I'm running an AWS Cloudman instance (on US East region) from Sydney for a developing suite of proteomics PTM tools in Perl, for use mainly by http://sydney.edu.au/science/molecular_bioscience/ and http://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/institutter_centre/bmb_biokemi_og_molekylaer_biologi

Hard to say if a local group is fully needed yet, but we could try. A multi-site audio or video conference is pretty easy these days. There are always unexpected insights from talking direct to others. I'd be happy to take part. But the main Galaxy dev team in US are so good on the mailing lists, we don't want to impact that.

Not a very insightful comment ! I used to be indecisive but now I'm not so sure ...

Greg Edwards

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 3:20 PM, Clare Sloggett <sloc@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm at one of the places Ross mentions (VLSCI), with Enis - among
other things we're deploying Galaxy CloudMan on the new "Australian
Research Cloud".

Just from talking to people I feel that local institutions that have
installed their own Galaxy, and are customising it, wrapping tools for
the researchers they support etc, do end up struggling with a lot of
the same problems. I think though that as Ross is suggesting in a lot
of cases these needs could be filled by the existing galaxy-user and
galaxy-dev mailing lists (I find sometimes people can be quite
hesitant to post a question until they have spent a lot of time on the
problem).

I do like the idea of a "local" Australia-New Zealand Galaxy group for
developers / techie bioinformaticians, but more for the sake of
face-to-face interaction and perhaps local-timezone teleconferences; I
don't want to end up just duplicating existing mailing lists. I'm not
sure of the best way to make such a group take off or how much
interest there would be. If there are other Australian / New Zealand
or local timezone groups reading this list and you're interested, let
us know!

Clare

On 30 April 2012 13:35, Ross <ross.lazarus@gmail.com> wrote:
> To all interested in Dave's suggestion:
>
> IMHO, an Australian/New Zealand Galaxy user/deployer/developer group
> will be worth setting up and will be viable if it solves specific
> problems that aren't adequately addressed by existing networks and
> communication channels - otherwise it will be JAFUG (just another
> fleeting user group) and will likely fizzle due to lack of genuine
> utility to potential participants.
>
> EG: One challenge for us when it comes to (eg) the proposed
> teleconferences is the tyranny of time zones - being 14 hours ahead of
> EST eg in Melbourne/Sydney. The other big challenge is that travel to
> meetings in Europe or the USA is expensive and exhausting, so
> workshops and hands on training are harder to get to. In general, I
> think we're probably going to be able to find plenty of problems to do
> with geographic isolation and maybe even some specific Australian
> challenges - but let's be clear about exactly what those are before we
> start building any structures. One problem I keep seeing is that there
> are many organisations happy to invest in hardware infrastructure, but
> far less willing to invest in the training and staff development
> needed for success.
>
> Two things I'd like to suggest to help with planning:
>
> 1) to get a better idea of scope, it would be very handy to assemble a
> register of potential organisations and their primary contacts. I
> already know of some large Australian organisations investing heavily
> in Galaxy deployment - eg - VLSCI in Melbourne; UQ in Brisbane, CSIRO
> all over the place, the Victorian DPI, AGRF, and the BakerIDI where
> I'm based - no doubt there are plenty of others too?
>
> 2) to make sure the idea is viable, it would be useful to collect some
> specific deployment challenges that people are experiencing that some
> kind of local user's group could help overcome?
>
> One focus I have a personal interest in exploring would be in face to
> face educational activities: eg for local Galaxy instance system
> administrators? Local tool developers? Local biologist users in
> specific contexts like short read sequencing?
>
> Suggestions welcomed...
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 12:37 PM, Dave Clements
> <clements@galaxyproject.org> wrote:
>> Hi Ryan, Ann, and everyone else
>>
>> I second what Nate says (I always do :-). I too like that it is user
>> driven. And, while I am not a developer, I do plan on being on the call as
>> often as possible.
>>
>> I can also offer my support for logistical and any other support. Ann,
>> please let me know if you want help with getting this going and getting the
>> word out.
>>
>>
>> On a related note, .... With Matloob's email, we have at least 3
>> organizations in Australia and New Zealand that are interested. I know that
>> there are many more Galaxy installations in that part of the world (and you
>> have Enis and Ross in Australia now). Would this be a good opportunity to
>> set up the first (to my knowledge) regional user group? If anyone thinks
>> this is a good idea, please respond (and create a new thread).
>>
>>
>> Finally, Ann, thanks for starting this.
>>
>> Dave C
>>
>>
>>
>> I also that both Ross and Enis are in Australia now
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Nate Coraor <nate@bx.psu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Ryan,
>>>
>>> I like that it's user-directed, and we could be there to provide input,
>>> although if help is needed to organize the call we could probably assist
>>> with that. I plan to be on the call as often as my schedule allows, and I
>>> believe some of the other developers on the team would also be interested.
>>>
>>> --nate
>>>
>>> On Apr 28, 2012, at 8:49 AM, Ryan Golhar wrote:
>>>
>>> > One question - Are the Galaxy developers involved in this or is this for
>>> > user's only? It may be helpful to have developers on the call to provide
>>> > information that users do not necessarily have.
>
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>

--

Clare Sloggett
Research Fellow / Bioinformatician
Life Sciences Computation Centre
Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Melbourne
Victoria 3010, Australia
Ph: 03 903 53357 M: 0414 854 759

___________________________________________________________
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--
Greg Edwards,

Port Jackson Bioinformatics

gedwards2@gmail.com