Oh, What A Meeting!
Different, peculiar, interesting and downright plain ludicrous are words which describe some of the events this week.
- 1860 saw the start of the Pony Express, delivering mail for $5 an ounce (a lot of $ in those days). Took 10 days to deliver to California, over 2,000 miles away - thank goodness for emails today!
- 1896 saw the return of the Olympics of the modern era, in Athens after a 1500 year break.
- 1949 saw the signing of the treaty which created NATO.
- 1961 was the year Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space traveling 187 miles or 301 kilometers, above the earth in a single orbit lasting 108 minutes.
Guest Speaker - Frank Sciaronne, DUG Technology.
Frank thanked the members for the invitation to share our fellowship and the opportunity to talk to the Club about his involvement with the start-up company DUG Technology.
DownUnder GeoSolutions (DUG) was started in 2003 by two blokes in a shed in Subiaco. They had lots of ideas and no money, with an appetite for disruption….
(Dr) Matt Lamont had been a high school dropout who went back to Curtin University at age 27 and earned his PhD.
(Dr) Troy Thompson had been Matt’s PhD student and ended up joining him in the venture.
Their little start-up company embarked on a “David and Goliath” effort to break into the market. Their aim was to develop technology and deploy expertise in high performance computing (HPC) for real world applications.
Their capability has developed to 45 petaflops (one petaflop = 1,000 terabytes) of computing power and 52 petabytes of storage capacity. As a comparison, one petabyte would be equivalent to 20 million conventional storage cabinets. This capability enabled one customer, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), to optimise their academic code in two weeks and achieve run-times that were 125 x faster.
Another big customer AUSTAL has been able to “reduce the timeframe for hull form optimisation in conjunction with computational fluid dynamics by an order of magnitude”.
DUG’s 21-year journey has seen them open offices in Kuala Lumpur, Houston, London and Abu Dhabi.
Other key markets for high data computing include:
- Oil & Gas.
- National Security & Space. (Defence)
- Enterprise. (education, research, applied science, CSIRO)
- Harry Perkins. (medical research)
- Telethon Kids Institute. (indigenous health)
DUG has also developed two new innovations:
DUG Cool. This is an oil immersion cooling system for data centres, reducing water usage by over 25%, power usage by over 50%, 85% less embodied CO2 and 85% less synthetic refrigerants.
DUG Nomad. DUG Cool in a container. This has many potential applications, including Defence – a transportable supercomputer in a container on the battlefield.
As Frank observed early in his presentation “necessity is the mother of all invention”
Not bad for two blokes and a shed…..
You can view the full presentation at: millpointrotaryclub.org.au>members only (password)> this link>Guest Speaker Presentations>SCIARRONE Frank – DUG Technology Startup
Directors Reports and Announcement
President : PDG David Barton (Melville RC) has nominated for Rotary Community Leader (RCL) for Rotary Community Group (RCG) #3. Any objections to be in writing to DG Ineke Oliver at dg@rotarywa.au by 5pm on Wednesday 17 April.
Vocational :
- Visit to SKG 23 April. Only 5 places left - be quick.
- Pride of Workmanship 17 May - nominations please asap for those who have gone above and beyond.
- Brightwater is holding its annual Charity Golf Day at the MT Lawley Golf Club and hosted by Adrian Barich. $1100 for a team of 4 - contact Gerry McGann if interested.
Vice President:
- Rotary Action Day 13 APril - 1 day event instead of 2 day conference. Lift the Lid walk in the morning (proceeds to Alzheimers); Packing Hope for various charities; Public Image seminar and International Dinner. See Events page for more details and how to book. Only 10 of the 22 people who initially showed interest have booked - please support our District (9423).
Community :
- Sunday 28 April volunteers needed to man the BBQ for Pankind Charity Walk (Pancreatic Cancer www.pankind.org.au). Please see Ian for details and events page.
Rick Sneeuwjagt :
- Men's 2nd Wednesday dinner at Catalano's in Vic Park next Wednesday
- Roger's stash of Shiraz donated to the club, $20 a bottle with a personalised message from the Rog! He may be gone, but definitely not forgotten and still with us in spirit.
Fines : Detaching members from their dough by way of divulging their disasters! Dastardly Geoff Longshaw
- Major 'Dobber-In' Wayne M for 'volunteering' Geoff for this task.
- All Easter Egg hunters
- Scott D for looking too healthy.
- Raelene G for winning a carton of wine for being the first person to register for the International Dinner
- Lydia W and Dianna G - new members (bad) luck
- Alan J - still in his PJs when Ken P arrived to collect him.
- Mike C - the gong was 3 minutes late!
- President Veronica - not only is she obsessed but 'possessed' with her weekly tid-bits.
Winner of Heads and Tails
Thanks to Margaret and Lyn Metcalf for supplying the wine.
Attendance
39 attendees in all, including guest speaker Frank and visitors Agatha, Penny and ex Rotarian Chris Hermann.
