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Opening day
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Submission deadline
Authors are invited to submit abstracts for presentation at UbuntuNet-Connect 2016, the 9th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking. The UbuntuNet-Connect series of conferences has been held for the past eight years and is regarded as one of the premier conferences in Africa. This year the conference will take place from 3 to 4 November 2016 in Entebbe, Uganda and will be hosted by RENU, the NREN of Uganda.
The UbuntuNet Alliance is an organisation of NRENs, and its immediate “community” comprises people who might be regarded as “REN Insiders” – people who are responsible for network engineering, interconnection agreements, service levels, help desks, governance processes, business models and so on. There’s no denying that many of these are complex, difficult and important areas of endeavour.
Nevertheless, all REN Insiders know that an NREN is not a purpose unto itself but is a means to an end that lies outside of the NREN. They know that the purpose of an NREN is to provide the connectivity and related services that enable the universities and research institutions in its country to pursue their missions. For this reason, for UbuntuNet-Connect 2016 the Alliance has chosen a theme: viz. “Optimizing the Impact of NRENs on Africa’s Research”, that will focus attention on the enabling of scholarly research in Africa through REN services.
Authors are invited to submit abstracts of proposed unpublished work that, if accepted, will lead to papers publishable in the proceedings. While abstracts should preferably address the sub-themes listed below, prospective authors are encouraged to submit any contribution that is interesting and relevant to research and education networking.
UbuntuNet Alliance hopes that the submitted papers will include, inter-alia, some that present interesting conceptual insights relevant to the Theme; some that discuss governance, business and technical problems; and some case studies that extract important lessons for practitioners in Africa.
Sub-Theme 1: Facilitating access to online research services
- Grid computing, compute and data storage services
- Federated identities, single sign-on, catch-all federations
- Storage, distribution and sharing of massive data sets
- Roles of and experiences with science gateways
Sub-Theme 2: NREN’s direct services to researchers
- Video-conferencing
- Connectivity for remote instruments and arrays of instruments
- Provision of dedicated light-paths
Sub-Theme 3: Dissemination of research results and scholarly works
- Trends in academic publishing
- NRENs and library consortia
- Scielo and the like
Sub-Theme 4: General connectivity to support research in Africa
- The Global Network Architecture (GNA) program
- “Research networks” vs “commodity networks” – still a worthwhile distinction?
- Extending the reach of the NREN within its country
- Extending the reach of Africa’s Regional RENs within their Regions
Abstracts
Prospective contributors are invited to submit abstracts of at most 500 words that clearly indicate the key messages to be shared. Authors may submit their Abstracts online by creating an account below. Abstracts should arrive no later than 15 August 2016. Collaboratively authored contributions are encouraged and welcome. All abstracts will be double-blind-peer-reviewed by an international panel. Successful authors will be asked to prepare full papers which the Alliance will publish in the conference proceedings.
