EMBnet.journal

Technical Management Project Committee: AGM2011 report

George Vasilios Magklaras

University of Oslo, The Biotechnology Centre of Oslo, Olso, Norway

Commitee members

Chair/Secretary: George Magklaras (NO)

Member: Nils-Einar Eriksson (SE)

Member: César Bonavides-Martínez (MX)

Member: Romualdo Zayas-Lagunas (MX)

Member: Nazim Rahman (PK)

Member: Harald Dahle (NO)

The following is a summary of the activities for 2011 of the Technical Management Project Committee (TMPC):

• re-organisation of the website: the TMPC members have worked to migrate all the public websites from the Swedish server to a new Linux server in Norway. In addition, an upgrade of the OJS system was performed, in order to aid the subscribers of the EMBnet.journal with new functionality. A parallel activity was an action plan to upgrade the structure and look of the EMBnet website, following the suggestions of the established website task force. The migration of services was successful, pending the technical issue of replicating the website for redundancy purposes. The re-design and site replication processes are in progress;
• testing and deployment of a new video conferencing suite: TMPC members have deployed a test OpenMeetings server. A small number of EMBnet VGMs was held and the server had problems with certain people connecting. EMBnet tried alternative solutions that also experienced similar reliability problems. As a result, TMPC needs to investigate the issue further and provide a solution to the problem;
• general support of DNS and helpdesk operations: in the period June 2010 – May 2011, the TMPC ran 38 DNS change requests and 3 HPC/system support issues for various members around the world.

The TMPC would like to thank Harald Dahle for his work. Harald is working with a new UiO institute and he steps down from the TMPC.

Our thanks extend also to Emil Lundberg for his work on various DNS issues in Sweden.

Consequently, the TMPC has two more vacancies to be considered during the AGM.

The Chair/Secretary would like to thank ALL the TMPC members for their work and dedication for this period.