Monday morning. The team from Nordunet, which includes some of my own people from DeiC, has been busy sunday...

...setting up the wireless network. And this network is - of course - IPv6 enabled. We love it!

Monday morning is also the time when the exhibition booths have to be ready. Here, we have Dave Wilson from HEAnet and Ole Frendved from DeiC, manning this booth featuring a very interesting project about software defined networking: Mantychore. Check it out yourself!

Another monday morning activity is making the last bits of the technology working. In the "Paris" meeting room, this projector underlines the fact, that event though VGA is an old standard, it still poses problems to do it right.

Luckily, the support staff is on to the problem. However - it continued throughout the day on and off. Hence, the support staff is indispensable.

This morning, I was hosting a BoF on the Health sector together with Sandra Passchier from SURFnet.

More booths: The ubiquitous Dante PR&Outreach in action.

Nordunet is also here with a minimalistic approach to booth features. Where are the pens and the sweets and the brochures? On the other hand, they have the most important stuff there: People.

The most important thing about the conference is meeting nice and interesting people: Thomas Brunner from SWITCH

Just being at the conference does not necessarily ensure face-to-face dialogue. You can also be very close and commnicate with people elsewhere.

A peak into the human-robot demo

The conference center is functional, but it would be an exaggeration to call it aesthetic.

A well-known face from som many TNCs in the past: Carol de Groot who is now working as an independent consultant. Here she is, probably trying to catch a new customer. Talk to her yourself and get the sales pitch!

Two bright specimens of the nice TERENA staff: Cora van den Bossche and Jim Buddin.

My colleague from DeiC, Bo Sixten Staahle, who is one of the people seconded to the Nordunet staff for the conference. He is one of the reasons you have wireless network which works totally smoothly - even with IPv6.

For the opening plenary, we have a series of welcoming addresses: The first one being by the TERENA president, Pierre Bruyère.

A great turnout for the opening session. I am told that this is the largest TNC ever. I look forward to the statistics we are used to have in the closing session on Thursday.

The next welcome is by the alderman of the city of Maastricht, who, very enthusiastically, argues that Maastricht is nothing short of paradise itself!

Yet another welcome comes from the rector of the University of Maastricht, Luc Soete.

The last welcome speech is done by Erwin Bleumink from SURFnet. They are celebrating their 25 year anniversary by hosting this conference. Congratulations!

It looks as though the script is hard to read...

but he delivers the speech very skillfully.

The opening keynote is about big data. Pablo Rodrigues presents a range of examples, mainly based on the vast amounts of data collected by them from mobile phone and internet utilization.

An intriguing quote.

A new initiative at TNC is the Open Space sessions. Here, you are invited to talk about anything - also new things emerging during the conference.

A nice initiative presented by Leif Johansson from SUNET.

The lightning talks session is chaired by Guido Aben from AARNet...

...who keeps time of all the 5 minutes talks with a most insistent alarm app.

The talks come in rapid succession: Zarlyk Jumabek Uulu from the CAREN NOC.

Scott Koranda from LIGO

Another quick change on the podium

Zen in the art of networking.

Miroslav Milinovic from Croatia...

...presents a very interesting initiative to rate eduroam experiences and performance.

The last item in the day was the BoF about CEF/BB4PA. John Dyer and Magda Haver from TERENA is anxiously following which participants show up.

However, their success seems to be within reach as the room is quite full, ...

...and they are happy and content.

The turnout is documented by John, who then realizes that nothing appears in the picture when he is in the beam of the projector.

He therefore has it shut off, rather than changing position ;-)

John starts the session without the slides as the problems with the projector from this morning are not quite dealt with yet.

The consultant for the EC from Deloitte, Con Sadée, who has been hired to do the CEF readiness study which is the main topic of the BoF.

Magda documents it all

Toby Young from DANTE

To everyone's surprise, Lajos Balint from NIIF/Hungarnet, has really restrained himself and not uttered a word. Until now.

Some meetings continue even longer than our BoF. Our communities back home get much more value for their money than I think they imagine. People here are not going for the easy solution...

...which is presented to us at the buffet. Nice dumplings.

The people who are neither of these places are probably sitting somewhere around and working...

...or they can have more private meetings like the nordic guys here.

The conference centre has a much nicer look and feel on the inside than on the outside. Large, modern and stylish.

Even the toilets are large, modern and stylish.

Two of the kingpins of service management in their networks: Harri Kuusisto from Funet/CSC and Walter van Dijk from SURFnet.

Valentino Cavalli, deputy secretary of TERENA, introduces the cultural event of the evening...

...which is an online performance using LOLA, in the development of which Claudio Allocchio from GARR have been a lead figure.

A jazz band with the trumpet soloist being online on stage from Edinburgh.

A very good performance...

...after which everyone is stampeding for the buffet

A great pleasure to review Karel Vietsch - even when it is in a slimmer version.

The french corner: Luc Saccavini from INRIA, Robert Ferret, Jean-François Guezou and Dominique Launay from RENATER.

An event which celebrates the 25 years anniversary of SURFnet, catches everyone's attention by announcing that the network is down.

Athina Zampara from the European Commission...

...is very happy to be here.

À propos the EC, we encounter Jean-Luc Dorel, surrounded by other well-known figures: Dorte Olesen from Denmark and Claudio Allocchio from GARR.

A long day usually ends with a beer. My colleague Tangui Coulouarn from DeiC and Paul Boven from JIVE. I guess they talk about Bandwidth-on-Demand. Or maybe about something funnier.

Martin Bech, DeIC, martin.bech@deic.dk