San Jose is a historic town founded by the Spanish occupiers of this former part of Mexico. At one time, San Jose was California's state capital. Today, San Jose is home to a large number of information technology enterprises, and is pleased to call itself the "Heart of Silicon Valley." The weather during the conference was pleasant and sunny, with daily highs in the upper 70s and low 80s.
My colleagues and I from the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center were among some 310 conference goers. Although my primary focus was on attending presentations having to do with the provision of user services, I also attended presentations dealing with operating system and security issues. Reports on sessions of interest that I attended are available by request (clark@arsc.edu).
This conference, the second since the Silicon Graphics/Cray Research merger, resembled closely the other CUGs I've attended. The apprehension expressed in Charlotte during the Fall 1996 CUG (that SGI's legal requirement for membership be open to all SGI/CRI users would result in a flood of SGI/non-Cray users) appears to have been unfounded. Attendance was up slightly, from 274 to 310, but the faces were largely familiar, and the users all seemed to be serious Cray users.
The conference was graciously hosted and well organized, with the usual format of parallel sessions, general sessions, Special Interest Groups, and Birds of a Feather sessions. The CUG Night Out was at the Winchester Mystery House, an oddly-designed 160-room mansion just outside San Jose, built by Sarah Winchester from the Winchester rifle fortune.
In addition to information gleaned from the various formal sessions, much information was exchanged by members at the various social events and informal exchanges on the conference grounds. As usual, a large Cray Research contingent was also on hand to answer questions. All in all, this conference was a pleasant and informative affair, and it was reassuring to see that CUG has survived the SGI/CRI merger intact.
