CENIC’s 2016 Annual Conference, The Right Connection, took place March 20-23rd, with more than 275 registrants and 13 sponsors taking part – the conference’s best attendance to date. Held on the beautiful UC Davis campus, the event drew some of the most influential members of the research and education communities. Planned by a program committee of leaders representing all segments of the CENIC community, the goal of the conference was to deepen the understanding of existing communities and discover ways to build new communities that transcend sectors.
CENIC has entered its 20th year and President & CEO Louis Fox opened the conference by reflecting on the past and laying out goals for the future. He showed a newly created video on the history of CENIC, which can be viewed on our YouTube Channel, here.
The more than 30 sessions that comprised the conference dealt with topics as diverse as cybersecurity, California’s digital divide, the convergence of jazz and technology, gigabit connectivity to public libraries and women in computing. Also included were plenary sessions, a group of sessions focused on research and technology and a group of session focused on education and library applications. Videos of these sessions can be viewed on our YouTube Channel, here.
Plenary sessions included Closing the Digital Divide in California, in which leaders including Eric Brown of California Telehealth Network, Connie Stewart of the California Center for Rural Policy, Adelina Zendejas of the California Department of Technology, and Assembly Member Mark Stone of the California State Legislature, described initiatives to improve access to broadband for all Californians. CENIC Network Bootcamp was a two-part session, focused on CENIC’s current network topology, peering relationships, and cybersecurity initiatives.
Sessions focused on research and technology included R&E Networks: Instruments of Discovery with Caltech Professor of Physics Harvey Newman, UW Oceanography Professor John Delaney, and Greg Bell, CEO of Broala. These scientists encouraged attendees to see research and education networks as instruments of scientific discovery, enabling researchers to share data, access computational tools, and scientific instruments, and collaborate effectively, regardless of where the data, tools, resources and collaborators are located. Security in R&E Networks and Campus Environments featured expert panelists, including security experts from UC Berkeley and UC Davis, discussing the security challenges R&E networks face and how these challenges can be addressed.
Among the sessions focused on work in the education and library communities, several were presented by two of CENIC’s cultural partners, SFJAZZ, and the Exploratorium. These organizations are using the CalREN network to engage K-12 schools and libraries in their work. In the Exploratorium’s Total Eclipse Live Webcast, staff members showed video of a live webcast of a total eclipse broadcast from Micronesia and described how audiences around the globe were able to participate in the eclipse viewing. In From Reading to Rhythm, Mount Allen of SFJAZZ showed video from an interactive jazz performance with audiences at three library sites and discussed the future of this approach to engaging new audiences and opening the world of jazz to young people.
One of the highlights of the conference was a live performance by world-renowned pianist Geri Allen playing with the SF JAZZ High School All-Stars, joining from SFJAZZ in San Francisco, and cellist Chris Chafe, joining from The New World Symphony in Miami. This session highlighted the use of the CENIC network by artists and cultural institutions as a platform for collaboration.
Conference Videos and Resources
If you were unable to attend CENIC's 2016 Annual Conference: The Right Connection, or if you did attend and you'd like to share one or more of the sessions with your colleagues, we have built a library of resources for your reference.
Conference presentations are being uploaded as they are made available. They have been saved as PDF files, organized by day are on available for download here.
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On Tuesday, March 22nd, the 2016 Innovations in Networking Awards were presented at a luncheon at UC Davis. This year, awards were presented to the following CENIC Superstars (click on their names to read more about the them and their work):
ESnet and IU to Host Workshop on Data Mobility & Management Challenges
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) and Indiana University (IU) are co-hosting a workshop at Berkeley National Laboratory on April 12-13. The workshop will focus on data mobility and management in precision medicine and metagenomics. The workshop is the fourth installment of the CrossConnects Workshop Series, which is designed to bring network and software engineers together with domain scientists, with the goal of developing actionable solutions to data transfer issues facing those communities.
The upcoming workshop will address the growing data mobility issues in the field of bioinformatics and will feature experts from around the world, including William Barnett of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute; Dan Jacobson of the Oak Ridge National Lab Biosciences Division; Larry Smarr of UCSD; Joe Hessie of UCSF; Sean Mooney of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Robert Freimuth of the Mayo Clinic.
CENIC Announces 100Gb Connection with Orange County Department of Education Network
CENIC is pleased to announce that CENIC, with its partners—the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE), the K-12 High Speed Network (K12HSN), and the California Department of Education (CDE)—has established the world’s first 100-Gigabit per second K-12 connection. The network connection went into production on March 24th, 2016.
“The remarkable collaboration among CDE, OCDE, CENIC, and our private sector colleagues who provided the fiber leases and the hardware is another example of the uniqueness of the CENIC community,” said CENIC President & CEO Louis Fox. “Ultimately, our students and teachers, faculty and students, and researchers and clinicians will use these new capacities in ways that we never imagine as they focus on the critical issues of our time and invent a better future for us all.”