Over 250 attendees from around the globe gathered in Seattle, Washington for OGF21 which was held October 15 - 19, 2007. OGF21 was mainly focused on the important work of our chartered groups including the creation, publication and adoption of Grid standards. In all, over 30 OGF groups held 80 sessions. A significant trend among many groups clearly seen at OGF21 is the shift in focus from creating standards to demonstrating interoperability and documenting uses cases and reference implementations. For example, the DRMAA and GridRPC teams were recognized for their recent accomplishment of achieving 'Grid Recommendation' status for their respective standards which signifies that these standards are being adopted within the distributed computing community. Other groups are also closing in on achieving Grid Recommendation status for their work. Another example of this trend was the large number of OGF interoperability demonstrations discussed at OGF21 which are being planned for SC07. OGF groups planning demonstrations include HPC Profile, GIN, SAGA, GridRPC, and GSM.

In addition, the eScience function hosted 15 software and solutions sessions and workshops on Web 2.0, OGC-OGF collaboration and GridNet2. The enterprise program featured a special track focused on Grid in the IT data center as well as sessions on enterprise grid requirements and best practices.

OGF21 marked the beginning of Craig Lee's 3 year term as OGF president. Craig is a Senior Scientist at The Aerospace Corporation where he has worked since 1989. He has been deeply involved in OGF since its founding (as GGF) in 1999, working to develop interoperability standards for Grids across a number of scientific and enterprise applications. Craig opened the meeting with a presentation that discussed, among other things, how OGF can preserve and nurture its current constituency, while expanding and evolving the organization. He outlined OGF's goal to build participation in the research/academic community by promoting peer-reviewed publications related to work enabled by OGF; by co-locating future OGF events with established research grid conferences; and by collaborating closely with other research organizations such as the Open Geospatial Consortium which recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the OGF. Craig, and other OGF leaders, thanked Mark Linesch, outgoing president, for his tireless efforts for the community. Mark was presented with a well-deserved OGF leadership award.

On Tuesday, Steve Tuecke, from the recently merged Univa UD organization, presented a keynote talk on how the proliferation of small clusters will mean big changes to the Grid community.

While Seattle may have lived up to its (apparently well-founded) reputation for rainy weather, overall positive comments about the facilities, staff, wireless network and food were heard in abundance.

For the presentations from any of the sessions, visit the schedule page and browse the program for sessions and topics of interest.

OGF21 was sponsored by Microsoft, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, HP, IBM, OMII Europe, Univa UD, Fraunhofer Grid Alliance, and GridToday.

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