Speaker
Description
Despite access to a robust, global community of research and education networks, many researchers around the world continue to struggle to transfer and access data effectively and efficiently. Researchers often do not understand the value REN services can bring to their research, or worse, are simply unaware that these services are available to them. In order for our community to address this, a proactive effort across many stakeholders (global, regional, national, local, campus, etc.) is needed. First, we need to know who is and who isn’t using our networks; second, we need to know how these users are currently interacting with our resources; and third we need to know how to effectively interact with end users to help improve their experience. This talk will argue that proactive engagement with end users to identify and solve networking issues is critical to the sustained success of a REN organization. It will highlight tools and practical strategies that International Networks at Indiana University has developed for identifying researchers and look at successful methods we have used for engaging and interacting with researchers and research communities.
