April 2004
ORION and partners launch annual R&E Summit
In what is expected to become the definitive gathering for research and education (R&E) in Ontario, the up-coming Ontario R&E Summit is looking to kick-start a new era of advanced networking and collaboration in the province.
Ontario’s research and education community is celebrating -- but also coming to grips with -- the completion of ORION, the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network.
Few jurisdictions can claim to have such an advanced and powerful networking infrastructure, dedicated exclusively to research and education. Networks in the United States, Europe and Asia are now scrambling to catch up to Ontario’s lead.
But that doesn’t mean that ORION is a household name in colleges and universities across Ontario … at least not yet.
“With the final of 22 Points of presence (PoPs) being turned on in Timmins just a few weeks ago, Ontario’s R&E community is only now starting to realize that it has to move quickly to take full advantage of this million network,” said Phil Baker, President and CEO.
“We have a connection point in 21 Ontario cities. That makes it much easier for the research and education community to start making serious plans in integrating activities and collaborating over our network,” he said.
Most colleges, universities, teaching hospitals and several school boards from across Ontario have now or will soon connect to ORION. This inaugural Summit represents an opportunity for participants to meet, discuss, think and plan for the future, using advanced networking infrastructure as a catalyst to innovation. “That’s why ORION was built, so let’s get on with it,” he said.
The two-day conference is exclusively designed for researchers and educators and will encourage the sharing of ideas and strategies to enable Ontario to best benefit from ORION and other advanced networks.
The Summit is open to researchers and educators, innovators, scientists, technology specialists, government representatives and policy makers, and private sector R&E partners.
Sessions will include discussions on the direction of research and e-learning in Ontario. An R&E Innovation Showcase session will take a look at some of the most exciting and innovative collaborative research in Ontario today.
One of the most popular sessions is expected to be a Birds of a Feather workshop on “Leveraging the Power of ORION”, where representatives from network users will explore how to collaborate and share resources over the network, for such projects as distributed data centres and disaster recovery.
Exploring new opportunities to boost “e-science” projects and research is another topic for the conference, while a parallel group is expected to focus on what ORION can represent for the future of digital libraries and resources in Ontario.
ORION is also bringing partners who will demonstrate how other jurisdictions are deploying and collaborating over their R&E network resources.
Keynote speakers and special guests will be announced shortly. The two-day Summit will be held on June 14 and 15, 2004, at the Ramada Inn in downtown Toronto. Learn more about the Summit, or register on-line at http://www.orion.on.ca/events/ontariorandesummit.html.
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