UCT hosted a 1 week site administrator course followed by a 1 week application porting course. The first week was spent demonstrating how to set up and run a basic Grid site. The course was run by Dr Bruce Becker from the Meraka institute, Andrew Lewis and Timothy Carr from ICTS and Albert van Eck from the University of the Free State. In essence it mimicked the course that the site operators attended in Catania in June. However this was the first Grid course in South Africa to rely solely on South African infrastructure. We were very fortunate to have several guests from the INFN in Catania assisting us; Emidio Giorgio, Valeria Ardizonne and Giuseppe Platania.
The second week was spent examining scientific packages selected by several South African researchers and attempting to convert them to Grid format. While not entirely successful it gave the South African Grid team insight into the complexities of the work involved. The course relied heavily on a mini cluster supported by a 20 HP Elitebooks, generously donated by Hewlett Packard.
Many thanks to the department of Engineering as well as Erica Le Roux and her staff for the excellent venue.