2024 Internet2 Community Exchange Call for Proposals
The Call for Proposals is open for CommEX24 sessions and working meetings! Read more about the event’s four featured tracks and submit your proposal for consideration by September 8, 2023.
Internet2 has the privilege to convene the national and global Research and Education (R&E) community to build meaningful and lasting relationships, exchange ideas, leverage shared experiences, and empower teams and individuals during the 2024 Internet2 Community Exchange. Collectively, this community drives new innovations, technologies, and solutions to further collaborations and advance research, scholarship, and education.
The 2024 Internet2 Community Exchange showcases the collaborative spirit by which our community transforms the way research and scholarship are conceived and conducted. Whether building new relationships or nurturing existing ones, attendees at this year’s conference can expect to participate in knowledge-sharing discussions with peers who bring a wealth of depth and diversity to their perspectives and expertise. Together, we will explore shared challenges and solutions, common pitfalls, and best practices among community professionals.
Working Meetings
Working meetings are held during breakfasts and lunches, but other options are also offered.
Learn more about the four tracks offered at CommEX24 below:
This track focuses on network innovation and automation, ecosystem-wide collaborations, trusted infrastructure, routing integrity and security, and network foundations and tools to enable future innovations in research and scholarship. Themes and proposals in this track will also highlight business and workflow innovation, network modernization and automation, networking for cloud, research support programs, network security, technology implementations in advanced networking, and building and inspiring collaborations for delivering research and academic services across local, national, and global advanced networks.
Cloud services offer scalability, flexibility, and access to many of the latest technologies for academic, administrative, and research use cases. The cloud track at Community Exchange 2024 invites proposals that focus on exploring the latest trends and innovations in cloud computing for research and education (R&E) and implications for the community. Appropriate submissions for the cloud track at Community Exchange focus on either infrastructure and platform services (IaaS or PaaS) or software as a service (SaaS). The track will consist of three main themes:
Optimizing Cloud Service Deployments: This theme focuses on how to optimize the performance, reliability, security, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness of cloud applications and services. It addresses the challenges and best practices of implementing cloud security including zero trust models, developing, and implementing an institutional FinOps strategy, and the growing need to support multi-cloud and enable interoperability between clouds. It also focuses on R&E efforts to manage cloud storage more effectively. Furthermore, it explores how cloud computing can enable business and academic transformation across various domains.
Impact of Evolving Cloud Technologies: This theme examines the opportunities and challenges of emerging cloud technologies and paradigms, such as edge computing, fog computing, sky computing, 5G, IoT, and artificial intelligence. It also discusses how cloud-based tools and platforms can facilitate data analysis, visualization, collaboration, and dissemination for research and education. Moreover, it will address the compliance, ethical, environmental, legal, and social implications of using cloud computing for various purposes and contexts.
Leveraging the Cloud for Core Mission: This theme evaluates the role of cloud computing in enabling research and enhancing the skills, competencies, and outcomes in different settings and disciplines. It also assesses the benefits and challenges of integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning into teaching, learning, student experience and research. Additionally, it explores how cloud computing can foster research productivity, collaboration, and innovation across domains and boundaries. Finally, it provides guidance on how to develop funding models and data governance strategies for research infrastructure that includes cloud computing, including when it makes sense to use cloud computing and when it does not.
This track focuses on various themes within identity and access management (IAM), including but not limited to identity federation, making access to services easier and more secure, software adoption, implementation strategies, security strategies for data and infrastructure, policy development, and the use of federation and identity management strategies to support researchers and global collaborations.
This track focuses on the impact of new technologies, policies, and practices – like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, digital transformation, digital accessibility, and change management – on R&E. How will these new innovations impact important issues such as lack of access, tools, resources, and cyberinfrastructure capabilities for under-served institutions and communities?
This track also highlights the innovative use of these new technologies and how they will shape the future of national and global collaborations and barriers to success with distributed workforces including the work of scientific researchers across global campuses, virtual organizations, and national and commercial facilities.
Now is the time topropose a session talk or discussion within the track topics and themes outlined above. The deadline for submissions is September 8, 2023. Session formats typically range from educational, instructional, and interactive, aimed at maximizing interactions and “exchanges” between conference attendees. Based on attendee feedback, we are offering a variety of proposed session lengths to fit the content and allow multiple, shorter talks to expand the voices and points of view on given subjects:
A 75-minute panel, presentation, facilitated discussion, or moderated-debate
A 60-minute panel, presentation, facilitated discussion, or moderated-debate
A 40-minute panel, presentation, or facilitated discussion
A 30-minute presentation
A 20-minute presentation
A 10-minute Lightning Talk
Working Meeting Details
Additional activities at this year’s Community Exchange include workshops, tutorials, small private group meetings, advisory/governance meetings, birds of a feather (BoF) and special interest group (SIG) sessions, working group meetings, receptions, and other informal events. Working meetings are held during breakfasts (60 minutes) and lunches (75 minutes) but other options are offered. Please choose several when you submit your proposal for one of these events.
Leadership Exchange
The 2024 Community Exchange features the special, invitation-only Leadership Executive event on Monday, March 4. The half-day session offers a selection of sessions and speakers tailored to the interests and issues of R&E executive leaders. It is designed to be relevant and valuable to the work of executive leaders and offers opportunities for individuals to gather with peers for collaborative discussion and networking.
