Monday morning where we all have to get our badges. For this, the GEANT organization is getting help from a PCO (Professopnal Conference Organizer) company.

They even get as much help as holding the walkie-talkie, enabling Magda Haver to wave both her hands while talking.

By the look of it, I am sure this conference will run on rails.

Anna Everitt is manning the GEANT booth and as I haven't seen her since the last TNC, we agree that she must have been sleeping inside the counter right up until now.

For me, Monday morning starts before the main conference with a TAC (Technical Advisory Committee) meeting.

An important part of meeting preparations is fishing for power

The TAC meeting is led by Valter Nordh from SUNet

It looks a bit like Star Wars. It is just a projector.

Erik Huizer, SURFnet, being productive as always in the bright light of his Mac

Dave Wilson from HEAnet is telling an interactive story

Quite many chioces in the story are implemented - but not all.

Our Greek colleagues, Ioannis Mitsos and Afrodite Sevasti, have once again made remarkable projects

Esther Robles from RedIRIS concentrating

Peter Szegedi from the Amsterdam office of GEANT looking like a classic film star

Guido Aben from Aarnet paying close attention

The SUNet dynamic duo: Leif Johansson and Per Nihlén

A vivid performance by Michael Enrico from GEANT

Shelton Waggener from Internet2...

...who seems pretty pleased about how they manage their development projects and make them sustainable

Licia Florio from GÉANT presented the idea of a development project greenhouse.

Let us just hope no developers get lost in the roadmap.

Valter Nordh again

János Mohácsi from NIIF/HUNGARNET

A Greek moment: Nikolas Pediaditis from RIPE and Ioannis Mitsos from GRnet

Above the letters in the GÉANT logo, you find the slightly melted infinity symbol depicting the soul of the whole thing

And here we have the same symbol, depicting the sole of the conference - the foot sole.

An impressive back projection screen...

...in an impressive room used for the plenary sessions

Welcome to everyone by Pierre Bruyère, president of the board of GEANT.

The welcome from the city of Porto is done by Filipe Araújo

A welcome from our good colleague, the director of the Portuguese NREN, FCCN, João Nuno Ferreira

The last, but certainly not the least of the welcome addresses is done by the Secretary of State of Science of Portugal, Mrs. Maria Leonor Parreira

A word from our great sponsor, Rodney Wilson from Ciena

The keynote speech done by John Day had a very thought-provoking account of how networking protocols and addressing paradigms emerged in the 70's and how we did not always make the most intelligent choices

And his slides even looked like they were from this epoch - possibly made in TeX

Final remarks by Klaas Wierenga from Cisco, who has been chair of the programme committee of the conference

Lunch is served in the area with all the stands from networks, projects and vendors. Very good.

The GEANT cup just drives home the message: Infrastructure is important but it only gets really interesting when some content is added

Domenico Vicinanza and Laura Durnford from GEANT take their turn at the booth - and they look happy, too.

A rare species at the conference: A colleague from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland - Dr. Fiorenzo Scaroni from SWITCH.

For the last session in the day, I attended the one about "Listening to the users", chaired by Tomi Dolenc from ARNES.

First item by Lonneke Walk from SURFnet

about striking the right balance between user driven and technology driven development og the service portfolio

She really feels for it

And eventually, she decides to stop talking

Walter van Dijk (SURFnet) also takes the stage to talk about this subject which has always been important for him: Service Portfolio Management.

Christoph Herzog from SWITCH is next.

The banners announcing the TNC on the Alfandega Building are a bit subtle,

compared to the way an ajacent exhibition is advertised

Tuktuk traffic seems like a bit of misplaced Bangkok in Porto

This, in contrast, is the original, environmentally-friendly method of traffic in Porto.

Opening reception at the Alfandega Pier, taking the conference out in front of the very nice venue

Very remarkable, very noisy and quite brief. That's how we like entertainment.

Gyöngyi Horvath - the conference organizer from GEANT. She has indeed done a good job - again this year.

Le coin francophone: Xavier Jannin, Jean-Francois Guezou (RENATER) and Tangui Coulouarn (DeiC)

River cruises were also a popular part of the event

Mark Johnston from GEANT, the nice guy from Ubuntunet, Mr. Joseph Kimali and Cathrin Stöver from GEANT. International networking at its best!

Guido Aben from AARnet (really from Utrecht, but that's an insignificant detail).

My good colleagues from DeiC: Claus Gohr and Tangui Coulouarn

Guido still reflects about what he is hearing

These guys are into storage: Christian Schmitz from OwnCloud and Peter Szegedi from GEANT.

The loud performers

Inside - we have the quite silent performer, Pierre Bruyere, who is unfortunately difficult to hear over the speaker system

This is the ideal merger: A bit of colour and fireworks and...

Bob's your uncle.

Dorte Olesen and Niels Hersoug from GEANT

The very nice colleague from SURFnet, Michel Wets, wanted to part of my blog. Here he is...

Ana Hunsinger from Internet2 and Pierre Bruyere

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