CEENGINE NRENs Users Workshop took place on 22nd May 2013 in Kiev, Ukraine.
The event organised by Central and Eastern European Networking Association (CEENET) within its FP7 CEENGINE project, was hosted by Ukrainian Research and Academic Network (URAN) in the premises of Kiev Politechnic Institute (KPI).
The funding for the event came from DG-CONNECT and CEENET (who co-fund CEENGINE project) and from Eastern Partnership (EaP) Platform IV/ Multilateral Part of the European Neigborhood Policy Instrument (ENPI) who provided substantial financial support to the project logistics and travel of the participants.
The Workshop was attended by over 70 paticipants from 14 countries, with majority representing EaP stakeholders in R&D – identified as important NRENs users by CEENGINE project. The event also attracted government representatives from Moldova, Ukraine & Belarus. European Union was represented by DG-CONNECT, a number of selected infrastructure projects (GEANT, EGI, DRIHMS, Global Excursion) and organisations from NRENs environment (JANET, TERENA, CEENET).
The objective of the workshop was to involve NRENs users in shaping NRENs future, to turn NRENs users into NRENs supporters, rather than passive consumers of NRENs services. For this purpose a workshop was organised into 4 sessions, aiming to discuss the following issues:
Workshop agenda & presentations:
Session I. Background preparation | |
Keynote lecture:NRENs – a primer for innovation and collaboration | Oliver Popov, (CEENET/Stockholm University, Sweden) |
EC research support to Eastern Europe now & in Horizon 2020 |
Jean-Luc Dorel (European Commission, Belgium) |
eInfrastructures between East and West |
Marat Biktimirov (e-Infrastructure Working Group Russia-EU, Russia) |
Session II. Meet the leaders |
|
EU Mega-eInfrastructure – GEANT | Valentino Cavalli (TERENA/GEANT, The Netherlans) |
JANET experience |
Josh Howlett (JANET, UK) |
European Grid Initiative |
Catherine Gater (European Grid Initiative, The Netherlands) (Over H.323) |
DRIHMS – Distributed Research Infrastructure for Hydro-Meteorology Study |
Elisabetta Fiori (CIMA Foundation, Italy) |
Global Excursion – New Way to Science Education |
Barbara Kieslinger (Centre for Social Innovation, Austria) – remote presentation |
Session III. Local dimension |
|
Cloud computing development and service development in Moldova | Valeriu Plamadeala (e-Government Center of Moldova) |
eInfrastructures in Ukraine |
Svetlana Klesova (Ukrainian State Agency for Science) |
Success story from Georgia |
Zviad Kirtava (Georgia) |
TEPID – Towards Eastern Partnership Countries e-Infrastructures Development – mini panel |
Vyacheslav Shkarupin (URAN, Ukraine),Peter Bogatencov (RENAM, Moldova),Octavian Rusu (RoEduNet, Romania) |
Session IV. Challenges |
|
NREN users in Eastern Europe |
Krasimir Simonski, (BREN/CEENGINE, Bulgaria) |
Users and NRENs – protocooperation or mutualism? |
Evgenii Martynov (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) |
Future owners of the infrastructure – mini panel | Oliver Popov (CEENET/Stockholm University, Sweden) Peter Bogatencov (RENAM, Moldova)Michal Przybylski (CEENET/CEENGINE, Poland),Valeriu Plamadeala (e-Government Center of Moldova) |
The workshop provided good dissemination of eInfrastructures supported by FP7 programme. The participants were very much interested in GEANT services that may be potentially offered to the community within GN3+ (Campus Best Practices, EduRoam, Videoconferencing). Further dissemination of these is required in the region and there is clear demand for future events of this type.
One of important recommendations of the workshop is the need of synchronisation of regional initiatives (especially in the area of the hot topic of building EaP countries backbone spanning NRENs of the region). A success of the event should be also attributed to the co-location of relevant events from different projects (CEENGINE and PICTURE) resulted in increased attendance and impact of each of events. We shall investigate the means to ensure similar coordination in the future.