Chameleon User Meeting | May 2-3, 2023

Welcome to the 4th Chameleon User Meeting!

WHEN: Tuesday, May 2nd - Wednesday, May 3rd 2023
WHERE: Crerar Library, Chicago, IL

The Chameleon User Meeting is back in person! As in the past years, our objective is to create a forum where users can discuss their research and education projects, share experiences of working with the Chameleon testbed, discuss challenges, and propose new features that will make their experimental and education projects easier. We hope that these interactions will evolve into a discussion of how to enhance and teach experimental methodology for Computer Science – and we will be right there to help make your experimentation more rewarding and fruitful in any way we can. The User Meeting will have features to interest Chameleon newbies as well as veterans, end-users and operators, researchers and educators. 

To support this mission the Chameleon User Meeting agenda includes tutorials, presentations of user experiments, and opportunities to engage directly with the Chameleon team. New this year is focus on data systems reflecting the interest of many of the experiments running on Chameleon. Also new this year are mini-workshops providing a focus for community interests that sprang up around Chameleon. They cover themes of education, reproducibility, and Chameleon operations and will be held on the second day concurrently with Chameleon tutorials that come back this year. 

To help the discussion develop, we will include a keynote on experimental methodology as well as a presentation from the Chameleon PI with a glimpse of new features coming up in the next year. The first day will conclude with a reception at the University of Chicago’s Rubenstein Forum overlooking the campus. We invite you to join us for a couple of days of insightful presentations, hackathon tutorials, and fun!

Prior Chameleon User Meetings:

• 3rd Chameleon User Meeting (2021, virtual, edge computing)
• 2nd Chameleon User Meeting (2019, in person)

Call for Presentation and Demonstration Proposals

The Chameleon User Meeting will be held May 2-3, 2023 in Chicago, IL, is fast approaching – we are super excited to be holding our first in-person post- pandemic event! The meeting will follow the format of prior User Meetings with the first day containing two keynotes and presentations from our users, and the morning of the second day focusing on tutorials. However, this year we will also hold three parallel mini-symposia on the 2nd day: Chameleon site operators (CHI-in-a-Box) mini-symposium, mini-symposium on education using Chameleon, and a reproducibility hackathon. As before, we will reimburse travel expenses of up to $1,200 for the presenting authors of the top 10 selected presentation abstracts (one author per abstract). Please, take a look at the Call For Presentations below for details.

Chameleon User Meeting represents a forum where users can share their experiences working with the testbed and discuss challenges and suggestions on experimental work in Computer Science. To facilitate this discussion we are soliciting proposals for brief presentations (15-20 minutes) based on your work with Chameleon.

Submission due date: April, 3rd, 2023
Send submissions to: presentations AT chameleoncloud dot org
Acceptance notification date: April 10, 2023

Presentation proposals should be  in pdf format, no longer than 2 pages in length, and should include the following information:

Presentation title:
Author/Presenter name(s) and affiliation(s):
Chameleon project(s) under which work was carried out:
Project type {research, education}: 
Resource type used {bare metal/CHI, KVM}: 

Proposal Body Sections: 

Research/Education Project Description:
A brief but clear description of the Computer Science research problem you are working on and your approach (What is the hypothesis? What is the challenge/trade-off? Why is it significant?) or a brief description of your education project (What are you teaching and to whom? What are the objectives of the class?)

A description of your experiment or project (including but not limited to):
Experimental configuration: What are your resource requirements? What capabilities do you need? (bare-metal reconfiguration, advance reservations, custom kernel reboot, type of isolation, the ability to snapshot, complex appliances, etc.) What qualities are you monitoring?
What features of the Chameleon testbed are you using to create your experiment? (hardware, features, appliances, etc.) Did you create any new appliances, notebooks, or other artifacts that you would like to share with others?

An analysis:
Pros and cons: In terms of using Chameleon what worked well and what didn’t? What changes or improvements would you like to see to our features, hardware, documentation, communication between the testbed operators and the user community? What features ideally would you like to see in the future and what is top priority?

As before, for the top 10 selected abstracts we will reimburse the travel expenses of up to $1,200 for the presenting authors (one per abstract). In addition, Chameleon User Meeting attendees will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite presentation and demonstration, and we will recognize the top selections at the next morning's award presentation.

The presentations will be limited to ~20 minutes in length, and may be grouped by topic depending on the number of submissions received. Presenting authors will be invited to submit a short paper after the meeting with proceedings published on Zenodo. 

Please, send your submissions to presentations AT chameleoncloud dot org or contact us at contact at chameleoncloud dot org or via the Chameleon users list if you have questions.

We look forward to seeing you all in Chicago this May!
 

Program

Detailed program will be annouced soon!

The general structure of the first day will be similar to previous Chameleon meetings, at least on the first day. The core of the first day program will be presentations and discussion from our users -- if you would like to present, please see the Call for Presentations! In addiiton to user presentations, we will host two keyontes, one a Chameleon update and one (to be announced soon) highlighting methodology approach or research directions of interest to our user community. 

The second day traditionally saw a range of tutorials on various topics related to Chameleon -- we will hold them this year as well but in addition we will also hold special interest activities as follows:

Tutorials: Chameleon tutorials will start with an introduction to Chameleon for beginners and progress to tutorials on special topics. In line with the data systems theme of the user meeting the special topics will focus on how to use Chameleon resources for research on edge, networking, storage, and machine learning. Detailed tutorials schedule will be announced soon!

CHI-in-a-Box: Chameleon site operators mini-symposium is targeted at meeting participants who operate or are interested in operating a Chameleon site or a Chameleon-like site. The event will start with a CHI-in-a-Box tutorial and include segments on site feature requirements, policy discussions, and community channels.

Education on Chameleon mini-symposium will bring together participants who teach or are interested in teaching using Chameleon and associated testbeds. It will contain presentations of digital teaching materials using Chameleon and a discussion of teaching techniques.

Reproducibility hackathon will be a reproducibility clinic with the objective to help participants package their experiments for sharing on Chameleon. The session will contain a tutorial on how to package experiments on Chameleon for reproducibility but most of the time will be devoted to a hands-on clinic helping participants package their individual experiments for reproducibility.

Tutorials: Chameleon tutorials will start with an introduction to Chameleon for beginners and progress to tutorials on special topics. In line with the data systems theme of the user meeting the special topics will focus on how to use Chameleon resources for research on edge, networking, storage, and machine learning. Detailed tutorials schedule will be announced soon!

CHI-in-a-Box: Chameleon site operators mini-symposium is targeted at meeting participants who operate or are interested in operating a Chameleon site or a Chameleon-like site. The event will start with a CHI-in-a-Box tutorial and include segments on site feature requirements, policy discussions, and community channels.

Education on Chameleon mini-symposium will bring together participants who teach or are interested in teaching using Chameleon and associated testbeds. It will contain presentations of digital teaching materials using Chameleon and a discussion of teaching techniques.

Reproducibility hackathon will be a reproducibility clinic with the objective to help participants package their experiments for sharing on Chameleon. The session will contain a tutorial on how to package experiments on Chameleon for reproducibility but most of the time will be devoted to a hands-on clinic helping participants package their individual experiments for reproducibility.

Registration

Registration is open -- REGISTER HERE!

Early registration ends on April 3rd!

We will host tutorials and workshops on the second day of the meeting, May 3. When registering, please indicate which event you are planning to attend so that we can plan for space:

Tutorials: Chameleon tutorials will start with an introduction to Chameleon for beginners and progress to tutorials on special topics. In line with the data systems theme of the user meeting the special topics will focus on how to use Chameleon resources for research on edge, networking, storage, and machine learning. Detailed tutorials schedule will be announced soon!

CHI-in-a-Box: Chameleon site operators mini-symposium is targeted at meeting participants who operate or are interested in operating a Chameleon site or a Chameleon-like site. The event will start with a CHI-in-a-Box tutorial and include segments on site feature requirements, policy discussions, and community channels.

Education on Chameleon mini-symposium will bring together participants who teach or are interested in teaching using Chameleon and associated testbeds. It will contain presentations of digital teaching materials using Chameleon and a discussion of teaching techniques.

Reproducibility hackathon will be a reproducibility clinic with the objective to help participants package their experiments for sharing on Chameleon. The session will contain a tutorial on how to package experiments on Chameleon for reproducibility but most of the time will be devoted to a hands-on clinic helping participants package their individual experiments for reproducibility.

Register now

Lodging

We have reserved a block of rooms at The Study, the brand new hotel on the UChicago campus, at 1227 E. 60th Street. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the conference venue (the Computer Science Department at the Crerar Library) and next door to the conference reception venue. To access the special room block price, please book using this link: https://reservations.travelclick.com/114529?groupID=3843767.

Should you prefer, you may also call directly to reserve a room at the number below:

Reservations by call in: 773-643-1600

Reservations by e-mail: reservations.chicago@studyhotels.com

When calling or e-mailing, please reference the group name: Chameleon User Meeting

Please note that this price is only valid for rooms booked no later than 4/1/23. 

Air Travel

Chicago has two major airports: O’Hare International (to the north) and Midway International Airport (to the south). Midway is the closest airport to the University of Chicago. Approximate travel times to campus by car: 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, 45 minutes from Midway Airport, and 60 minutes from O’Hare Airport.

John Crerar Library Building

The University of Chicago Department of Computer Science is in the John Crerar Library Building, 5730 S. Ellis Ave. 

The building is set back from the street between Drexel and Ellis Avenues and 57th and 58th street, as shown in yellow below. The main entrance is on the east side of the building (marked with *).

For short visits, metered street parking is often available on Ellis Avenue. For longer visits, or during peak hours, we recommend parking in University garages at 55th Street & Ellis or 57th Street & Cottage Grove. A map of all UChicago parking options is available here.

If you are taking a rideshare or taxi to our building, it is often best to choose the University of Chicago bookstore (970 E. 58th Street) as your destination, then walk west past it and northwest across the small quad to the John Crerar Library. University shuttle buses and CTA routes #171 and #172 also stop in front of the bookstore or Levi Hall on the other side of Ellis Ave.

For information on taking CTA or Metra train lines to the University of Chicago campus, see here.

Contact Us

Please send your questions regarding the Chameleon User Meeting to contact AT chameleoncloud.org.