Facilitating Community Collaboration
Twice-annual member meetings provide opportunities for the diverse Internet2 community to gather in person. Meeting attendees bring perspectives and expertise from multiple research areas, teaching, engineering, administration, technical support, and numerous academic disciplines with the common goal of sharing their experiences with, and use of, advanced networking technologies and learning more about how to apply them. In addition to the highly-rated program sessions, participants stressed the value of member meetings in providing an opportunity to collaborate through Working Group meetings, birds-of-a-feather and special interest group sessions, workshops and tutorials, and other small group meetings. For the first time ever, both member meetings in 2004 had more than 700 participants.
The University of Texas at Austin hosted the Fall 2004 Internet2 Member Meeting. Texas Governor Richard Perry and Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst greeted participants at the opening plenary and announced a $9.8 million award from the Texas Enterprise Fund to support higher education and high performance computing efforts in Texas. This marked the public launch of the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN), which will provide higher education institutions in Texas with high bandwidth connectivity, including the high-performance, nationwide Abilene Network.
The Fall Member Meeting program featured 45 sessions on topics such as collaboration technology, advanced applications, network infrastructure, K20, middleware, security, and updates on regional and national networking initiatives. One particularly memorable session demonstrated real-time, interactive underwater exploration when a diver shared DVD-quality video from three cameras 60 feet below the water’s surface in Monterey Bay, California, and answered live questions from the audience via Voice over IP technology. Dr. Bob Ballard from the University of Rhode Island and the Mystic Aquarium's Institute for Exploration joined the session remotely to discuss the project and his vision for underwater museums. The Fall Member Meeting also featured a demonstration area that showcased 13 advanced network applications developed and used by members.
The Spring Member Meeting, held in the Washington, D.C. area each year, provides participants with opportunities for interaction with the federal funding agencies that support advanced networking activities. Key areas of focus at the Spring 2004 Internet2 Member Meeting included cyberinfrastructure initiatives, cooperative funding arrangements among federal agencies, global e-science collaborations, security on high-performance networks, advanced applications activities, deployment of middleware capabilities, and advancements in the K20 community.