SciComp kickstart intro
Who are we?
Aalto Scientific Computing: https://scicomp.aalto.fi/about/
In collaborations with other universities (Finnish Computing Competence Infrastructure)
And one talk in collaboration with CSC
And occassionally talks in cooperation with other partners.
What is this course?
Course contents
Day 1
General big-picture stuff about high-performance computing
Some practical skills
Mostly lectures and demos
Quite generic
Days 2 and 3
Using a computer cluster
Aalto’s cluster as an example, but applicable to others.
Much more hands-on
Who is attending?
Multiple universities, with different clusters
Our demos based on Aalto University
May need adapting to other sites
We will carefully explain about how things change in other sites.
You can ask questions about other universities (and get help during exercise sessions).
Practicalities
How the workshop works
When some people teach online, they can reach a few tens of people at once. We can reach hundreds.
We have an interesting strategy:
Livestream broadcast, like a TV production.
Anyone can watch.
There are pauses for exercises, you can work (alone or in groups).
If you want, be in Zoom and switch there for exercise sessions.
There are many parts of the workshop:
Talking and demos (livestream)
Type-along (livesteam)
Exercises (Zoom or alone or your own groups)
Breaks, at least 10 minutes/hour
Chat and communication
Please don’t use the Zoom/Twitch chat for questions: insturctors won’t see.
Use the “Notes” for chat: questions in bullet points:
From here you can also find important links and reference.
You can switch between view and edit modes:
You have to switch to edit mode once to get live updates (then you can go back to view)
Please leave in view mode if you aren’t actively using it
Someone watches these and will answer or raise relevant questions by voice.
Don’t get overloaded! The point is you can read later.
Don’t include names or identifies in the Notes: it is public.
Icebreaker: Please answer the icebreaker question in the Notes
Where do you focus?
There is so much information! What should we look?
Screenshare and lecture
Your own type-along
Notes (all important links should be pasted here)
Only look at the bottom.
Come back and read detailed answers later, not during.
Lesson webpage (as needed, direct links in the Notes)
Screen arrangement
Arranging your screen is surprisingly difficult!
We share a vertical window, so half of the screen is for us, and half is for demos.
Screen layout with broadcast on one side and learner on other side
We are accessible to many learning styles
We have more material than we can cover, but…
Not everyone needs to take the same path
Some may prefer to watch passively and self-study later
Some may be active in all the exercises
Some may leave it on in the background and pay attention when things sound interesting.
Some may miss a part and review videos later that evening.
Our material is constantly being improved
This is more like a guided overview of our actual tutorials than a standalone course.
You can help us improve.
Care for the community
Be respectful and helpful
It is actually hard to teach and mentor for tech like this. The course is much more than “only” instructors..
We leave you with four pieces of advice for now:
Everyone here is at different levels, and that’s expected. Everyone will be learning different things, and everyone will focus on different topics. Passive learning is OK.
Everyone is both a teacher and a learner. If not now, after the course when you are helping others.
Take time to check in. For example, ask “how’s it going? is everyone getting what they need?”, in breakout rooms.
When something isn’t going right, speak up (or Notes write) quickly. We want to help, even if the answer is “let’s discuss later”.
What can go wrong
You get overloaded with information
Don’t worry!
Change your watching style and know material will be available for you to watch later.
Instant video replays help here, but the material is also open.
Notes are too fast to follow
Don’t follow it. It’s published for future reference.
Only look at the bottom during the sessions. Review later.
Write your question and come back to it later.
The notes lag and you can’t edit / text goes wrong
This sometimes happens with high load
We recently upgraded but it could still happen.
Everyone: Switch to “view mode” and wait for it to calm down.
The real solution is that we (the staff) need to keep it shorter - we will move older data to an “Notes archive”.
Location of archive link.
We don’t have time to cover everything
This is just a fact - sorry.
We aim to give a summary, you are smart enough to follow up later
You can review later
Talk with collaborators and make your own study network
We deviate from the schedule
We try to stay on track
But this is going to happen
There are major accessibility problems
e.g. audio quality is bad, screen not visible, breaks not coming, unintelligble explanation…
Write the problem in the bottom of the Notes immediately.
The stream suddenly dies
Broadcaster’s computer has crashed.
Stay around and it will resume in about 5 minutes.
You don’t yet have some important software installed or configured
Oops… but it’s OK
Switch to “watching” mode and once the day is over, work on fixing it for the next day.
Ask for help if needed
You can’t attend every day
Review material later, raw Twitch video delay is ready immediately.
Better YouTube videos later
A cat visits one of the instructors
How is this a problem?
The course is too cool and you want to know more
Check out our advanced information
Ask your local supporters
Final notes
Recording
The course is recorded and will be put on YouTube
But because of our unique setup, you can’t possibly be recorded yourself.
Don’t add names in the Notes. Don’t post any personal information.
All outputs, including the Notes, are CC-BY and published.
Credits
We don’t assign credits for attending this course - we can’t track attendance.
Use what you learn here in the online course Hands-on Scientific Computing (https://hands-on.coderefinery.org) to get credits.
Join us!
We are staff at Aalto but welcome others to join us in allowing everyone to do scientific computing.