Thursday Mar 05, 2009

Privacy: what happens with our personal information?

After the advanced training provided by Sun experts so far, the Essex OSUM members felt themselves strong enough to share their knowledge with other peer students. This time, one of the members, Bogdan Suvar, gave the demo titled: ‘Privacy: what happens with our personal information?’ Bogdan introduced the concept of the ‘Cloud’ and raised such a critical issue as leaving our personal details on the Internet. The speaker brought the audience’s attention to how it is important to behave carefully on the Web: shopping lists, medical records, preferences, personal data – is it safe to leave this information in the electronic environment? The demo went into the open discussion when every one from those present had the chance to share their opinions on the matter. It appears that the majority had not been aware of many security issues.

The inside from this week meeting of the Essex OSUM was that it is important to properly choose topics for demoing and discussion. The problem of privacy and security appeared to be so popular that lots of people came to listen to the talk. Many of those who came were not club members yet. These students were also educated on the OSUM and the SAI.

Posted on: Mar 05, 2009

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Sun

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Thursday Feb 26, 2009

Higher knowledge: HPC and Lustre

After the insights on how to start up a business or make a good career in IT industry provided by Matt Hosanee, the Essex OSUM realized the importance of studying the technology to become a real professional. The Essex OSUM invited Dr James Coomer, a Lead HPC Architect at Sun, UK, to educate it in High Performance Computing and Lustre in particular. It wasn’t easy to grasp this higher knowledge, but Dr Coomer was a great speaker and explained everything in clear, simple way. His demo was very interesting, deep, advanced, and inspiring. The speaker got so many questions from students. The students now behave like professionals: they can spot all the weak points of the technology. Open discussion after the demo over tea/coffee and biscuits showed the progress the Essex OSUM made so far in studying technology. More mountains to conquer!

Posted on: Feb 26, 2009

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Sun

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Thursday Feb 19, 2009

Tech entrepreneurs

Essex OSUMMatt Hosanee

Having knowledge and skills in different technologies is not enough. We must know what we need them for and where to go with this erudition. Once realized this, Essex OSUM decided to discuss the following problem: “Web 2.0 – Getting through the economic crisis as a startup”. Matt Hosanee, a Senior Web Technologist from Emerging Markets & Communities at Sun Microsystems, was leading the session on 18th February 2009. He gave lots of useful tips on how to start up a business and promote oneself in order to be recognized as an expert. After absorbing Matt’s advices, Essex OSUM is not afraid any longer to start its own journey in the ocean of modern business, which is packed with many challenges and corner stones.

One more lesson has been learned: when organizing things, never rely on yourself only. Have a team of people ready to help you in order to tackle unforeseen circumstances. The event organized by me had been publicized well in advance. Just 15 minutes before its start, I got the message that the entrance to its venue had been blocked due to some maintenance work. The catering couldn’t get through either and left the trolley with refreshments somewhere in a corridor. If it was just me, I would never manage the situation. Luckily, I had a group of students who helped me to save the event (Bogdan and Valentin, thank you guys!). While I was meeting the speaker and writing to administrators to announce the room change, other Essex OSUM members printed and stick posters directing to a new location, found and brought in the trolley with refreshments, picking up attendees on their way and directing them to the new venue. So, being just 5 minutes late, we started our journey into the world of modern business and cool open source technologies!

Posted on: Feb 19, 2009

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Sun

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Tuesday Feb 10, 2009

Essex OSUM popularity

We have been working hard to bring up the Essex OSUM group and to make it a respectable individual. Now it is strong enough to tell for itself. Its great activities are recognized and recommended by students, lecturers, and others in academia. One of the Essex OSUM members says: “Becoming a member here is quite simple, very beneficial, and totally FREE!!! For one thing, it provides us with means to keep track of new ideas emerging in the open source world. We can also attend web seminars (smartly called webinars), interact with other members (from Essex and other tech schools all over the world), keep track of upcoming events, read blogs, view relevant photos and videos, and so many other cool things.”

Read the whole blog of the student here:

http://my-cool-new-life.blogspot.com/2009/02/csoc.html

Posted on: Feb 10, 2009

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Thursday Jan 22, 2009

OpenSolaris & VirtualBox Install Fest

It’s always nice to observe how young people become mature professionals. There were pronounced many interesting and challenging questions to the speaker David Cole (Services Lab Engineer, Sun Microsystems) with whom we were running the OpenSolaris & VirtualBox Install Fest on 21st January 2009. Many students were interested in networking and security aspects of the system. They also liked talks on ZFS and DTrace and enjoyed the process of installing Solaris OS using VirtualBox.

There were around 25 people present; all of them got DVDs with freshly released OpenSolaris 2008.11, handbooks on OS and OpenSolaris, as well as leaflets on LOSUG, SAI, and OSUM. Other goodies (a t-shirt, a mug, and bags) went to the most active participants.

Surprisingly, 90% of attendees were those who are not currently in the Essex OSUM group. This indicates the importance of using various sorts of media in order to promote demos: not only messages to current members, but also posters, leaflets, newsletters, daily bulletins, word of a mouth, etc. This also shows the importance of running demos regularly and on various topics in order to involve more members: if students/staff are not interested in today's talk they might still come along to another event tomorrow. Thus, every single demo has to start and finish with the words about Open Source, Sun technologies, OSUM and SAI so that more students find out which great opportunities they open to them.

Posted on: Jan 22, 2009

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Tuesday Dec 16, 2008

Broaden the horizons – go global!

It’s not that Essex OSUM is bored with itself; it’s just so tempting to know what is happening in the world – new ideas, new philosophies and experiences – to show ourselves and to know others… Sun technologies and the idea of Open Source were popularized among the international community interested in technology during three conferences happening in parallel, namely: (1) International Conference on Computational Intelligence for Modelling, Control and Automation, (2) International Conference on Intelligent Agents, Web Technologies and Internet Commerce, and (3) International Conference on Innovation in Software Engineering. Now OSUM has more participants and contributors from the globe – we have reached the points which are not covered by CAs. And that is yet another proof of Sun quality and importance: one of the speakers (John L. Kenyon) after talking on C/C++ has finished his presentation with the following phrase: “…and now I realize the need to learn Java”!

Posted on: Dec 16, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Demo on the project Wonderland

Project WonderlandProject Wonderland

The success of Bernard’s talk on Sun SPOTs was so huge that Essex OSUM decided to meet Bernard again. This time the club was taught about the project Wonderland and the Mixed Reality Teaching & Learning Environment in particular. We are students throughout our life regardless our age and we love to play in virtual environment – that is why the project is so appealing to us! It gives solutions to many contemporary problems, especially when it comes to getting education. The demo showed inspiring future and yet another brilliant application of Sun technologies. We just love them!

Posted on: Dec 16, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Thursday Nov 27, 2008

Demo on Glassfish and Sun SPOTs

Being already mature enough, the Essex OSUM members get together again on 26th November for two hours. Great stimulants coffee and biscuits did their job – all minds were sharpened in order to catch higher knowledge. One hour was devoted to the project GlassFish (demoed by me), and another hour to the Sun SPOTs (thanks Bernard Horan for your great talk and the picture!). Details as follows…

GalssFish

Pre-condition: No one out of 25 present ever heard about GlassFish

Post-condition: Everyone is looking forward to put their hands on, how great it is! dear all, we are approaching labs where the software is already installed…

Sun SPOTs

Pre-condition: We’ve heard about it, even tried to play around – we need more knowledge on how to use it

Post-condition: Wow! you even have a simulator (solarium), let me try my ideas in there…

Great stuff – thank you, Sun!

GlassFish demo


Posted on: Nov 27, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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The Essex OSUM birthday, childhood, and youth

The Essex OSUM group was born on 25th September 2008. Probably because of the great diet the UK Sun doctors (Michael Clark and Kim Austin – big thank you to you!) prescribed to it, the Essex OSUM grows up quickly and steadily. After the big initiation event on 23rd October, when the committee was elected (president, secretary, coordinator, treasurer, and scribe), all the members successfully passed the Sun primary school, where they were taught about the idea of open-source and Sun contribution to it, about the SAI and other great opportunities Sun offers to students. On 5th November, being teenagers by then, the Essex OSUM members tried to understand what is Web 2.0 and which Sun technologies they can use in order to create cool web apps. Now the Essex OSUM is mature enough to understand more sophisticated stuff, in particular, how all these technologies work and how to use them. Watch out the great future!

Posted on: Nov 27, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Set up the base

Andrew McFarlane, CAs from the Uni of Edinburgh, gives excellent ideas on how to create a “physical” community on campus so that to let your fellow student know about all the great opportunities and open source technologies Sun offers to them (http://blogs.sun.com/sunwards/ ). Just to add some butter to Andrew’s blog: if you don't have a Computer Society (or alike) - don't miss the chance and create your own! Of course you will have to invest some time and effort, but then it comes back to you with lots of benefits: you have the official status, easy room/bars booking, promotion on the university level, web-page on the Uni web-site - it all means you can reach students/staff not only from your department, but all over the Uni. Of course official Uni club requires lots of paper work and time for attending organizational meetings, but you can easily delegate this to your student fellows motivating them that it will look nicely on their CVs - imagine how happy a first-year student would be to have the opportunity to add a line in his CV: "President of Computer Society"!... So organize - delegate - use!

Posted on: Nov 27, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Personal

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Sunday Oct 19, 2008

It's all live!

It's difficult to achieve a goal by thinking and behaving in terms of "from 9 to 6". Use all your time to achieve the goal. Think in personalities, not in crowd. Why not to talk to a fellow in the gym or stranger at the bus stop or while queuing to pay your shopping? That is how you bring your matter into the mass. Spread a word! By sharing you are gaining: give it out and free the space for something new. I don’t believe in promotion, I believe in mutual understanding. Just a second can change the world!

Posted on: Oct 19, 2008

Posted by: Yevgeniya Kovalchuk

Category: Sun

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