IMPACT/myGrid Hackathon

Bookings are now open for a free 2-day developer workshop/hackathon which aims to encourage take-up and further development of tools developed by the IMPACT Project. The workshop is intended for technical staff, for example, developers and implementers. It will allow them to take a closer look at the tools available and investigate new solutions and features that could be developed for the benefit of the wider community.

The workshop will held from 14 to 15 November 2011 at the Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, University of Manchester. It is being run by technical staff from the IMPACT Project in conjunction with the Taverna developers at myGrid. More information on the workshop including location and programme details is available from the Workshop Wiki. The event is free but spaces are limited.

During the workshop IMPACT staff will showcase the IMPACT Web service and workflow development platform and look at how scientific workflows can be used in digitisation and related fields. Developers will use a number of tools which have been developed by the IMPACT project and will explore how they interact within the Taverna workflow management system and the related myExperiment environment. Related issues such as long-term preservation and natural language processing will also be considered.

IMPACT

IMPACT is a European project that aims to speed up the process and enhance the quality of mass digitisation in Europe. The IMPACT research programme will significantly improve digital access to historical printed text through the development and use of innovative Optical Character Recognition software and linguistic technologies. UKOLN's main role in the project has been to work on the externally facing parts of IMPACT, primarily in helping to produce and disseminate documentation (best practice guides, briefings, case studies, etc.) on text digitisation frameworks and IMPACT tools together with a series of training events.

myGrid

The myGrid team produces and uses a suite of tools designed to “help e-Scientists get on with science and get on with scientists”. The tools support the creation of e-laboratories and have been used in domains as diverse as systems biology, social science, music, astronomy, multimedia and chemistry. myExperiment makes it easy to find, use and share scientific workflows and other Research Objects, and to build communities.

Taverna

Taverna is an open source and domain-independent Workflow Management System – a suite of tools used to design and execute scientific workflows and aid in silico experimentation. Taverna has been created by the myGrid team and funded through the OMII-UK. The project has guaranteed funding till 2014. The Taverna suite is written in Java and includes the Taverna Engine (used for enacting workflows) that powers both the Taverna Workbench (the desktop client application) and the Taverna Server (which allows remote execution of workflows). Taverna is also available as a Command Line Tool for a quick execution of workflows from a terminal.