The seventh edition of TICAL, the conference of the Directors of Information and Communications Technologies of the Latin American Universities, ended this Wednesday, July 5th. The event, the only driven to its public in the region, was held at the Hotel InterContinental in San José, Costa Rica, bringing together more than 300 participants from different parts of Latin America, North America and Europe.
The journey of TICAL2017, held in conjunction with the first edition of the Latin American e-Science Meeting and the ION Conference, organized by the Internet Society, included 54 exhibitions of papers, company presentations, discussion tables, workshops and exhibitions of the four invited international panelists. In a permanent and fruitful discussion were the current moment and the trends of the technologies of information and communications in the institutions of higher education of the región; three intense days of "pure life", science and technology.
In the opinion of Mariano Bontempo, Executive Director of TICAL2017's host network, RedCONARE, all the effort made to held the event was worth. "We started working to bring TICAL to our country soon after TICAL2016, in Argentina. Today I can say that everything was worth. The event has been successful for everyone. It strikes me to see how TICAL enhances collaboration. I have approached many other directors and representatives of national networks and I see good possibilities for new joint developments. In our region, no encounter does this as TICAL. RedCONARE was specifically benefited from these three days."
For Juan Pablo Carballo, Executive Director of Ecuador's national academic network, TICAL2017 was "formidable". "From the technical point of view, it's been the best edition I've ever been to. The technical talks were very interesting and all the ICT directors I talked to are very happy.” Carballo's opinion is shared by the new Executive Director of RedCLARA, venezuelan Luis Eliecer Cadenas Marin. Participating for the first time in the Conference, Marin also highlighted the e-Science track as fundamental for the success of the event. "I think the e-Science meeting allowed us to better understand the needs and work of the scientific communities. It's a very important approach", he said.
The event also included the launch of the second edition of the book "Enhancing the University of the XXI Century: ICT solutions to think about the universities of the future", organized by Ernesto Chinkes, General ICT Coordinator of the University of Buenos Aires Aires and Honorary President of TICAL. Printed versions of the publication were distributed to those present at the event and a digital version will be available at RedCLARA’s and TICAL’s websites in the coming days. The Conference also had live transmission of its main sessions, records that will also be made available on the Conference website (http://tical2017.redclara.net), as well as the presentations of the parallel sessions, photos of the event and many other information on what was TICAL2017.
TICAL2017 was organized by RedCLARA, RedCONARE and CONARE, and was sponsored by Microsoft, Google, LACNIC, Internet Society Latin America and the Caribbean, Padtec S / A, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Latam, Brocade / Ruckus, Nokia, Level3, Telefonica, OnBase by Hiland, Grupo Binário / Coriant, Grammata Education, Ufinet, Cisco and Organizational Consulting.
