3 weeks on the road

I am off tomorrow on a crazy 3-week-long trip:

Tomorrow I am flying to Oslo where I am giving the keynote at the “Workshop on Web and Grid Services for Scientific Data Analysis (WAGSSDA)”. I am planning to talk about White Dwarfs, data integration and web services, a little bit about modelling in distributed systems and SSDL, and what all these have to do with the “Grid”;
On Tuesday I am flying straight to Barcelona for a CoreGRID WP3 meeting. The discussion is going to be on component models for the “Grid”. This work package is supposed to define a component model for Grid programming. Since the beginning of CoreGRID I have had concerns about the approach to use monolithic components in order to describe how the “Grid” could be programmed. It seems that an object-oriented view of the distributed world (let’s shared as many assumptions as we can) prevails. My last task as a representative of Newcastle will be to support a different view – the MEST view. I will support that capturing the protocols, policies, contracts, semantics, etc. between components is more important rather than making assumptions about the behaviour at particular endpoints in the form of a hierarchy of types/interfaces. Simon Woodman will also be with me to support the cause. It should be great fun;
On Sunday (19 June) I return from Barcelona to Newcastle after relaxing for a day there and catching up with a friend from my home city (Xanthi, Greece);
On Monday (20 June) I am flying to Geneva to participate in Oracle‘s launch of the “Open Grid Network”. Paul was invited but I am standing in for him since he is unavailable. Back from Geneva on Tuesday or Wednesday (I still haven’t booked my flights);
On Friday (24 June) I am off to Glastonbury festival. This is going to be soooooo cool. Lots of great groups and 4 days of no sleep and lots of fun.;
Immediately after leaving Glastonbury, on Monday, I have to go to Chicago to attend my last GGF (my second ‘last’ GGF after Seoul few months ago :-). This is going to be very interesting. I will turn up at the airport after Glastonbury without having slept and without having had a shower for 4 days. I’ll try to get a room in a hotel just for the shower.
Back from GGF on Friday (1 July) and very likely the end of my Newcastle-related work travels. July is going to be mainly relaxing and travelling for fun before moving on to my new job (expect more news on this next week when the formalities have finished).