Unique line-up of speakers and demonstrations

CANARIE, Canada's advanced research and innovation network, is leading the parade of partners, as exclusive Platinum Sponsor, coming together to help ORION stage its annual Summit.

Close to 250 of Ontario's top innovators and research and education leaders are converging at the MaRS Centre on April 13, to see and network with a unique line-up of leaders in science and research, champions of new and interactive digital technologies and more.

Registration is now open for the annual conference, ORION's fifth Summit since it launched the conference in 2004.

One of the highlights of the Summit is expected to be a 3D interactive game, developed by Sheridan Visualization Design Institute (VDI) in collaboration with two Ontario based companies, Spatial View and Research In Motion, which is a popular showpiece at the Ontario House Pavilion at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.

One of the plenaries is dedicated to CANARIE and a showcase of its flagship Network-Enabled Platform program, which funds innovative tools and software that help researchers exploit and share large amounts of data and research that flow along CANARIE and regional networks, including ORION. One of CANARIE's Ontario-based NEP funded projects will be showcased at the Summit. Jim Roche, CANARIE's president and CEO, will facilitate the plenary session and give an overview of our country's national backbone network organization and its vision for the future.

Tom Jenkins, Executive Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer of Open Text Corporation, will set the stage as the Summit's opening keynote.

Ian Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada Emeritus and Founding Director for the new Stratford Institute, will lead a discussion on a vision for "Canada 3.0" and the new push to establish Ontario, and more specifically, Waterloo Region, as a new global-scale digital media hub.

Conference participants will also hear from one of the world's most successful and innovative technology leaders, Cisco Systems Canada. Jeff Seifert, Chief Technology Officer with Cisco Canada, will address delegates on how collaboration is driving the next wave of business growth and innovation. He will also discuss how new technologies are not only transforming the way we communicate and conduct business, but how we teach, learn and conduct research, in new virtual collaborative environments.

Dr. Darren Lawless, newly appointed Dean of Applied Research at The Sheridan Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, will lead a session on what it takes to create a successful collaboration between industry and Sheridan's unique applied research institute. The session will show how the Ontario Centres of Excellence acted as a catalyst that resulted in the innovative "IC3D" game, which is displayed in 3D using Spatial View's "glasses-free" and deploys Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphone as a games controller.

People who are following the debate on the critical importance of extending broadband capabilities will take note of the Summit session on the role of research and education networks, such as CANARIE and ORION, to help push broadband out to the wider community. The session will hear from Don Welch, President and CEO of MERIT, Michigan's advanced research network and its role in leveraging federal investment to extend the reach of advanced broadband to rural and underserved areas.

Other sessions will focus on ORION's new value-added services, and a national effort to establish a federated access management system to facilitate inter-institution collaboration for research and education, both within Canada and internationally.

Summit sponsors
Once again, several organizations and companies supporting or involved in research and education in Ontario are coming together to sponsor the Summit, joining CANARIE, the Summit's exclusive Platinum Sponsor.

Cisco, one of the ORION network's original consortium network partners, is a Gold Sponsor of the Summit. SHARCNET returns to the Summit as a Silver-level sponsor. Colleges Ontario is participating in the Summit as a Bronze Sponsor. MaRS is once again the ORION Summit's Host Partner. Additional sponsors and summit partners will be announced shortly.

ORION will confirm additional keynotes in the coming weeks.

New this year, Summit registrants can keep abreast of updates through the Summit blog on O3 and by following us on Twitter.