APPLICATIONS

BALTIMORE -- A demonstration of "smart" technology called IntelliBadge™ will allow participants in SC2002 to track people with similar interests, monitor conference events, view conference statistics, and view visualizations of patterns of people flowing through the conference. SC2002, with the theme "From Terabytes to Insights," takes place Nov. 16-22 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The IntelliBadge demonstration at SC2002 is being developed by the Experimental Technologies group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This group developed the interactive database that will provide real-time information for the project. "IntelliBadge will show us how technologies like remote sensors and real-time visualization systems can create a richer conference experience for the participant," said Roscoe Giles, chair of SC2002 and deputy director of Boston University's High Performance Computing Center. "We want people to have fun with the IntelliBadges, but also to gain value from them." "We hope to build new communities, reinforce existing communities, and enrich the conference experience," added Dan Reed, director of NCSA who, as chair of the SC2002 technical program committee, launched the IntelliBadge project. "By participating and sharing their interests with the IntelliBadge system, conference attendees will be able to identify participants and conference events matching their interests. Through real-time visualizations, participants will also be able to see where their community fits into the larger group of people attending SC." Attendees who choose to participate in the IntelliBadge project will receive Savi Technologies' 600 Series RFID tags in addition to their regular SC registration badges. Using a variety of display technologies, IntelliBadge participants will be able to: see a playback of the conference's history; view the distribution of attendees by their interests; track conference statistics, such as miles walked; play interactive games; locate and join groups; and find useful information, including the distance to restaurants that cater to the wearer's tastes. An IntelliBadge website, http://intellibadge.ncsa.uiuc.edu, will allow anyone--including nonparticipants--to view the conference at a glance. In addition the project will feature an electronic participant: the NCSA "IntelliBot," a smart robot that will roam the convention center, talk, and interact with IntelliBadge systems. IntelliBadge technology and display systems will be scattered throughout the convention center and will include the following: *A registration booth next to the general SC registration area with kiosks and a visualization display. Here, conference participants will register for the IntelliBadge project, receive their RFID tags, and, if they choose, complete a short profile of their professional and personal interests. *A large, high-definition screen, plasma displays, and kiosks in the SC2002 technical program area. At the kiosks and through the IntelliBadge website, participants will be able to log in and monitor conference events, update their profiles, find profiles of others, and locate other badge wearers. *A large, high-definition display at the entrance to the exhibit hall offering visual information about the conference. *A booth on the SC exhibit floor (#2103) featuring two kiosks and a high-definition JVC QX-1 projection system. In addition to ongoing visualizations, the booth will feature demonstrations about the project and the technology supporting it. Formal talks by NCSA staff will be held at the National Computational Science Alliance booth (#R1249) at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, and Thursday, Nov. 21. The project also will feature a playful visualization of the conference as a growing and shrinking flower garden, showing the changing distribution of program events and categories of participants. Supporting the IntelliBadge project will be seven networked Savi EchoPoint readers, which detect badge wearers within 300 feet, and 20 Savi EchoPoint signposts, which activate tags up to 8-feet away to provide exact participant location within the conference center. Two readers and five signposts will be donated by Savi. The IntelliBadge project is open to technical program participants and members of the media. Participants can sign up at the IntelliBadge registration kiosk beginning Saturday, Nov. 16. No advance registration will be offered.