Call for Proposals

We are interested in hearing your stories about implementing software-enabled infrastructure, implementing automation and orchestration, connecting to the cloud, using shared telemetry, operations, security, creating a netdevops team, and all of the other networking topics that you want to discuss.

We want to hear from you! Do you have a story to tell’about a problem you solved over the past year? Do you have a new solution that your peers need to be thinking about? Tell your story about automation and orchestration, using shared telemetry, operations, netdevops, security, or other timely topics.

Knowledge sharing: accepted proposals should include links to resources used or developed as part of your story. These may include GitHub repositories, code snippets, or other materials that the community might use to jump-start their journey.

In addition to the usual mix of presentations, panel discussions, and lightning talks, the 2023 program includes plenty of time for hallway conversations.

In an effort to support conversations among different technical audiences – many of whom are working on different facets of a shared challenge – we are strongly encouraging topics that bring multiple audiences together (i.e., RPKI, use of telemetry, etc.).

Other topic areas to consider include (but are not limited to):

• Moving to a software-enabled infrastructure with use of automation, orchestration, and telemetry
• Plans to leverage broadband grants in your region, infrastructure upgrades, implementation of eduroam, and collaboration with minority-serving institutions
• Use of infrastructure and services to support cloud, research, teaching, and learning
• Maintaining routing integrity by implementing new and updated routing security protocols including MANRS, IRR, RPKI, and ROV, or new security paradigms such as zero trust security model
• Global collaborations to enable science, technology, and learning
• Implementing identity management to support role-based authentication in software-enabled infrastructure

Hyper-scale computing, or “cloud technology,” represents near-limitless, scalable, disposable computing power on demand with ubiquitous access. Its uses range from backups to bursting, from stateless, event-driven enterprise applications to compute-intensive research workloads, and from Big Data to AI/ML.

It has been widely used in government, the private sector and higher education for years, yet it remains poorly understood and underutilized. Questions persist about cost, appropriate use cases, security, platform choice, networking and when/how much it is wise to rely on it. If there were easy answers, we’d all have them. What we do have is a wide community taking a serious, professional go at using the cloud and the unique tooling it provides. This track invites the community to share its hard work, its painful lessons, and its game-changing successes on the path to making cloud technology an essential part of any institution’s IT toolkit.

The three major topic areas of interest, and sample topics, for this track include:

• Cloud as a team sport: development, identity, networking, ops, and security’s essential roles in cloud success
• DevOps, infrastructure as code, and building cloud native applications
• Architecting and running research workflows in the cloud

Looking to share a problem you’ve solved and build your IAM street cred?  Working on ideas and approaches that push the envelope of where access management is going in Higher Education and Research?

We are actively seeking you — practitioners, current and future identity experts, enterprise IT architects, project managers, developers, and infrastructure providers —to deliver thought-provoking and engaging presentations in the TechEx Identity & Access Management (IAM) Track, also known as CAMP Week.

CAMP Week attracts higher education IAM experts from around the world along with those with deep knowledge of related architecture and operational principles. Submit a proposal yourself or collaborate with peers to deliver presentations, demonstrations, stories, and/or panel discussions. An accepted session typically propels further fast-paced, in-depth discussions at the Unconference later in the week.

General topic areas include (but are not limited to):

• Best and Emerging Practices – What’s Working Right Now such as identity governance, considerations for using vendor IAM solutions, DevOps and automation, managing access to the cloud, evolving IAM infrastructures, sharing services across regions and states to cut costs.
• The Future – New tools and innovations such as passwordless authentication technologies, emerging implementations of digital wallets and integrated mobile-device support, trust frameworks of the future, adaptive authentication, and adopting a Zero Trust model.
• International Developments – How can we better enable international collaboration? What’s going on in other countries that we use and can help to extend?

We are seeking proposals for sessions telling the community how your organization has improved its security posture, both inside and outside your network.  “Lessons Learned” presentations have historically been very successful, as have presentations on somewhat unusual topics.

The Information Security area focuses on both network and system security topics, including (but not limited to):

• Implementing Zero Trust architecture and perimeter-less security
• Promote leadership in security for the global Internet through projects to strengthen the security posture of key infrastructure

• • Advocating for MANRS adoption and working to ensure routing integrity
  • Experience with threat modeling of infrastructure

• Learning from major security incidents recently experienced by the community – particularly incidents yielding significant “lessons learned”
• Addressing the research community’s unique IT security needs

• • Understanding and addressing the challenges of network security at 100Gbps and higher speeds
  • Identifying and/or developing new and promising network security tools, particularly tools for collaboratively sharing data about security incidents at scale
  • Balancing “enterprise-like” security on open networks.

• Leveraging Trust and Identity tools in the context of community infrastructure
• Handling common security issues in the unique research and education environments

• • Measuring success with security metrics and benchmarks
  • Threat hunting techniques and remediation strategies
  • Assessing the security posture of cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
  • Dealing with actual or looming ransomware threats

Research computing and data, including networking and cloud services, play a key role in scientific discovery and scholarship across all disciplines. The accelerating pace of change presents both challenges and opportunities, not only to providers of these services, but also to researchers eager to keep up with the evolving technology landscape. TechEX23 provides a forum for those who support and/or conduct research to showcase the ways in which their efforts have enabled research and/or accelerated innovative technology or software-based solutions through collaborative efforts to address these challenges.

Submissions should highlight experiences, opportunities, and some of the challenges relating to enabling or conducting research via digital resources and services, including, but not limited to, advanced networking, information security, InCommon, and cloud. We also encourage submissions related to the people and organizations that enable research, including consortia or collaborations in support of research computing and data professionals, training and professional development, engagement with researchers, as well as any other relevant areas of interest.