Attendees - 26

Chris Atherton (GÉANT)
Sylvia Kuijpers (Surf)
Guido Aben (AARNet)
Alex Moura (RNP)
Alex Reid (University Western Australia)
Claudio Chacon (CEDIA)
David Salmon (Jisc)
Edward Moynihan (Indiana University)
Fernand De Decker (Belnet)
Helen Clare (Jisc)
Juraj Bilic (CARNET)
John Hicks (Internet2)
Ken Miller (ESnet)
Koen Schelkens (Belnet)
Lars Fisher (NORDUNet)
Olga Popcova (RENAM)
Shirley Wood (Jisc)
Tania Altmirano (RedClara)
Tim Chown (Jisc)
Victoria Moody (Jisc)
Meoli Kashorda (KENET)
Alexei Belotserkovsky (BASNET)
Andrew Wiedlea (ESnet)
Peter Bogatencov (RENAM)
Yousef Torman (ASREN)
Juan Pablo Carvallo (CEIDA)


Date

Wednesday 28th October 2020 15:00 - 16:00 UTC


Re-cap

We had a very interesting talk from Sylvia Kuijpers from Surf, about the merging of her NREN with other national e-infrastructures and the role that research engagement and the enlighten your research programme played in this merger process. 

Some of the lessons learned from the enlighten your research programme were:

  • Researchers are not ICT project managers
  • Most of their work is in the local domain
  • Bringing together researchers and their ICT departments is beneficial
  • Tuning between network and higher layers at end sites is necessary
  • Commitment is essential from all involved domains (NRENs, regional networks, campus, computing centres, etc.)

One aspect which this presentation highlighted was that the outreach process the enlighten your research programme employed.  These were all developed in parallel:

  • Awareness building with stakeholders
  • Community building activities 
  • Strategic alignment with funding bodies

With the last point, having the weight of the community of researchers and other e-infras all working together towards a common purpose, made talking to the funding bodies easier (although the discussions had begun with the funding body many years earlier).  This resulted (after much dialogue) in a change to the funding of IT budgets in research projects in the Netherlands, to take away the requirement to only invest in new IT equipment. This old requirement was preventing researchers from fully utilising NREN infrastructure (or any other national e-infrastructure) in their research grants.

The enlighten your research programme helped to bring about in a more formalised collaboration between the various national e-infras, called Support 4 research. This was a single point of contact and coordination service, supported by the 4 national e-infras and operated all year around (EYR runs normally only every other year).  Following the long term collaboration between the different elements of the surf family in this programme, members (R&E institutions) highlighted that there were challenges to work with the various national e-infrastructures.  The members urged the organisations to improve the situation.  They were not satisfied and so the members asked for the organisations to merge into one.  That process started in 2018 and completed this year (15th October 2020).      

Agenda:


Video updates from the community

TF-RED Update: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v7hbYMgD6ht5htDaxJlXvuODAHUEaIzV/view?usp=sharing

CEDIA Update: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XalZv_dsPjN_-1lekDhLxO4Bv6ahUbdb/view?usp=sharing


Video of the Meeting

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f-3CvdPK6fyHI3rDC2Gf-8wI03h718v3/view?usp=sharing

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