NOBUGS 2002

Frequently Asked Questions

What is NOBUGS?

NOBUGS is a biannual conference for researchers associated with user facilities in condensed matter physics, materials sciences, biology and similar fields, who are involved with computing software and hardware. Primarily, this includes synchrotron, X-ray and neutron radiation facilities, as well as laboratories using uSR, Mossbauer and other techniques. NOBUGS is traditionally an informal opportunity to compare notes, discuss techniques and results, and establish collaborations in the area of computing and data acquisition infrastructure for research, which is not normally covered by traditional scientific conferences.

What is the scope of NOBUGS?

The main thrust of the conference is hardware and software for data acquisition and analysis---this is our background and primary specialty. At the same time, the reality of large user facilities requires a lot of infrastructure projects like proposal tracking systems, visitor computing etc, so we include those areas as well.

The conference topics include, but are not limited to:

• Data Acquisition
• Instrument Control Methods
• Data Formats
• Data Reduction and Analysis
• Data Visualization
• Distributed Computation
• Graphical User Interfaces
• Web Interfaces
• Automatic Beam Alignment
• Instrument Simulation Software
• Biocomputing in User Facilities
• Programming Techniques
• Remote Monitoring and Control
• Remote Experiments
• Collaborative Initiatives
• Scientific Databases
• User Facility Business Processes
• User Facility Computer Security

What is the format of the conference and participant profile?

The conference consists of two and a half days of oral and poster presentations in approximately 10 sessions. It is directed to active users and writers of scientific software; most past NOBUGS participants were physical, biological and computer scientists involved in the computer infrastructure for the research at large facilities.

What were the past NOBUGS meetings about?

The online references for the NOBUGS conferences are:

Jan'96	Grenoble/FR	http://www.esrf.fr/computing/nobugs/abstracts/abs.html
Dec'97	Argonne/USA	http://www.aps.anl.gov/xfd/bcda/nobugs
Jun'00	Daresbury/UK	http://srs.dl.ac.uk/nobugs/nobugs3
Nov'02	Gaithersburg/US	http://www.ncnr.nist.gov/events/nobugs2002/

These sites reflect the working, informal aspect of NOBUGS. The past conference sites do not provide full text of proceedings. For NOBUGS-2002 we are planning to set up an online proceedings, with index, table of contents and full proceedings texts, in a standard, citable format.

How many participants are there normally?

Past NOBUGS conferences enjoyed 100+-50 participants.

What are the manuscript guidelines?

Formal 2-10 page papers are strongly encouraged. There are no specific page limits, beyond the size limit enforced by the publication repository we have chosen, the eprint arXiv http://arxiv.org. Please submit your papers at that site, following their guidelines.

The complete proceedings, including the index and table of contents, will be available after the conference at the Stanford/SLAC eConf electronic proceedings system http://www.slac.stanford.edu/econf.

What are the costs involved with the attendance? Is there any financial support available ?

The NOBUGS-2002 conference fee is $245, plus of course travel and lodging expenses. Unfortunately, we cannot offer financial support at this time, except that we are planning to waive the conference fee for session chairs.

Last modified 13-September-2002 by website owner: NCNR (attn: Przemek Klosowski)