Congrats on the 15th Anniversary WCG!
I started crunching, at grid.org, at the age of 13-14, running a single-core computer a few hours each day and every time a WU was finished and returned back I felt happiness and pride - you know when you are a teenager and feel that you have accomplished something.

Loving technology and building/tweaking computers it was natural for this setup to expand. Now I have a 64-thread main PC running WCG 24/7 as well as some older quad-cores and I return 500+ WUs each day instead of a single WU every or every-other day.

I've always been interested in science, in most of its shapes and sizes. Medicine, diseases, clean energy and I was actively looking for a way to be able to participate in top-tier hands-on science while not being a scientist myself. I searched and I found - first grid.org and later WCG. The trend of solving problems in software is an increasing one and I believe it will be even more so with the years to come.

Observing the "usual" way people think they help science or poverty by throwing money into a canister at random or sending cash into a black hole never made sense to me. Especially since once you dig a little beyond the surface you see where that money usually ends up. So seeing adults and poor elderly throwing their last coins right into the salary or vacation fund of some CEO and board members of so-called "charity" organizations created nothing more than aversion in me.

I said to myself: "NO! That does not feel right and I don't feel that I am actually DOING anything by just throwing money into a black hole".
With WCG I feel that the only thing hindering the advancement on science is my own, and the community's, level of participation and ability to add more and faster machines. I can choose the sciences that interest me the most and from time to time I get feedback from scientists on the work that has actually been crunched right here.

Also, nowadays there are even badges, grid-based cryptocurrencies, a nice community, dedicated techs and leadership in the backend (who deserve more credit than they usually get!) committed to getting those WUs crunched whether you like the cause or if you are competitive, like crypto-mining and helping at the same time. All reasons are valid and I find it hard to believe that people would crunch for years on end with no slight interest in the humanitarian research behind all of those badges.

So what do I see is the right way forward to continue expanding the user-base and computational throughput of WCG?
- Community. To grow, there needs to be an increased focus on the interaction between scientists and the community. (Yes, progress tracking included...)
- More platforms included and more projects that can run om many platforms (Android on ARM and x86, ARM with Linux etc)
- GPU. Yes this is probably one of the single most requested type of project capability requested by the community. Of course not every science can run on GPU efficiently or effectively, but I am sure they're out there.
- Putting some pressure on the scientists: Yes, we know that they have very limited time, but hey you are getting the WCG Supercomputer power free for your project...isn't that worth some heavier involvement with the community making this dream of yours become true? Isn't it worth exploring GPU and ARM on Android, Windows, Linux which in turn will make your project get even more computing power? I know it is not that simple, but if there is a will there is a way, don't you say? If people in the community are dedicated enough to spend thousands of dollars equivalent to buy hardware and pay electric bills to support you projects, so can you :) CEP project scientists had very good community relations for instance....

- Getting the word out. Like, here in Sweden, if I say WorldCommunityGrid to someone they have probably no idea of what that is. I am no good at marketing, but I am sure IBM has a lot of people and $$$ budget for such things. Time to loosen up the pocket a bit IBM and put WCG on every man's lips. People should not check their Facebook accounts every minute but WCG accounts, alright? ;)
Just kidding, but one must aim high and I can't imagine WCG giving IBM bad PR so it should be money well spent.

Just my two cents...

Hey guys,

A little late to the party, but definitely wanted say thanks to all that make WCG possible. I got the bug in 2013 (man can't believe it was that long ago) and never wanted to stop. From that point I was hooked and while I tried to look at other BOINC projects I still believe that WCG is the more professional IMO.

I know that others will disagree, but for some reason I just want to keep crunching just for WCG.

In any case wanted to say thanks to the techs and other team members here that make this possible. Its definitely a partnership and I think only when everyone works together (techs, scientists, volunteers) that we make this happen. I am in this for the long haul and will keep crunching for another decade to help further research.

For me, contributing my time, computing resources and associated runtime costs to Boinc projects is something I am happy to do.

Unlike a simple financial donation to support an organisation which to me seems a very impersonal contribution the donation of computing time and personal time to help science increase the combined human knowledge and understanding of ourselves, our environment, the universe, well in fact everything really is something much more interesting and worthwhile.

I like to support many Boinc projects but the projects from the World Community Grid are definitely ones I regularly support.

While I have been a World Community Grid member for a long time there was a few years where I had a break. After 2 GPU's in my XPS laptop died which I attributed to Boinc projects I became somewhat disinterested in further support of any Boinc projects and just stopped crunching altogether.

About 5 months ago I stumbled onto the TThrottle app from eFMer.eu which allows you to set temperature limits for CPU and GPU and now I am happy to crunch away on Boinc projects knowing that my computing hardware has some protection from temperature related side effects.

What do I see for the future? Well for a start, the niche area of Boinc projects and community computing is not very well known by the majority of the population. I would imagine someone a bit smarter than me coming up with a way to increase the WCD profile so it becomes more recognised in the mainstream social media networks.

#SupportWCG
#BoincProjects

Yes I know this is just for Twitter but really I am not that social media tech savvy to suggest other things