Date: Friday 24 April 2015
Venue: Kamo High School Whangarei
The tentative program is as shown below. Attendance is free of charge but registration is essential for seating and catering preparation.

1:45pm Reception in Music Studio in Block A
2:00pm Opening by Phil (Assistant Principal)
2:10pm Main Theme by TN (High Performance Computing with examples in astronomy and neural computing)
3:10pm Guest Speech by Haggis Henderson (Science teacher of Whangarei Girls High)
3:25pm Guest Speech by Colin Dyer (Computer science tutor of Northland Polytechnic)
3:40pm Guest Speech by Nick Trevena (Computer consultant and service provider)
3:55pm Closing Forum Q&A
4:10pm Muffin Break in Staff Room

This Open Technology series has been kept at a very high altitude (like in the air) and not for ground deployment. High level (altitude) information can be applied to a thousand types of activities whereas ground level deployment is very specific. Our seminars are meant to stimulate thinking and not to explain how we do our jobs on a daily basis. High Performance Computing (HPC) is a concept. Learning is a concept. Ecosystem is a concept. Open Source is a concept.

TN will provide 2 examples of the application of HPC for the warm up phase. One is about the measurement of tectonic plate movements on Earth from the universe (not satellites). The second example is about how we design computers to emulate the working of the brain.  The main talk is on the differences between the current mode of consumer computing and the next generation of high performance computing including some development works being done in Compucon (this is commercially sensitive and confidential stuff and the info will not be printed for seminar hand-outs). The final phase of the talk will explain why the professional community should embrace parallel computing and be the first early bird to pick the worm.

Haggis will comment on the above themes from an educational perspective. Colin will discuss what we shall do for the ecosystem to be more successful than we are at present. Nick will provide an industrial perspective of HPC and ecosystems using Free and Open Source Software as an example. 

The Q&A Session will summarise what participants can take away from this seminar.