The lectures of the ION Costa Rica Conference, organized by Internet Society, and the announcement of the new Executive Director of RedCLARA gave the tone of the first day of activities of the TICAL2017 Conference, which began this Monday, July 3, at the Intercontinental Hotel in San José, Costa Rica.
With the participation of approximately 300 attendees from different Latin American countries, the event started at 8:30 am with the opening of its Business Fair.
ION Costa Rica began simultaneously, bringing together network engineers and industry leaders in a half-day program to cover topics such as IPv6, DNSSEC, Securing BGP and TLS for Applications. In charge of the discussions were experts like Kevin Meynell, Fred Baker and Guillermo Cicileo, of Internet Society and LACNIC.
For Christian O'Flaherty, ISOC's director of development for Latin America and the Caribbean, the event allows network operators to stay ahead of the curve to understand and implement emerging Internet technologies. "ION presented a unique opportunity to discuss the future of the Internet with people who help create it. More than a simple series of lectures, it provided hands-on interaction with our panelists, so attendees take the answers they need to implement new standards and technologies in their own networks", he said.
The opening ceremony, which marked the official opening of TICAL, was held in the afternoon and was attended by various authorities from the ICT universe of the region. The session was chaired by the president of the Board of Directors of RedCLARA, Carlos Casasús, RedCLARA's Deputy General Manager, Carmen Gloria Labbé; The Rector of the University of Costa Rica, Henning Jensen; The Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica, Carolina Vásquez Soto, representatives of CONARE and the recently elected new director of the regional network, Guatemala-based Venezuelan Luis Eliecer Cadenas Marin.
By videoconference, the former director of RedCLARA, Florencio Utreras, talked about his experience in the network over the last years and wished success to the new director.
The keynote speech was given by Dr. Henning Jensen Pennington, who stressed the importance of incorporating ICT in universities and that these should become a transversal axis in all areas of knowledge and university work. "The technology is one of the most urgent issues to be discussed in our universities. I think they are not the end, but one of the most powerful means we have to achieve higher goals", said the rector, who also told what actions the UCR is developing to promote the use of ICT, such as the Computer Committee in which he is part of. Jensen was followed by Francisco Garcia Calvo, of Google, with the presentation "Innovation and Artificial Intelligence in Education."
The day of activities closed with the first round of parallel sessions, where a part of the 33 papers selected for the Conference by its Program Committee and the Program Committee of the first Latin American e-Science Meeting was presented.
In the opinion of Carmen Gloria Labbé, the first day of activities at TICAL exceeded expectations. "We had good discussions, the space is nice and the content of the program is very striking. I hope the next two days will be even better and everyone will feel comfortable in TICAL". The parallel sessions, as well as the plenary sessions, continue this Tuesday, July 4. As in previous years, TICAL has live streaming of its main sessions at http://ticalstream.redclara.net/tical/room-spanish.php.
The seventh edition of TICAL is organized by RedCLARA, RedCONARE and CONARE, under the sponsorship of Microsoft, Google, LACNIC, Internet Society Latin America and the Caribbean, Padtec S / A, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Latam, Ruckus Wireless, Brocade, Nokia , Level3, Telefonica, OnBase by Hiland, Grupo Binário / Coriant, Grammata Educación, Ufinet, Wolfram, Cisco and Organizational Consulting.
For more information on TICAL2017 and its program, visit http://tical2017.redclara.net
