If you would like to present, please follow the submission link on the main page. Below is a list of Speaking Tracks and their description.
Lightning Talks
Prepare to be electrified as we delve into the exhilarating world of Lightning Talks! Brace yourself for a whirlwind of innovation, inspiration, and jaw-dropping insights.
But beware, because these high-voltage talks are no leisurely stroll. With just five precious minutes on the clock, every second counts. Lightning Talks zoom in on a single electrifying idea, a triumphant project, or even a spine-tingling cautionary tale.
So, ignite your curiosity, charge up your imagination, and get ready for an electrifying experience like no other.
Empowering Students in an information age
Information literacy has always been an essential skill for all students, and in an era of #fakenews and ChatGPT its even more critical. However, on entering, university students have varying exposure to computers and the Internet. How do we help someone critically evaluate sources when they’re still learning to find information?
What are the current challenges universities face with information literacy? This is a problem that inevitably touches on the realms of both the IT help desk and the library. How can they work together to give students the best possible chance of succeeding?
In the dark
Stage 16 loadshedding? How will we teach? The impact of loadshedding is profound, and many institutions are now planning for higher stages. Critically, if load shedding gets worse, campuses may be forced to shut down certain aspects of their operations whereas others will become indispensable. In this session we’d like to explore how dependency on the campus network & Internet might evolve, which services are most critical, and how we can all work together to keep them running.
Learning Management System
The pandemic brought learning management systems (LMS) to the fore. Some institutions were able to quickly scale existing systems, whereas others struggled with new and sometimes unfamiliar technologies. The challenges are both in the technology and in the softer skills of helping academic staff adapt to new ways of teaching. What have we learnt in the process? How does the LMS continue to play such a critical role? Is this an area in which universities could collaborate, and would a shared learning management platform be a viable solution for some?
All hail the mighty eduroam
It is a little over ten years since South Africa started participating in eduroam and we might think it’s now ubiquitous. However, the WiFi space is evolving rapidly; we’re finding new use cases; and we continue to be haunted by old problems. This session is a space to talk about eduroam, past, present, and future: how it has impacted your campus, where we’d like to expand coverage, and what challenges there might be down the line.
Cloudy with a chance of research
Within the enterprise, cloud is rapidly becoming the norm. However, the availability of on-demand storage and compute creates both opportunities and challenges for researchers, and for the institutions they belong to. How are researchers using cloud in your institutions? What problems has it created? And how do we overcome those?
10Gb 100Gb will change everything
In the early 2000s, SANReN started deploying 10Gb/s links and we profetically claimed it would “change everything”. With 100Gb/s now becoming the new normal, the scale has changed, but we still face some of the same challenges and opportunities we faced nearly two decades ago. Can your internal network handle such volumes of traffic? Are your firewalls the bottleneck? What happens when it goes down? Is it time to multi-home to manage risk?
The inevitable COVID session
It’s 2023 and COVID-19 is becoming a memory. But it has a profound legacy: people have changed, and their expectations have changed with them. How does this continue impact the university of 2023, and will those changes still matter in 2033? Are we better off than we were in 2018?
Trust, identity, and other buzzwords
Globally we’re seeing trust & identity services being one of the core “plumbing” services provided by NRENs. Research exists in a space that’s not easily or well served by the commercial alternatives. However, in South Africa, take up is still lagging and many institutions struggle to set up and maintain the infrastructure required. This session aims to unpack some of the successes and failures inherent in identity and access management. (We can talk about certificates too…)
