From 6th to 9th October, a General Technical Meeting was organized at Telefonica I+D premises in Valladolid, Spain.

With a large participation of around 40 people, the meeting was very productive, including many sessions devoted to security aspect, as well as XtreemOS file system, changes in AEM, etc. Plenary sessions for developers (specially focused on release 2.0 and also the future 2.1 release before Christmas), for demos and also for performance evaluation were also important in the agenda.

But not everything was just work, and the partners have enjoyed some activities "out-of-agenda", like a guided tour in Valladolid and the social event in Bodegas Arzuaga, one of the best wineries in the region (Ribera del Duero), where we visited the cellar and also enjoyed a dinner with the typical "lechazo" (young lamb) from Castilla. With a special mention also for "tapas": some XtreemOS members became experts and practiced this "regional sport" in even 5 different bars in just one night!

It is interesting to mention as well the visit from the chairman of Telefonica I+D premises in Valladolid, taking the opportunity to take some photos and to write a press release that will be published internally in Telefonica and also in regional newspapers.

From March 23rd to 27th, we held our sixth general meeting in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We had about 50 XtreemOS members (senior researchers, PhD students, engineers, students...) in attendance at Vrije Universiteit, our Dutch host.

The "rallying cry" of this general meeting was the preparation of the second software release of the XtreemOS system, closing ranks around the next release candidate and working together towards an improved system with advanced features and an easier installation and configuration process.
This week gathering was divided into several slots dedicated to internal workpackage meetings, cross-workpackage meetings and joint sessions on common research topics and shared interests (checkpointing, virtualization, cloud computing...), tutorial (security services, packaging...) and of course plenary sessions (software roadmap, demonstration activities...) when XtreemOS brains were intensively "boiling" ;-)

XtreemOS also took the opportunity of this Dutch week to meet a delegation of representatives from the S-Cube and Reservoir projects: this aimed at making mutual general presentations of the three projects, investigate potential areas of collaboration and identify contact persons to coordinate collaboration activities.

No need to say that this general technical meeting was, once again, intense and frantic but definitely productive and exciting too!

A friendly social event allowed all our hard workers to relax first during a tour boat on the canal of Amsterdam then in an Indonesian restaurant...ideal to pep every one up! :-)