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There were various Keynotes and presentation that helped me to understand more on Science Gateway. The keynote addresses were especially inspiring like, the role that science gateways play in accelerating research across various disciplines by reviewing past and picturing the future of scientific collaboration, or how to assemble or construct scientific information or knowledge to be more accessible to public, or how to collaborate to transfer the scientific information. There was the keyword in most of speeches , "The User". I got an impression that the common keyword for science gateways should be "The User" and it must be considered as one of the highest priority in building it. One sentence from the presentation that deeply impressed me was "focus on the user then everything will follow" and I will try to remember this.
One thing that I think could have been better was that length of the technical sessions that was around 15 minutes. There are many technical sessions that include our SMM project and others but 13-15min is not enough time to introduce the project and answer the questions. For example, there was a technical session for TAPIS that I thought it was pretty interesting. The presenter from Texas Tech University introduced it and the point that got my attention was the similarity to Kubernetes. There was a question about what are the differences between TAPIS and Kubernetes and the answer was Kubernetes was not fun to mess with and docker is easier to use, like easier to set up ingress and others, also it was plug and play. But he also mentioned, when answering other question regarding the scalability, that TAPIS was on top of kubernetes and there were not much explanation about that. Also, there was no more time for asking questions so I was not able to ask follow up questions. There was one session that showed of using Kubernetes, Again, I was trying to ask a question but I was not selected because the lack of time and the next session should be started. So I had to approach to the presenter later and had to ask questions. Consequently, since the session time was so short, it was hard to get enough information about the project and it was also hard for us to provide enough information to the audience either. Likewise, some other sessions just show the live demo, but not much explanation about how the things going on behind. Or just focused on how their project created without showing any examples. SMM also focused on conceptual side but it could be better if we did some live demo that could attract people way more than just explaining. At least to me, even making technical sessions to parallel sessions, making the session time longer could be much beneficial even though some session will be missed, at least it would be possible to get enough information about the project.
Other thing that I expected was that I wanted to hear more about how AI impacted on science gateway, but there was not much sessions or posters.
The conference was held on the second floor of casino building and casino was fully filled with smoke from Tabaco and Vapes, interesting. The city was beautiful and the season made all the trees look very colorful and the topography was very different from Champaign area so it was very pleasant visually. The hotel located right by the Steelers football stadium and was able to see so many people since there was a game when we got to hotel. The food was amazing. Probably the best food I've ever had in any conference. Overall, the accommodation was really good and satisfied.
Finally, I would like to thank to NCSA to give me this opportunity and also thanks to the organizers, speakers, and fellow attendees for making this conference a memorable and productive experience. I am not very sure if I participate Science Gateway again but I definitely look forward to the next opportunity to join another conference.