Final words from Catania - so long, and thanks for all the fish!

With visible signs of regret, and a last glance at the loaded food tables, the EGEE 4th User forum and OGF25 participants are packing for home today. The final word in the closing plenary came from Vangelis Floros, Chairman of the User Forum Organising Committee, who reminded us that we had seen 27 oral sessions including 96 oral presentations, 37 posters and 18 demos. Judging from the liveliness of the sessions, the conference can already be counted a great success,

As ever, the conference closed with prizes for the highlights of the week: the best demo and poster awards.

As voted by the delegates, the prize for best poster went to "Large scale free energy calculations as showcase of worldwide grid usability" by Zora Strelcova, Petr Kulhanek, Jan Kmunicek, Jaraslav Koca and Ludek Matyska.

The best demo award was decided by EGEE External Advisory Committee, who felt unable to narrow this down to just one in the face of such fierce competition, so awarded three: best infrastructure, best application and an honorable mention.

Honorable mention for its ease of use, clean and simple interface, large public appeal and focus on the significance of the data went to "Digital Libraries on the grid to preserve cultural heritage" presented by Dr Antonio Calanducci.

Best infrastructure demo due to its timely development, coverage of a 'hot' technology, integration of cloud with grid technologies and mixed environments solution was "Scaling out EGEE sites on Amazon EC2 with OpenNebula" by Dr Iganacio Llorente, Dr Ruben Santiago Montero, Mr Constantino Vozquez Blanco, Mr Javier Fonton Munios and Dr Rafael Moreno Vozmediano. (Read the blog post)

Best applications demo was judged to be "The e-NMR GRID platform for structural biology" by Dr Alexandre Bonvin and Prof Antonio Rosato, as it represented a unique and important application, was adopted to grid very fast, had a clear development strategy and most importantly brought new resources to the grid. (Watch the GridCast video)

Vangelis issued a call for papers for a Journal of Grid Computing Special issue: "EGEE applications and supporting technologies". The committee is looking for 15-20 page papers describing original and important work, for submission before the end of July to the JOGC. Just follow the author instructions on their website if you are interested.

Final announcements were made for the International Summer School for Grid Computing 2009 and of course EGEE09, the final EGEE conference, which will be held at the Hotel Barcelo Sants, Barcelona, Spain. Improved wireless networking since OGF23 is promised!

It just remained to thank all the organisers, including INFN and the University of Catania, the city of Catania and of course, the delegates.

See you all in Barcelona and arrivederci!