The inaugural ISC Cloud & Big Data conference, taking place in Frankfurt, Germany, from September 28 through September 30, 2015, will provide attendees access to what promise to be eight very interesting workshops. All of the workshops will be held on September 28 and will run for four hours each.

A broad selection of topics — ranging from state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for image recognition to how to quickly deploy an HPC cluster — will be presented. The conference agenda app specifies the target audience of each workshop, in order to help attendees identify those that are highly relevant to them.

Workshop highlights

• Using GPUs for Deep Learning – A Hands-On Introduction to Deep Learning for Accelerating Deep Learning on a GPU Cluster
  This Monday morning workshop will describe how GPU-powered clusters are being used to accelerate training and development of Deep Learning systems.  The focus will be on convolutional neural networks (CNN), with examples in imagery and signal processing. Different tools for developing CNNs also will be discussed. To wrap up the workshop, a hands-on lab will be conducted that will allow attendees to employ GPU acceleration for their own Deep Learning applications.
• Amazon Web Services Tutorial – Securing HPC in the Cloud
  In this morning workshop, representatives from Amazon will describe the practical aspects of deploying HPC applications in the AWS Cloud. The talk also will outline how to use the account management, audit logging and encryption functions available on the platform. Attendees will come away with the knowledge of how they can quickly deploy an HPC cluster that makes use of all of the discussed practices.
• Working in a Fairytale Country – Towards Becoming a Data Scientist
  This morning workshop will focus on the role of the data scientist, a relatively recent job category, but one that is at the heart of Big Data efforts. Attendees will learn about what a data scientist does and the skills needed to become one. The discussion will pay special attention to the role data scientists’ play in helping companies transform their business processes. The workshop will consist of talks, interactive discussions and hands-on tutorials.
• HPC Cloud Solutions for Manufacturing
  This Monday afternoon workshop will focus on the role of the data scientist, a relatively recent job category, but one that is at the heart of Big Data Competitiveness in manufacturing and often hinges on a company’s ability to effectively purchase and harness HPC resources. This workshop will impart the knowledge and tools necessary to acquire those capabilities, with a special emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The discussion will be joined by three European projects (CloudSME, Fortissimo and CloudFlow), who are working to support manufacturing SMEs when using HPC clouds. Case studies will be presented that illustrate the advantages that cloud-based HPC brings to the manufacturing sector.
• Amazon Web Services Tutorial – Large Scale Data Analytics with Amazon Web Services
  In this afternoon workshop, AWS will explain how to most effectively derive value from your data. The talk will walk you through specific examples to illustrate best practices, with special consideration given to removing storage constraints, analyzing the data, deriving actionable intelligence and sharing the results.
• Docker Containers for Scientific & Engineering Applications – A New Era of Packaging, Delivering & Accessing Complex Software
  This afternoon workshop will provide an introduction to Docker containers, one of the most compelling new technologies being adopted in HPC cloud environments.  The discussion will encompass how Docker impacts system operation and the underlying infrastructure. Also discussed will be how to use Docker for software development, testing and verification. A genomics workflow will provide an example of how to use the technology for a real-world application. Docker’s use in UberCloud will also be featured. The second half of the workshop will delve into how Docker operates in different cloud and data center software environments.
• Two additional workshops will be added to the conference agenda shortly.

Following the workshops, the ISC Cloud & Big Data conference will offer two full days of sessions, panels and discussions within the Industry, Business and Research tracks. The event will also host a small exhibition on Tuesday, September 29, and Wednesday, September 30. Attendees may either combine passes or purchase the workshop pass separately for 145 Euros during the early-bird registration, which comes to an end on August 19.

About ISC Cloud & Big Data

This new format offers attendees two full days of multi-track sessions, highlighting current and future technologies, and applications most relevant in the cloud and big data fields. The conference will be bringing together 250 attendees from across the community to learn and discuss their experiences. They will span the spectrum of cloud and big data users, coming from industries including manufacturing, medical and pharmaceutical, financial services, retail, and the energy sector, as well as from government agencies and research organizations.