Vsoch

The Agentic HPC Center: Orchestrating the Future of Science

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:21:50 +0000

If you could not make it to PEARC26, the venue was beautiful! 🤩

I was the invited speaker for the Systems technical track, which was an absolute honor. I realized that they do not record the talks, and walked back to my room to record a second time in front of my couch. 🛋️ It is not on par with the venue version, but thinking about my “Just Give them the Sandwich” talk from 10 years ago, it would have been so wonderful to see it again, in really any form, and I decided that this was important to do. This talk covers some of the major themes my team and I have been thinking about as we move into an era of autonomous scientific discovery. We explore where converged computing is heading, how an agentic orchestration approach works, and, ultimately, why AI needs our taste. 😋

If you are interested in learning about The HPC Sandwich of Scientific Discovery, 🥪 this talk is for you! I of course do not know what the future holds, but I am flexible to learning new things, and excited about the potential for science. Whether agents added to layers of our sandwich are supporting components or ants will wait to be seen. I suspect it will be a bit of both. I realize I did not come full circle with our little future job “Joby.” Perhaps not knowing that exact future is exactly the point.

I saw a large chunk of Minneapolis, on foot, and even in the high 90 degree days. I enjoyed seeing many different styles of buildings downtown, the historic mill district, Lunds & Byerlys market, the University of Minnesota (architecture!), art museums, the Dinkytown Greenway regional trail (and Grand Rounds), the Guthrie Theater and Mill City Museum, old Main Street, the riverfront and stone arch bridge, the Walker Art Center (and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden) and of course, the Mississippi River. I think my favorite thing was finding poetry scattered throughout the landscape.

The line that touched me is the last:

Kneel at the altar of your heart

Because indeed, although we are often trapped in routine and external expectations, we cannot forget to respect and honor ourselves. There is a level of vulnerability and surrender to see yourself and truly find self-compassion and love. There is sacrifice in placing ourselves in discomfort or uncertainty to enable growth. I aspired for that on this trip. I gave my first talk in ~9 years in person without wearing a mask. My contact lenses were so old they were about a dollar too weak in each eye. It was in the 90s and my hotel room did not have AC the first night. I was largely unbothered, because I was too immersed in feeling grateful for all of it. I finished almost two bottles of olive oil, slept in a massive hotel bed with three puffy pillows, and and explored the city with an open heart and mind for adventure. It was the ultimate joy to be able to share my smile after all these years, aligners and all! Thank you to PEARC for giving me opportunity to do that.

Liquid Gold

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:10:00 +0000

You poured for him a bowl of liquid gold
Rich with life, and stories untold
It bubbled to the rim, a meniscus it formed
Of course with growth, uncertainty adorned.

The trickle was gentle, small enough to stop.
Small enough to account for every drop.
It rolled off of the table and you respond
Your hands, cupped together, embracing bond.

You look to him, surely for a cup.
But inside his heart, panic has bubbled up
He paces, back and forth, bounces his fear.
You watch, patiently, as line of oil grows near.

The burden is now on you, to bear the spill.
A small mountain emerges from a tiny hill.
The burden is now on you, to manage the pain.
That will be your loss, and his feign.

But you feel a pressure, it spins in your grasp.
And you realize it is no longer oil that you clasp.
Force of water, oil, and care, formed a scar.
But you have accidentally created a star.

It shines brightly, glows with elegance.
Only existing because you took a chance.
It smiles warmly, and you both know.
That to the floor it eventually must go.

Strong enough to hold systems together,
Resilient to emotional and physical weather
He keeps his distance, hands at his side,
You cradle the strength that he could not provide.

It is brave to give when they can’t meet you there,
To hold the gap with unwavering care.
But beauty is found in the fault and the spill,
In the accidents born when the panic falls still.

The signal goes out, but it echos right through,
A quiet reflection returning to you.
You will carry the star, and embody its glow
A sovereign joy that continues to grow.

Swan and Mallard

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:16:00 +0000

I found a fake restaurant called the swan and mallard, and found the concept immensely beautiful. I appreciate the metaphor of darkness and light, and I also appreciate thoughtful design that creates identity with empty space. I made my own variant, and a small poem to accompany it that reflects the sentiment it gives me.

Swan and Mallard

Swan and mallard, an unlikely pair
One a shadow, one light and fair
Defined by darkness, hiding in sight
Revealed by connection, embraced in light

It is romantic, but not necessarily in the way you first intuit. It could be about two people, but it also could be about two pieces of the self. It might say that comfort and safety comes from acceptance and embrace of both the dark and the light. It might also say that our greatest fears of not being accepted, based in what we see as our darkness, draws the light to us. A third interpretation I like is that both concepts cannot exist without the other. Shadow cannot exist, conceptually, without light.

Quantum Computing

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:11:50 +0000

I tend to get obsessively interested in things, to the point my curiosity is insatiable. If I do not understand how everything works I will absolutely implode. That has recently started to happen with quantum computing. I will precede this with a warning that I have zero background in Physics beyond a class in high school that was terrible, and my background in everything else STEM is largely self-taught during my working years. I am going to dive in anyway, because I am on ☁️ nine learning about this. First, I want to review projects that I have encountered in the space.

Projects

When you attend meetings or hear people talk about quantum computing, these are commonly named. I still have a lot of learning to do, and especially diving into each one, but I am starting to put them together.

Qiskit is IBMs software SDK is what you use to write circuits and compile instructions. This is the slack community that a lot of people that work on qrmi are in. They also have a runtime and serverless that are products to combine classical resources and quantum. If I want to write a program for Quantum, I can use Qiskit.
QRMI is the quantum resource management interface, what I have been working on with Flux. This is what is relevant to scheduling, because it helps expose quantum resources as interfaces. It is middleware to schedule and manage jobs on quantum. E.g., I can acquire a session to connect to a quantum device, or submit / cancel / monitor tasks.
QDMI is what Martin works on - the same but device interface. It works with devices as a back-end interface for software to read hardware characteristics and compile specific instructions (e.g., from qiskit).
A qubit is analogous to a bit, but a quantum bit (my deep dive on this below).

So QRMI is system level, and QDMI is hardware level, and they are both parts of a “submit my work to quantum machines” but different layers. To get a sense of how centers are integrating classical and quantum, watch this talk by Martin Schultz (a year old) and this more recent talk that I attended in person! And asked a very naive question… how do I get access to one of these computers? I did not have an answer until about a month ago.

Learning about Qubits

There are several different ways to actually create them (analogous to hardware, an example from IBM is microwave pulses) but for my understanding, I’m considering one like a supersonic spinning coin in the air. At any point in time, I can slam the coin on the table to get heads or tails, but while it’s spinning, it is some combination of heads or tails. At first I was imagining heads and tails having probabilities, but that isn’t quite right. They call them amplitudes, where each can be positive or negative, and they can cancel each other out. A positive number means the quantum wave is in a crest, and a negative is a trough. The mental imagery I have is of a grid of little intersecting waves, which if you imagine combined, is like a moving sheet. Each configuration has its own amplitude point on the sheet in a crest, trough, or neither (this state is called superposition). When a microwave pulse fires, it adds positive or negative values to these points. A path that adds 5 and a rule-breaking path that adds -5 would pool into the same spot and become 0, and that is how they would cancel each other out. A 5 and -3 would leave a tiny little wave of 2. When we take a measurement, which is like freezing the sheet, the computer squares these final values to turn them into positive percentages (probabilities) that add up to 100%. It doesn’t use a threshold to round up or down; instead, it rolls a quantum dice based on those percentages. An optimal path with a high percentage is highly likely to be chosen, while a bad path with 0% will never be seen. When a measurement is taken, that dice roll is what we get back—a single string of 0s and 1s representing that one frozen grid configuration, which is why we run it multiple times to see which answer pops up the most. To go back into my visual imagery, I see water rolling across a valley and pooling into the rivers, the solutions to our problem, but only frozen at a single point in time by the measurement.

My next question was how you model a problem into this kind of program, and you can use software called Docplex that works with qiskit. There are two matrices you define - a distance matrix for some kind of topology (e.g., we could model hardware topology) and a penalty matrix for constraints. The assumption (for something like QAOA) is to assume pairwise constraints, but there are ways to add in helper qubits to model three way+ interactions. I’m going to avoid thinking about that for now. So we write a Python program that loads in the matrices, and sets the objective (e.g., minimize distance). And here is a cool part that I can’t best explain because I have almost zero actual STEM background aside from throwing myself into it like a noodle. There is a wave landscape (!) called an Ising Hamiltonian, and it’s a mathematical equation. Qiskit takes our inputs and translates them to that. And at this point, every valid path (e.g., maybe a scheduling solution) sits at the bottom of a low-energy valley, and all of our distance/penalty violations are steep, high-energy hills. God, this is so cool. 😎

Now we run the algorithm. The one I mentioned is QAOA (Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm). In Vanessa terms - “how many times should I let my waves crash and slide around this landscape to find a lowest point? As a reminder, a really high point (heavy penalty) is what we have modeled to be not ideal, and ideal is low.” So in the actual quantum computer, assuming IBM with microwave pulses, the qubits are initialized into superpositions of all possible solutions, and then the machine fires microwave pulses based on distance rules. Invalid options will destructively cancel out, and we go until we take a final measurement coinciding with our last planned pulse. Then the quantum computer does the freeze, convert to 0/1, and it returns them via QRMI/qiskit to our classical computer, and we convert that back to meaningful variables based on our model (Docplex variables).

Scheduling Quantum

We have started modeling Quantum APIs into our scheduler, Flux Framework. More specifically, flux-sched or fluxion, isolated from the core of flux (flux-core). I do not need the core components to build stuff in Kubernetes. This is what I am calling the two-queue problem, or the fact that we are modeling a queue that we do not control (but can inspect the depth of) and need a good means to orchestrate work between classical and quantum systems that does not have resources running idle on the classical.

I love this work, and am in that state of being inspired, thoughtful, and focused, all at once. Right now I am still working on our custom scheduler plugin, fluence, and doing early experiments to measure latency and test approaches in Kubernetes to handle it. I started using IBM Quantum Cloud, ran out of the free trial, and have now moved over to Braket. I will ideally be able to work with both. Next we will look at local on-premises quantum modeling, which I will not talk about publicly. In parallel, I am interested in the actual programs, and specifically modeling problems (algorithms) in scheduling to run on quantum devices. I will note that I have been working on this for less than a month, so please excuse my lack of expertise - you are seeing someone learn about a new area in real time! Here is the first set of projects that reflect the Kubernetes work, recorded to present at a 6am meeting at which point I was sleeping. :)

They are already much further along than I presented there. Stay tuned for more! 🥳

Treading Water

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:11:50 +0000

There were once a man and a woman, and they were in a big, beautiful, and deep sea. It was the color of nautical twilight – a deep purple that was stained with elegance, memory, and the softness of a heartbeat. They were treading water. It is unclear why the man was treading water, but the woman chose to stay with him.

She could not touch him, and could not help. But she chose to tread water beside him to make sure he knew he was not alone. She wanted to bring substance to what would otherwise be empty. What is heavy is not always burdensome if it carries meaning. What is light is not always freedom. The heaviness of the task was the ultimate fulfillment. The lightness of the quiet was only lonely when the lapping of the water declared its presence.

He is treading and waiting for something different. Maybe a boat. She could not be a boat. And so she waits with him, also treading water. At some point, she will become tired and be forced to return to shore. But she will not regret the time spent next to him. And the story is OK, because she does not want to be a boat. She will return to the shore, and walk along it collect shells. What is important is not an ultimate state of finding a boat. What is meaningful is making the choice to wait, floating not in water but laughter, and knowing that the joy and strength resides within her.

Observation

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:22:00 +0000

A good life is a balance of different kinds of thinking. We have our preferences for thinking style and content, and mine tend to vary between technical and behavioral, where often I am experiencing a gradient of both but leaning stronger in one direction. I have been leaning technical for over a month now – starting with the HPSF Conference in Chicago, and returning and becoming completely immersed in not one, but two paper that led to simulation experiments for which (ultimately) I ran over 20K simulations for agentic job negotiation and selection paired with resource provider discovery software, a hierarchical server architecture to orchestrate the work, and algorithms and method to test it all out. It was an exciting, and full set of weeks! However, today I would like to talk about the other side of my dimension. I want to talk about observation, acceptance, and learning. Let’s dive in.

Going off a Cliff

You have a dream where you are in a car, and in a forested and quiet area in the night. It’s a beautiful car, but it does not behave as expected when you push the accelerator. It goes backwards and then forwards at high speed. You find yourself going off the road, through the trees, and plummet off of a cliff. There is a moment of weightlessness and time in a standstill. How do you a feel?

A younger (or real-world) version of you would be terrified. This is the point in the nightmare when you wake up, and are a mix of relieved and upset. Today, you are overtaken with calm. You still wake up, but you are are not fearful or experiencing a negative emotion. You are curious. Why?

Acceptance Before Experience

The calm results from adopting acceptance before experience. It has resulted from years of meta-cognition to understand yourself and the world. Let me explain. When we are younger, we are reactive. We experience the world, ruminate, and either react or choose to suppress. A child will likely react in the most behaviorally logical way. When you touch a hot stove and it hurts, you cry out. A young adult might learn the social fabric wrapped around their reactions, and learn to suppress. They touch the stove, understand that it is “weak” to show pain, and hide it. Many of us do not progress from either of these states to react or suppress. If you watch the famous scene from American Chopper (the one that resulted in the meme, yes) you will notice the second, younger man, go from a state of expressionless shock into immediate reactive anger. We know well from the meme that it turns into a yelling match and he storms out. He reacted. What are alternative endings for this interaction?

He might have suppressed. He might have decided to internalize his anger, like a packet of negative energy forced into a tiny pocket and shoved deep inside his chest. This is a strategy that works in the short term because it allows you to handle a hard situation. Often quick, emotional reactions can be unpacked later, and then discussed when emotions have cooled down. The problem is when we never unpack. We continue filling up our internal pockets until every crevice is stuffed. And then the (typically) negative and unprocessed emotions explode out. Exploding pockets are collections of so many life experiences they no longer have specific direction, only valence. We direct the energy inwards to ourselves, and onto others. It is the reason that someone might seem to unexpectedly explode, and the magnitude of the reaction often does not make sense.

The Alternative of Observation

The other alternative is to observe. Observation is based on a pattern of experiencing the world, ruminating, understanding thoughts and behavior, and then making a decision. The nuances of the decision are what set people apart. You might decide on a strategy of control. How do I control my environment so this does not happen again? Does it mean avoidance? Does it mean setting a boundary? As a young woman I practiced this a lot. My negative emotion of choice was anxiety, and primarily oriented to social. A bad social experience could simply be nullified by avoiding people. If I had a bad experience traveling, I could stay at home. I can understand how agoraphobia develops. What happens with this mindset is that we inadvertently create boundaries to protect ourselves. It’s a false sense of protection. It’s a self-inflicted cage. The safety measures we impose prevent us from living fully, from being authentic and vulnerable with others, and connecting meaningfully. Our life experience gets smaller. That is, of course, what happens when you live in a box.

There is no Control

The insight is that it is not possible to have control. Events occur with different valences and probabilities of happening again, many of which are outside of our awareness. Logic can help here too, and we can identify our own inconsistencies. Look up the probability of dying in a plane versus a car crash, and then think about the prevalence of being afraid of driving versus flying. It is not logical. We have a false sense of control while driving because our hand happens to be on the wheel. We cannot control events, nor can we inflict control on the thinking of behavior of others.

Let’s start again with the sequence. We are hit with life experiences, we ruminate, and possibly get stuck in our heads. We do not choose reaction, suppression, or avoidance. For each new experience, we start to recognize patterns. It might be that we are defensive for a particular topic. Is it because we have an insecurity about it? Where does that insecurity stem from? Is the foundational belief that underlies it true? We unwrap our (typically) unconscious thinking to form understanding, and find that we react less. The experiences feel less directed at as, and more like streams flowing by us. Our default state is one of curiosity. We are not suppressing. We are understanding. The world is no longer dangerous, but interesting. We start to notice more, process, and learn about ourselves, our needs, and create hypotheses about the underlying mechanisms of what we observe. We become better at applying similar logic to others. We notice more, to the point we are no longer resorting to impulsive reaction. We stop trying to control. This is meta-cognition – the ability to step outside of ourselves, observe, and critique our thoughts.

The epiphany that many of us might have as young, ruminating adults is that there is no control. However, there is wisdom in the Serenity Prayer. Lack of control does not extinguish lack of choice. The degree to which something affects us is a choice. We can choose to stop reacting and trying to control our environment, and just observe it. Observing becomes the primary state of being, and we accept things before we have experienced them. Their existence or outcome is separate from a sense of self. The events that happen around us do not define us. The car goes off the cliff, and we observe the experience. We have accepted it before it happened.

Unintentional Impact

Marcus Aurelius talks about the soul being dyed the color of our thoughts in his personal writings. I read this, and I loved the metaphor. The practice of observing our experiences and changing our perspective can color the mind a more beautiful hue. It builds on itself as we face the world with more joy, and it reflects back to us.

There are further benefits. The first is appreciation. We often do not actively see the things that are right in front of us. We forgot that we are wearing a watch or bracelet because it is biologically more efficient. Or perhaps we do not appreciate what is on our wrist because we are perceiving a future better model. We do not realize the value until our wrist is bare. We notice absence of a previously fulfilled need more strongly than its presence. And that is the basis of nostalgia – a realization of appreciation that only is possible when the object or person is no longer present to appreciate. This is the benefit of observation. It reveals the details. We move from a mindset of wanting what we don’t have to realizing what we have is exactly what we want.

To go back to American Chopper, the alternate ending to that scene is that he observes, he listens, says OK and stands up and walks out. He understands his own needs and what is happening in the environment, accepts it, and decides it is time to walk away.

Closing

It is an admirable goal to practice being an observer. The choice of how to react (control, suppress, or observe) is the first level of a hierarchy that we choose from. The degree to which we are able to, in real time, observe and change our thoughts is meta-cognition. When our perception is not anchored in fear, we can live more fully.

I Love You, All of Your Pieces

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:22:00 +0000

We are hard on ourselves. We can consistently push our bodies and minds, and put others first and strive for compassion and integrity in our lives. But we often forget ourselves. Or we are forced into hyper-independence that makes us long for the care or validation of someone else. We are often told by the very people we love that we are not enough.

What do we do? We take responsibility for ourselves and the power of our words. We love everything a little bit more knowing it will not last. If time is subjective, we decide to perceive the details of a moment. We start to see that some light only reaches us because something got in the way. We realize that others being incapable of meeting us even some of the way, or providing the intimacy we crave does not deem us too much, but having higher resonance that requires an equivalent match. We realize that we are the protagonist of an exciting, wild life story. Our silence and space becomes intentional, and our moments of fragility elegant. We find forgiveness for all that we see wrong in ourselves, and realize that acceptance only comes when we stop fighting reality. We see the essence of life’s duality, that perfection does not exist without imperfection, and light does not exist without darkness. We decide to be a light.

Regardless of how anyone judges you, you get to decide your definition of strength and beauty. There is beauty in our scars, and imperfections. They quietly tell the story of our lives. You get to decide that you have worth, leaning toward people that support you to grow, and walking away with dignity from those that do not respect it. You get to decide to flip every conventional love song on its head, and love all of your pieces. You are the strongest person you know. Your strength does not need to be conventional, nor does it need validation by anyone. You become your decisions. You can find false protection by trying to control others and your environment, or true strength by learning to sit comfortably in the unknown.

Never give up on yourself.

I am not trained to sing (and I am not very good) but I enjoy it as I do dancing, and I recorded this thinking of someone that I love. I hope you appreciate it.

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This song was always special to me. It tells a story of finding magic and story in life, in the small things, always. I often wish that I could share my view of the world with people that I love, because it feels like a beautiful place.

The Fifth Decade

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:09:00 +0000

Happy 2026! Let’s start the year off with some dancing. 💃 This year I promise:

To continue to live with authenticity and integrity.
To be inspired, diving deeply into ideas and learning.
To adventure, and look for beauty in unexpected places.
To not make myself smaller to make others comfortable.
To push myself physically and do things that are hard.
To age with elegance, and appreciate myself as I am.
To believe a person when they show me who they are.
To dance, laugh, and be curious about the world.
To prioritize self-care and rest.

To little funny looking, goblin me: you finally grew above 4 feet. You’ll feel out of place for a long time, and life is going to be hard when you enter adulthood. You’ll grow from it, and you’ll be OK. You will learn that beauty and value are within you, and Sovereign. They do not require validation or being chosen. They exist because you are a person who notices the world.

This closing year, 2025 had a lot of adventures with dancing, Flux tutorials, running and biking and beautiful places!

Onward to the adventures of 2026, still as a goblin, but taller! 💪

Gifts

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Presents are interesting to think about. It’s an exchange of a physical item as to say, “I value you.” And don’t get me wrong - they can be fun, and informative about a person or relationship. I’ve historically been someone that puts time into thinking about the right gifts for specific people. That goes back to sewing pajama pants and blankets in high school to custom gifts for friends and family to (as I’ve been older) niche food or experiences I know the person will enjoy. I have spent upwards of a year carefully preparing (what I deem to be) highly meaningful gifts. Experiential gifts are also a lot of fun, especially for a group (e.g., a pinata or food item to enjoy together). The exception to that are things that the person really wants or needs, which is something else you can do well when you know someone well. Receiving a gift of something you really like (and will use) that you maybe would not get yourself is the sweet spot (e.g., high end chocolate).

Where it starts to go wrong is expectation. When birthdays or holidays roll around and you are expected to send a gift, what do you do if it isn’t in your heart? What do you do if there isn’t anything the person needs, or if you just don’t feel like it? There is too much expectation that is created by advertisement and a generally consumerist society. It starts to feel badly to feel trapped into having to send something. It feels equally bad to receive something that you feel was forced or actually indicates that the person doesn’t know you at all. And let’s take this a step further. Gift giving, if normally done, when withheld, turns into a pathological means to express a lack of approval. The quality or quantity becomes a point of comparison, and I’m guilty of making this comparison and feeling like I wasn’t valued quite as much.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized something important. The most meaningful gift that someone can give me is their time. Time is limited, and precious. It reflects intellectual curiosity, openness to experience, and choice. Two people choosing to share time is a mutual desire and not an obligation. There is no need to assert value with words, because it is shown through action. There is a mutual shared value of conversation, which typically comes down to emotional and/or intellectual connection. I know I’m valued not because I receive an obligatory present in the mail, but because I just spent many hours with someone engaged with me, laughing, and my internal cup of connection is overflowing.

I will still enjoy (and give) presents, but I no longer feel an obligation. And I’m also investing more in myself, both in terms of self-care and tangible items. My cup has overflowed this year, and I’m grateful to all the people that have been a part of that. That said, when you receive a present from me, know that it comes from my heart. When you spend time with me, you probably already knew that. ❤️

You may also have noticed that I have not written as much this year. The reason is because the year has been too rich to want to spend the time. I am finding that my adventures, whether they be to new cities, intellectual dives into ideas with colleagues, balanced rest, or to scale a mountain with my best friend, are how I want to spend the time. I am branching out, taking care of myself, and expanding my world in ways I never did before, and possibly a lot of the ideas that wound up in writing here are being spoken in a much more engaged context. It was a year of adventure, learning, and growth. On to another in 2026! 🥳

Agentic Orchestration of an HPC Workload in Cloud

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

One of the most satisfying and learning-rich pieces of work from this year is represented in this white paper, “Agentic Orchestration of HPC Applications: A study using Google Gemini in Cloud.”

First, I’ll provide a little bit of back-story. We were using simple models to convert JSON job specifications or batch jobs between formats. I had a sense that the agents (specifically, Gemini) could do much more, and dove in. At first I was not sure the agent could successfully build a Docker container. It did. And then I was not sure about deployment and optimization in Kubernetes. That worked! Of course, there was a lot of nuanced detail with respect to how the orchestration was done, and how me (the human) interacted with the agents as a team. The learning from this early work is represented in this white paper.

In summary, we used an agentic team (with Google’s Gemini) to build, deploy, optimize, and run scaling studies for HPC applications in Kubernetes. Work is underway (and most of the software done) to do similar experiments using AutoGen, LangChain, and a more formalized state machine design with Model Context Protocol (MCP). This work is immensely exciting because we have more ideas for extending agents to scheduling, topology, and job design. We released this as a white paper since we wanted to extend it before any kind of journal submission, and (for me) I care more about sharing the work than getting it into some high-end venue.