2010 Let's Get Started

Rocky II
  Airplane II
    Shrek 2
      Rush Hour 2
       Star Trek II
        Toy Story 2
          The Karate Kid Part 2
             Porkys 2
              Home Alone 2

Sometimes you just can't get enough of a good thing.....

It may seem a little early to be planning the sequel for GRITS, 
but spring is only a few months away.   GRITS --- the Greater 
IPAC Technology Symposium --- was first held in May 2009 as a 
complement to the Greater IPAC Science Symposium.  It's a chance 
for IPACers to share information about computer hardware and 
software, algorithms and new products that make it possible to 
do the processing and analysis of the data that our scientists 
collect.  Last year we had presentations from Mike Brown (aka  
@plutokiller) on how to serve okra and search for planets, from 
Trey Roby on using AJAX and the Google Web Toolkit to completely 
transform web pages, from Tim Conrow about building the WISE (and 
Planck and Galex and...) pipeline, and from John Good and Bruce 
Berriman about making masterpiece Montage mosaics.

That was just a small part of the program --- there were 15 
presentations that covered transits and IPAC's archives and all 
the flight projects we're supporting and operating system 
virtualization, too.  (You can see the agenda and associated 
presentations at 

http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/grits/

This year, we hope to make GRITS II even bigger and better than 
last year.  But to do that, we need two things --- ideas and volunteers.

If you have an idea about what you'd like to see or who you want 
to hear, please send an email to thh@ipac.caltech.edu.  We're looking 
for topics, for speakers and for suggestions for tutorial sessions.  
The “tutorial day” is new in GRITS 2010 --- we would like to arrange 
one or two tutorials the day before GRITS II.  These one-day or 
half-day intensive presentations would be on topics that you 
request... something that you want to learn about - ruby, IDL 
visualization, mysql...

If you want to volunteer to be a part of next year's GRITS, the 
organizing committee --- currently Lee Bennett, Tom Handley, Frank 
Masci and Steve Schurr --- can use your help.  As an Organizing 
Committee member, you would:
 o attend the committee meetings (monthly at first, then weekly as 
   the symposium date approaches)
 o contact people (IPACers or others) about presenting
 o honcho and introduce a session
 o select symposium content
 o learn what flavorings you can add to grits (the food)

The time commitment most of the year is very small --- an hour a 
month.  If you'd like to join us and help plot GRITS II, please 
send an email to Tom Handley (thh@ipac.caltech.edu).

The consensus among movie critics is that Godfather Part II was 
even better than the original.  Help make GRITS II the sequel 
that keeps the franchise going.  Join us!