November 20, 2019
This year’s SC was my second time attending. Unlike last year, I was not presenting, but I appreciated the ability to spend time taking in the conference and exploring rather than worrying about my presentation. In addition to helping out at UD’s exhibit hall booth like in previous years, I was a student volunteer for SC19 for my first time. I really enjoyed how this allowed me full access to the conference, which I didn’t have last year. I intentionally choose volunteer shifts at workshops and tutorials related to my interests, and of these I got the most out of tutorials on OpenMP common core and tasking, presented by members of the OpenMP ARB. I also attended workshops on AI and machine learning, and HPC correctness, but these were a little more out of my wheelhouse and I wasn’t able to get as much out of them. I also volunteered at multiple Students@SC sessions, including a career panel for students which I found very informative and inspiring. I spent some time on Wednesday and Thursday exploring the exhibition hall, on the lookout for summer internship opportunities.
One of my favorite experiences at SC was attending the OpenMP 5.0 State of the Union with my CRPL grad student, Jose. This was a great opportunity to take more of an inside look into how OpenMP is gradually implemented by vendors and how the OpenMP ARB, users, and vendors communicate with each other. Generally, I really loved getting the chance to meet people at SC that I had only heard about before, especially those involved with OpenMP and the SOLLVE project. I look forward to building up those relationships further at SC20 in Atlanta!
