July 2004
Looking forward to the next Ontario R&E Summit
The First Annual Ontario R&E Summit was a strong beginning,” says ORION’s Marketing manager, Andre Quenneville. “We had a great mix of people and organizations and we’re already starting to plan the next Summit,” he said.
Close to 130 people gathered in downtown Toronto on June 14 and 15 for this first of what is expected to be an annual conference designed specifically for Ontario’s broad Research and Education (R&E) communities, now sharing a common infrastructure through the ORION network.
It was a first for Ontario, as the Summit brought together people who normally would not have the chance to meet and network, from advanced researchers to information technology professionals from remote Ontario communities, to heads of research networks in the US and Europe.
The event featured over 40 speakers and presenters, an unusually large number for a relatively small event. “We were pleased at how many researchers and educators accepted our invitation to participate,” said Quenneville.
In his opening address to participants, ORION President and CEO Phil Baker noted that ORION is now shifting its focus from building the network to working with partners to develop collaborative and innovative uses of the new infrastructure.
Ontario Science and Technology Assistant Deputy Minister Tim McTiernan brought greetings from Economic Development and Trade Minister Joe Cordiano and took the opportunity to signal the Ontario Government’s new focus on commercialization of research.
As the morning keynote June 15, CANARIE president and CEO Andrew Bjerring gave an update on CANARIE’s future plans for the national backbone network, and its efforts to re-invent itself as a vital “fourth pillar” organization.
Among the highlights was a compelling exploration of the importance of investing in cyberinfrastructure by Prof. Dan Atkins, Chair of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure.
Dr. Todd Sands, who chaired a Birds-of-a-Feather session, said there is a clear consensus on the potential for ORION for educational delivery models in a college or university production environment, but that there is still much work to do before the network’s capabilities are fully exploited.
The session highlighted the fact that certain technical considerations need to be addressed before institutions can take full advantage of ORION’s new and powerful connectivity, such as a campus network’s ability to fully support multicast, or grid technologies.
Also identified was the need for training workshops, resource manuals, and examples of best practices.
While awareness of ORION and its capability is growing among institutions, the greater challenge resides in engaging users of the network at the research and teaching levels to identify how ORION can benefit their work.
Sessions on collaboration, digital resources, high-performance and distributed computing rounded out the full Summit program.
“We succeeded in building a strong foundation for the Summit and to provide Ontario’s R&E community a regular and ongoing forum which on which to draw, for years to come, said Quenneville. “We are quite happy with the response.”
The two-day event drew on the support of a large array of sponsors, including the Ontario Government, CANARIE, Bell Canada, Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems Canada, Contact North, MaRS Discovery District, ADCOM and UNIS LUMIN, and many others.
Presentations and a photo gallery are posted on the Summit web site, at www.orion.on.ca/events/ontariorandesummit.html.
Back to Headlines
|
|
