Farewell Address Some reflections after 12 months in the job TERENA Networking Conference Lisboa 25 May 2000 David Williams, CERN and TERENA President

Twelve months ago… n I was elected as President of TERENA about a year ago. n Never having been personally involved in the management of TERENA or its predecessors. n I hope that I will be able to repay people’s confidence during my term of office. n I’m not going to take much of your time, but I would like to tell you a little about what I have learned and give you some of my thoughts for the future.

Many organisations… n I had to learn more than I knew before about the multiple players in European networking. Who is who. Who does what. Why it’s like that. Would we do it that way if we started from scratch?… –CENTR, DANTE, ENPG, Project Consortia, Research Networking Group of the EU (DG INFSO-F2), RIPEncc, TERENA n And I had to learn about the people that we have to deal with nationally and internationally, in Canada, Japan, USA and elsewhere. n Don’t worry….

TERENA’s Technical Role n Many NRNs are members of TERENA. n They all have their own excellent technical staff. n Who are continually investigating new technologies and planning for the technical evolution of their NRN in their particular national environment. n These are all busy people, but they quickly realise that some technical jobs are so important (and so difficult) that they cannot be handled alone. n That’s when we should use the TERENA Technical Programme to enhance/coordinate/enable/share/accelerate. n An important job of the TERENA management (all of us) to make sure that we investing our resources in the right areas.

Technical opportunities n Speaking personally…. n I see middleware (whether for grids or for more generic applications) as an area of major importance for the next few years. It will need close attention to make sure that different application areas do not diverge, nationally or internationally. n And I am very interested in facing the challenge of creating a TERENA portal as a method of integrating and enhancing national efforts to improve the quality of academic information in Europe. n Plenty of interesting and valuable work to be done...

France n We expect that France’s application to join TERENA will be accepted at our formal business meeting this afternoon. (+ESA). n For a number of reasons that is a particular personal pleasure for me, and I would like to thank all those involved, especially Dany Vandomme, Director of RENATER. n I would ask everyone to make a conscious effort to integrate their colleagues as fully and as quickly as possible into TERENA, and especially into our technical work.

European Union n The creation of a Research Networking Unit in DG InfSo was very good news. n It has not had the easiest of start-ups, but we are pleased to see that it is now getting the support that it deserves from the highest levels of the Commission. n Again a particular pleasure to see Roman Tirler here from that unit, and we ask him to take our best wishes back to his colleagues.

The European Research Area n Commissioner Busquin (Research portfolio) produced a document late in 1999 entitled ”Towards a European Research Area”. Available via n One of the basic ideas is that we need to broaden the goals and scope of European research, and to plan it more coherently. n For the first time (that I can remember) the Research Commissioner seems to grasp the importance of computer networking as an enabling technology for all fields of research.

eEurope n This is a plan (with 10 major headings) aimed at speeding up Europe’s approach to the electronic future. It is available via cumentation/index_en.htm. It was prepared by Commissioner Liikanen (Information Society) and strongly supported by Minister Gago. n Endorsed by the European Council (of heads of state and government) in March, and expected to be finally signed off at next month’s European Summit. n One heading calls for “the creation of a very high-speed trans-European network for electronic scientific communications by the end of 2001 linking research institutes and universities, as well as scientific libraries, scientific centres, and, progressively, schools

The Gago challenge n In our opening session Minister Gago made it clear that the interconnect referred to in eEurope initiative is “beyond GEANT”. n But he has asked TERENA to comment on eEurope in general and on the networking plan in particular. n He wanted us to define aggressive but attainable targets. n We should clearly announce what we really want, since, as he says, these sorts of political opportunity only come very rarely.

My reaction... n Personal reaction, we will discuss formally this afternoon, and in the coming days… n My dream would be that someone donates to the research networking community two fibre pairs passing through all European capitals n And we start to deploy services on different wavelengths on those fibres.

My personal thanks n To all of the TERENA staff and my colleagues on the Executive for being so patient with me. n To Stefano Trumpy for all that he did for TERENA during his four years as President. n To Lajos Balint for his contributions during four years as TERENA treasurer. n To our colleagues in the other networking organisations, with the hope that we can maintain and improve our relations

Closing thanks from us all n To Claudio Allocchio and all the Programme Committee –Rob Blokzijl, Manfred Bogen, Hans Döbbeling, John Dyer, Jan Gruntorad, Dave Hartland, Antonio Lioy, Roberto Sabatino, Pedro Veiga, Ton Verschuren n To our sponsors. –PT Prime, Teleglobe, Network Appliance, Novell, IBM, InfoLibria, Cisco Systems, FCCN n To our speakers. n To the session chairs. n To the attendees. n To the TERENA staff involved in the conference

And some presents for... n Sr Anacleto - LNEC (National Laboratory for Civil Engineering) Conference Centre Coordinator n Elsa Sousa and Madalena Almeida from Abreu –Busses, registration, information desk, …. n Ana Braga and Salome Branco –FCCN administrative cooridnation - signs, lunches, exhibition, … n Joao Nuno Ferreira –FCCN technical coordination - kept us on the Web etc… n Pedro Veiga