In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team previews the ancillary events around SC16 in Salt Lake City.
Friday, Nov 11

• HP-CAST (Friday-Saturday). The High Performance Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical (HP-CAST) computing users group works to increase the capabilities of Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions for large-scale, scientific and technical computing. The company has recently completed its acquisition of SGI, so this meeting will be the first chance for customers to hear about the road ahead.

Saturday, Nov 12

• Dell HPC Community meeting. The Dell HPC Community is a worldwide technical forum that fosters the exchange of ideas among researchers, computer scientists, technologists, and engineers and promotes the advancement of innovative, powerful HPC solutions. Dell customers, staff, and partners are invited to become members and to attend this exclusive workshop featuring insightful keynote presentations by HPC experts, as well as valuable technical sessions and discussions. This half-day event will take place on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 12.
• Intel HPC Developer Conference (Saturday-Sunday). This one and a half-day event brings together architecture experts and HPC industry leaders to discuss, share and highlight the latest in supercomputing.

Sunday, Nov 13

• SC16 starts Sunday with Tutorials and Workshops and runs all week until Friday, Nov 18.
• Third Workshop on Accelerator Programming Using Directives (WACCPD). Held in conjunction with SC16, this workshop aims to solicit papers that explore innovative language features – their implementations, compilation & runtime scheduling techniques, performance optimization strategies, autotuning tools exploring the optimization space and so on.

Monday, Nov 14

• International Workshop on Parallel Data Storage and Data Intensive Scalable Computing Systems (PDSW-DISCS’16). The objective of this one day joint workshop is to combine two overlapping communities and to better promote and stimulate researchers’ interactions to address some of the most critical challenges for scientific data storage, management, devices, and processing infrastructure for both traditional compute intensive simulations and data-intensive high performance computing solutions.
• StartupHPC Conference. Kick-off your Salt Lake experience and SC16 week with the annual StartupHPC conference. Register early and secure your opportunity to engage fellow entrepreneurial explorers, executives and experts during this one day exclusive event packed with high quality content, insights, and interactions! Building on the success of last year’s event, StartupHPC-16 focuses on hot markets, case studies, and funding. Contributed talks combine with spirited discussions in this open forum, offering attendees a mix of rare and deeply personal experiences, professional best practices, and practical learnings.
• International Workshop on Heterogeneous High-performance Reconfigurable Computing (H2RC’16). This workshop brings together HPC and heterogeneous-computing researchers to demonstrate and share experiences on how newly-available high-level programming models, including OpenCL, are already empowering HPC software developers to directly leverage FPGAs, and to identify future opportunities and needs for research in this area. 
• DDN User Group. Join your HPC community colleagues and DDN executive and technical leadership to share insights and hear how other leading global organizations are assessing and leveraging technology to raise the bar on HPC innovations and best practices.
• D-Wave Quantum Computing Seminar at SC16. Over the past few years investment in quantum computing research has skyrocketed worldwide, as has interest in the potential of this revolutionary technology. D-Wave, the first quantum computing company, released its 1000+ qubit D-Wave 2X system last year, which has now been installed at NASA Ames, Los Alamos National Laboratory and USC/Lockheed Martin. Attend this seminar and learn about D-Wave’s newest system, with a 2000 qubit quantum processor. Learn more.
• Seagate HPC User Forum at SC16. “We’re venturing well beyond legacy boundaries. Are you confused about the real future of HPC storage? Is it all flash like the hype suggests? Are reliable spinning disks still going to be relevant? Is there a better answer? Join us Monday, November 14 from 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. at Seagate’s 3rd annual HPC User Forum to get your questions answered and learn about the newest HPC direction and innovations firsthand from four industry leaders.”
• Beowulf Bash at SC16, 9pm – 12am at the Discovery Gateway: Children’s Museum 444 100 South, Salt Lake City. The biggest party at SC16 takes place on Monday night 9pm after the opening gala. So here’s the deal: we are holding the 2016 Bash in a children’s museum. Not to worry, as in years past a great bunch of vendors will be providing food, entertainment, and adult beverages. The museum has simple, safe exhibits that should not be too difficult for you and your friends.

Tuesday, November 15

• IDC Breakfast Briefing at SC16, 7:15am – 8:30am. Free for attendees, the event takes place 7:15 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 15 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center. “Join IDC industry analysts as they present their expert opinions and analysis on the technical computing market and the future of high-performance computing.”
• Women in HPC Celebration at SC16, 7:30pm – 9:00pm. The Women in HPC network is hosting a meetup celebration at SC16. The event will take place at Nov. 15 at 7:30pm – 9:00pm at Caffé Molise in Salt Lake City. “Join us to celebrate the growing community of women in the supercomputing community and the work of WHPC. This special networking evening will include drinks and an appetizer buffet. Hosted by EPCC in collaboration with Intel, Compute Canada and McMahon Consulting, the event is a great opportunity to celebrate the work done by WHPC and meet members, founders, advocates and supporters.”
• Nimbix Party Lounge, 6pm – 10pm. Stanza Italian Bistro & Wine Bar. Nimbix is bringing together an international group of High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data enthusiasts including software developers, hardware OEM’s, users, industry analysts and more.

After our event roundup comes our predections for SC16 total attendance numbers:

• Henry: 14,237
• Shahin: 12,600
• Dan: 11,100
• Rich: 9,800

Then we each share our Catch of the Week:

• Henry likes the story about Sunflower Labs, a company that will launch drones to photograph anyone who trespasses in your yard.
• Shahin points us to a pair of European startups looking to do computation with light: Optalysis and LightOn.
• Dan has an idea for an App that will allow you to track your progress on an escalator.
• Rich puts in a plug for the Print ‘n Fly Guide to SC16 in Salt Lake City. Top Tip: Be sure to negotiate your taxi fares ahead of time!

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