From AIMSWiki

Table of contents

1 Workshop Online News 1.1 Background 1.2 Photos 1.3 Articles 1.4 Blog 1.5 Interviews 2 Workshop Programme and Materials 2.1 User Guides for Dummies 3 Useful Links about BOINC, Volunteer Computing and Africa@home

Workshop Online News

Background

Participants from 18 African countries are taking part in a workshop on volunteer computing in Muizenberg, South Africa from 16 to 22 July 2007. Volunteer computing is a technology that allows science projects to use idle computing cycles from millions of home computers around the world, offered by volunteers. This is made possible by open source software called BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu). So far, most of the science projects, such as SETI@home (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) and ClimatePrediction.net (http://www.climateprediction.net), have been developed in Europe or North America. The workshop's main objective is to plant seeds in different universities and academic institutions around Africa to create poles of excellence for developing volunteer computing projects using BOINC, in particular applied to the most pressing health issues, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis research and modeling.

The AIMS Workshop on Volunteer Computing focuses on the most popular platform for volunteer computing today, BOINC, which stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. BOINC allows volunteer computers in homes and offices to run compute-intensive simulation programs such as malariacontrol.net (http://www.malariacontrol.net), developed by researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute. This was made possible through the multi-stakeholder partnership called Africa@home (http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch), which involves CERN (http://www.cern.ch), the University of Geneva (http://www.unige.ch), ICVolunteers (http://www.icvolunteers.org), the WHO (http://www.who.int/) (World Health Organization), AIMS (http://www.aims.ac.za), several other African academic institutions, the Swiss Tropical Institute (http://www.sti.ch), and Informaticiens sans frontières (ISF (http://isf.cern.ch)), with the support of the Geneva International Academic Network (http://www.ruig-gian.org).

The present section aims to help document and distill some of the results of the workshop held at AIMS. It was put together by ICVolunteers, member of the Africa@home team.

Photos

Workshop participants and tutors from 22 countries in Muizenberg. See for the names of the participants (http://flickr.com/photos/teleyinex/839790898/).

Jan's Photos (http://www.aims.ac.za/~jan/photos/200707boinc/)

Viola's Photos (http://www.icvolunteers.org/index.php?spgmGal=other/aims&what=gallery)

Articles

English

• Press Release: Training of Trainers on Volunteer Computing for Africa

• Workshop Report of the AIMS workshop on Volunteer Computing for Africa

• FAQ about Africa@home

Français

• Communiqué de presse: Formation de formateurs en "calcul volontaire" pour l'Afrique

• Compte-rendu de l’atelier sur le calcul volontaire pour l’Afrique

• Africa@home: FAQ

Blog

Gridcast from the workshop [1] (http://gridcast.web.cern.ch/Gridcast/)

Interviews

English

• Ben Segal, one of the Internet pioneers, talks about BOINC and Africa@home

• Jan Groenewald (South Africa), Computer Officer at AIMS

• Chris Sutton, BOINC Volunteer and IT Director in the private sector

• Nicolas Maire, Swiss Tropical Institute, Scientist on the Malaria Modeling Project

• Joris Borgdorff, Department of Public Health at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, on STDSIM

• Angelina Lutambi from Tanzania, workshop participant

• Thoughts, feedback and perspectives of workshop participants from Ghana, Sudan, Nigeria and Algeria

• Volunteers behind the scenes in South Africa

Français

• Ben Segal, un des pionniers d'Internet, parle de BOINC et d'Africa@home

• Entretien avec Jan Groenewald (Afrique du Sud), Computer Officer à AIMS

• Chris Sutton, directeur d'une boîte informatique et pionnier de BOINC en Afrique

• Nicolas Maire, Institut Tropical Suisse, Spécialiste en modélation du paludisme

• Joris Borgdorff, Department of Public Health at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, sur les STDSIM

• Angelina Lutambi de Tanzanie, participante à l'atelier

• Pensées, feed-back et perspectives de participants à l'atelier du Ghana, du Soudan, du Nigeria et de l'Algérie

• Des volontaires derrière les coulisses en Afrique du Sud

Workshop Programme and Materials

• Programme for AIMS workshop on Volunteer Computing
• Mailing list (http://mailman.aims.ac.za/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/africa-at-home)
• AIMS workshop on Volunteer Computing Participants

User Guides for Dummies

• Basic Linux usage for BOINC
• Overview of BOINC Server Installation
• Overview Guide

Useful Links about BOINC, Volunteer Computing and Africa@home

• http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch
• Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (http://boinc.berkeley.edu)
• Le portail de L'Alliance Francophone des projets BOINC (http://www.boinc-af.org)