This will be my 12th SC, every year except the virtual one (or was it two? I've genuinely lost track) since 2009.
It's a singular experience. Enormous. Part trade show, part conference, weird mix of deeply technical people, and IT manager types and the salescritters who prey on them, so there is a lot of intensely smart people and a lot of money floating around, not necessarily in the same places.
It historically was largely built around the national labs and their purchasing and use of very large systems, and that's still a major feature.
It feels like the population ratio has shifted from "people who work on computers" to "people who run work on computers" - a lower proportion of computer engineers, programmers, and top tier IT people, and a lot more folks running other people's code on other people's large systems, often with other people's data, which is a little strange.
There are still always a lot of interesting conversations with the people who are actually doing things to be had.
Yes, it is going to be a rough week back at the office. Everyone on my team is going, even the person staying behind is going virtually. (I manage a team of HPC computational scientists). Hrm, opportunity for me to do some HPC!
Funny, the more I manage my team, the more I think I should not have moved into management, and want to go back to helping people use HPC as a computational scientist / sysadmin. Sure seems like it is really hard to get a job in HPC (as a manager wanting to go back to HPC, non-managemnt). Handed out so many resumes, so many interviews "so... tell us again why you want to go back to (this HPC job) and not be an HPC manager."
I hope all who go to Denver have a good time, and learn a lot.
I used to work for Myricom in the 2000s, and used to attend these as an exhibitor/vendor. The exhibits were amazing in terms of seeing new, cutting edge tech from small (and large) companies. I really miss going to these.
It's a singular experience. Enormous. Part trade show, part conference, weird mix of deeply technical people, and IT manager types and the salescritters who prey on them, so there is a lot of intensely smart people and a lot of money floating around, not necessarily in the same places.
It historically was largely built around the national labs and their purchasing and use of very large systems, and that's still a major feature.
It feels like the population ratio has shifted from "people who work on computers" to "people who run work on computers" - a lower proportion of computer engineers, programmers, and top tier IT people, and a lot more folks running other people's code on other people's large systems, often with other people's data, which is a little strange.
There are still always a lot of interesting conversations with the people who are actually doing things to be had.