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Promoting Theta Supercomputer
BACKGROUND
Theta is ALCF’s *11.69-petaflops supercomputer capable of 11 quadrillion calculations per second. Theta went into production in July 2017. We began a strong campaign push for Theta seven months before it was available to use, and, once in production, we continued this push another five months to close out the year. Theta entered our “steady-state” cycle at the start of 2018 and is a center point around everything we do, from promoting available calls for usage, to promoting the science results achieved due to having access to the supercomputer.
* Theta originally launched as a 9.65-petaflops machine and was upgraded to 11.69-petaflops a few months later.
APPROACH
When rolling out a new supercomputer, there is more to do than notifying users that it’s available and promoting to the public that a technological marvel was designed and built for the U.S. It starts by rewriting scientific software, writing and packaging user documentation from scratch (supercomputers at this size do not arrive with a user manual), and training early adopters on how to use the machine. My team starts off a year ahead by designing the “skin” of the computer cabinets and editing documentation that subject matter experts write and packaging for delivery on the website. We also help our staff scientists plan and promote webinars and onsite workshops to get our scientific users running their science campaigns. The entire organization is in an “all hands on deck” mode and each member pitches in where their level of expertise is needed.
Our Theta communications plan started with a series of webinars for early adopters and open calls for science proposals. As the months progressed, we began writing narratives on the expected impact of Theta on the scientific users community. Until finally, once in full production, we were crafted stories that captured the early results and breakthroughs that Theta enabled.
Selected RESULTS
Communications plan for theta
Our promotion plan began at the start of January 2017 and ended in December 2017. We captured key points that we wanted to communicate through the various forms of promotions and messages to users. We identified opportunities to slip in even the slightest mention of Theta to generate media hits to build community awareness.
Introducing Argonne’s Theta supercomputer
A month before Theta was available to the scientific user community, we launched an introductory video internally to Argonne researchers and staff to get them to create their own buzz within their communities. We made the video public as soon as the veil was lifted.
User Announcement
Our users were the first audience to be notified that Theta was open for science. We prepared a newsletter email with machine specs and described all available opportunities to get them started using Theta. We quickly followed up with an article to reach a wider audience.
Published article: Theta Goes Online
All Eyes on Us
The Department of Energy is the nation’s leading provider of high-performance computers. For more than six decades, the DOE national laboratories have helped develop and deploy many of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
The worldwide HPC community tracks what we do to stay on trend and learn from our research. There are several online HPC magazines that we partner with to provide our stories to the broader community. Our news became their news as well.
Story on Theta’s Impact on science
A month after being open to the computational science community, we were able to share early impacts of Theta and begin justifying to taxpayers the importance of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on scientific tools to advance science and technology.