existing note for consideration as a HSF note along with some comments
Torre: some good (I thought) comments from Brett not reflected in latest draft, e.g. “must” be PDF is too strong for some cases, “TN” in ID not needed, avoid being unnecessarily restrictive on updates

Torre: job postings module installed in Drupal, not on interface yet
Andrea: HSF should make job postings available, mailing list and on website
Dario: agree, would improve HSF visibility.
Agreed to proceed with job postings by email and on the website. Will not use the CV posting functionality. Postings by email should not be too frequent. Perhaps include a Jobs section in the newsletter (if the newsletter is regular enough).
Andrea: will soon be able to help with knowledge base. Will discuss with Pere this week.

Agreed we should discuss soon about when to have another workshop, perhaps the next meeting after the iFB meeting
Michel will host next week’s startup team meeting.