INDUSTRY

EchoGRID and EUChinaGRID, two projects funded by the European Commission, jointly organized the first International Conference on EU and Chinese Grid Experiences. This event will take place April 24 - 27 in Beijing at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Science. As part of this international conference, INRIA will provide a free course April 26-27 on ProActive, the open source grid middleware, at the Super Computing Center, CAS, in Beijing. Under the theme of “Networking EU & Chinese Grid Experiences for Innovation," the event will provide an outstanding platform for European and Chinese state-of-the-art grid technologies and projects, showcasing results, new application areas and future advancements. The conference is aimed at top-level experts and professionals from large enterprises, SMEs, academic and research organizations, government and public administration, international standardization bodies, and scientific and business associations from Europe, China and beyond. The event will promote cross-fertilization between grid-related projects and initiatives in Europe and China by interacting with top grid research and industrial communities, exchanging experiences and best practices for grid middleware and applications interoperability. High on the agenda will be enterprise challenges with grids;, interoperability; new programming paradigms/SOA; new priorities for management in grids; and ongoing research versus enterprise achievements. The program also features a live demo and poster session, as well as a roundtable on "Future Collaborative Scenarios" led by experts at the forefront of grid technologies. Networking experiences aim to facilitate scientific data transfer and processing in a first sample of application areas. This landmark conference will further strengthen collaboration between Europe and China and serve as the driving force to test and deploy an effective grid infrastructure between the two regions. The Second International Conference is scheduled for Autumn 2008. Participation is free of charge but subject to on-line registration at its Web site.