It is my great privilege to serve as the General Chair of SC this year. This conference, now in its 26th year, combines a deep regard for quality and tradition with a commitment to innovation that ensures SC stays relevant in a community that fundamentally reinvents itself at least once a decade. As an attendee, this means that you can rely upon the familiar favorites you’ve come to expect while looking forward to discovering something new to enrich your professional development.

This year is no different, and SC13 will feature several new conference activities and elements that we will touch on in the months leading up to November. In this newsletter I would like to focus on the first of those new additions: the Emerging Technologies track.

Emerging Technologies offers the opportunity for large-scale, long-term projects to showcase their work on the exhibit floor at SC13. The goal is to focus on achievements in HPC, networking, storage, and analysis that might not otherwise have a home at SC13. For example, research projects at National Labs or companies that are not in the core of the business (and so wouldn’t necessarily be featured in a standalone booth) would fit in well in the Emerging Technologies showcase. We also hope to attract large-scale and longer-term projects. Recent results from these projects might be part of the technical program as technical papers or posters; while Emerging Technologies will allow us to showcase other aspects, such as development over a decade of significant new capabilities and their broader impact. As with the rest of the technical program, Emerging Technologies submissions will be rigorously peer-reviewed.

The mix of projects or simply “cool ideas” will be a unique experience for all visitors. In addition, the open nature of the program is a great opportunity for informal discussions and starting collaborations.

I hope you’ll talk with your colleagues and bring your best emerging technologies to SC this year. More information about the Emerging Technologies program can be found at http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/emerging-technologies and open questions will be answered by the chairs via emerging-technologies@info.supercomputing.org