Wednesday morning. Another nice piece of infrastructure around the conference:
The shuttle bus from my hotel to the conference is waiting for me in the right
side of the picture.
This mornings session started in the arts and humanities department with Ann
Doyle from Internet2
and session chair Ingrid Melve from UNINETT.
Ann Doyle showed a lot of interesting examples of how video conferences can be used
in contexts we would never have imagined, like classical music master classes and coreography.
Egon Verharen from SURFnet was speaking about high definition TV over IP.
This year, it seems that all the people from SURFnet have been out in the Dutch
swamps eating grass, since this picture is on the front page of all their presentations.
"But not me - I am innocent", Egon says.
My remarks aside, Egon did a very good talk about what HD-TV can do for us and why we
need it.
SURFnet has made a whole 24h/24h HD TV channel that broadcasts to more than
19.000 students in thier dormatories. A project like that, we can only dream about!
The spooky side of federations: Ken Klingenstein in the mystical glow of his laptop.
A very good initiative: PGP key signing in the coffee breaks by the TERENA office.
Go there!
Some of the people working hard for us: The video transmission studio in the booth
in the big conference room.
And more of the energetic people helping in making this a perfect
conference: Roberto Tudisco and her colleagues from
the Shogun conference bureau.
A part of the exhibition area, where there is also people working to inform all
of us about their projects and products.
A Swedish guy, Björn Larsson, working here at the Catania Astrophysical
Observatory, showed us some tools for visualizing astrophysical data, including a
"Telescope-de-Luxe" where you can see objects that are otherwise invisible.
Session chair David Fergusson from the National eScience Centre in the UK.
Another local scientist, Danilo Reitano, from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, told us about
how they do research to monitor seismic and vulcanologic activity.
Cezary Mazurek from PSNC showed us the Polish approach to building a
digital library.
Look at these funky graphics. I like them. You can really see that those fibres
are full of light.
An example of what you can see in the library.
The session after lunch was chaired by one of the eduRoam veterans:
Klaas Wierenga from SURFnet.
And the first speaker was Henk Eertink from the Telematica Institut in Holland
who spoke about the mechanics of eduRoadm
Klaas is not more occupied by the chairing responsibilities, than he has time
for a snapshot.
Several improvements of the RADIUS protocol is discussed. I think the slides
explain it all very clearly.
Next, we had Chris Myers from GrangeNet talking about the nice progress of eduRoam
in the Asia-Pacific region.
The localizing of logos that has caused quite a bit of debate.
Otherwise, the proliferation of eduRoam is really going nicely over there.
Last in the session we had Philippe Hanset from University of Tennessee (via video) talking
about the situation in the US.
One of the possible uses of eduRoadm in the future is
for so-called "edu-gear" - all the gadgets that we want to log on to the network
without human intervention.
Coffee break in the nice sunny weather that has continued throughout the conference.
Here, we have Ton Verschuren from SURFnet, Ingrid Melve (UNINETT)
and Walter van Dijk - the LCPM-focused guy from SURFnet with the nice figure ;-)
My next session was the South East European situation, chaired by
Jorge Sanchez from Greece.
Zoran Jovanovic (University of Belgrade) told about the situation in Serbia and
some of the neighboring countries. Dramatic things are happening fast in those countries
these years. In Serbia, for instance, the network people had to go all the way to
the prime minister, and have him persuade the monopolistic telco to give dark
fibre to the research network. Not long after, the prime minister was assasinated,
but they got to keep the fibre. That's what you can call real network problems!
Valentino Cavalli from TERENA is asking a question.
The TERENA conference can also be used as a place to meet the people you
don't see every day. Here I am having a meeting with the champion of
South East European networks, Dr. Zoran Jovanovic.
More people working hard for you behind the scenes: The technical people who take
care of sound, displays and video.
Creative parking of cars seems to be a national sport, but apparently, there
are limits. "Servizio rimozione" is giving "service" to those that are too creative.
Speaking of parking, several places, you can find this version of underground
parking, where the house around it is yet to appear.
A house where all the neighbors are torn down.
The underground river of Catania, appearing in a small park near the cathedral.
The cathedral (il Duomo). In the foreground, you see another underground structure: the railway, that appears in a short stretch before it enters the main station.
Castello Ursino
The gala dinner was held in Museo Biscari, which is otherwise closed to the public.
Numerous waiters (wearing white dresses and ditto gloves) are waiting for the whole thing to begin.
Two of the driving forces behind the conference: Roberto Tudisco and Shirley Wood
Another driving force: Carol de Groot - here posing as a statue for the occasion.
Drinks and snacks were enjoyed in the courtyard.
The Latvian people (with a single exception) have found a table.
I leave it to you to guess who is the exception.
The most luxurious buffet of many delicious items, I have come across in years.
The food really is living up to the extravagant surroundings.
Mario Campolargo (of the EC) and other beautiful people.
I was sitting with some of the freindly Norwegian people.
The dinks bar was very popular.
En extraordinary menu, and it all tasted as good as it sounds.
Time to leave the party as a conclusion of a fantastic day with
nothing but good experiences.
Martin Bech