Image courtesy of Andre-Pierre Olivier

Can't make it to Catania this March?

Let GridCast take you there - virtually.

Bloggers are providing a sneak-peek behind the scenes of the 4th EGEE User Forum/ OGF25 & OGF-Europe's 2nd International Event, to be held the first week of March in Catania, Sicily.

The User Forum is an annual, multi-faceted, key event in the grid community, featuring keynote talks delivered by high-profile experts from business, government and research.

The bloggers will be part of a grid podcast, or "GridCast," that allows readers to virtually share in the forum, as if they were really within view of Mount Etna.

Coordinated by the GridTalk project, the GridCast includes podcast interviews as well as a blog, and is being produced live at the User Forum - an event which attracts hundreds of participants.

"Podcasting is another example of how connected and flexible our world is becoming," says Craig Lee, president of the Open Grid Forum. "I tend to view this convergence of digital media and its integration with a global, distributed infrastructure as not all that different, in spirit, from what the grid community has been doing for years. I hope everybody uses this capability. I know I will since I can never get to all the sessions I want to."

The forum's goal is to engage with a large community of current and future adopters of grid computing, to help make grid computing more accessible for all.

GridCast bloggers will be commenting on hot topics, highlighting case studies, reporting on issues about interoperability, standards and more.

"We want to make readers feel as though they are here, as part of the event," explains Cristy Burne, coordinator for the GridTalk project, and a blogger herself. "It's a 'no-holds-barred' look at what real people here are saying about grid computing."

This is the fifth GridCast in the series.

Read more.