Leadership is demanding. Today’s leaders need broader and deeper skills than ever before to meet the evolving needs of our organisations and successfully navigate these uncertain times. Join leaders and people development professionals to hear how their NRENs are building leadership capabilities. Find out how GÉANT has developed leaders for the future through a programme tailored specifically to those leading GN5 projects.

Wednesday 11th June 11:00 - 12:30 BST | Founders Room
Chair: Sarah Hughes (GÉANT)

In this podcast we talk with Sparkle about how they will be showcasing the power of AI and cloud services in delivering new opportunities in the field of healthcare and how OCRE24 will help provide institutions and NRENs greater support for Research and Education.

Rosanna Norman and Irina Matthews discuss two presentations happening in the Community Hub on Tuesday 

GÉANT Community for NRENs by NRENs: A Changing Landscape

Support for URAN Lessons Learnt: Humanitarian Support in the Community Programme

Tuesday 10th  June 14:00 – 15:30 Community Hub 

Research and Education networks have always been at the forefront of technology, often with the highest traffic demands and toughest performance requirements. Exactly how AI will impact these networks is still to be determined but will likely add to the challenges of economically scaling bandwidth among data centers.

In this brief presentation, we will discuss the latest trends in optical networking innovation that will help NRENs easily scale optical transport networks in an uncertain future where bandwidth may rapidly accelerate due to AI workloads. Specifically, we’ll look at 800Gbps optics, supporting an IP over DWDM architecture and long-distance optical spans through pluggables directly mounted in IP routers.

Join us to understand the underlying innovation enabling this technological jump and how it fits in existing optical networks and the operational needs for NRENs.

Exchange Theatre: Wednesday 11 June 12:45 - 13:05 

Speaker: Jon Baldry (Nokia)

This session will shine a light, maybe even a laser, on the global connectivity landscape, unwrapping how different world regions interconnect today and how that might need to evolve into the future. Delivering connectivity and building networks within a single country is business as usual for an NREN, but in this session we will learn about the challenges of deploying connectivity between continents, under the sea, and through some of the most challenging environments on earth. 3 unique perspectives from 3 different organisations will offer a fascinating insight into what it takes to continually enhance capability and keep research and education traffic flowing across the globe.

Tuesday 10th June 14:00 - 15:30 BST | Concert Hall
Chair: Neil Shewry (Jisc)

In this podcast, Kireeti Kompella talks about how to build a Network Digital Twins and how this can help you to play out your network operations fantasies and live to tell the tale!

NRENs are built on the power of collaboration, and true impact comes when we align technical expertise with shared purpose, global cooperation, and collective action. This session highlights three unique ways NRENs are working as one to deliver more than the sum of their parts. We’ll see how AARNet and Cybera leverage time zones for seamless security operations, how SURF’s shared vision strengthens strategy and community, and how 39 NRENs simplify cloud adoption through OCRE2024. Join us to see collaboration at scale in action!

Tuesday 10th June 16:00 - 17:30 BST | Unitarian Church
Chair: Joost Gadellaa (SURF)

Submarine fibre cables are the invisible yet crucial part of global communication. Beyond the original purpose, the same cables are becoming luminous threads enabling us to discover the fascinating world beneath the waves. Join the Bright Cables session to explore how the submarine cable infrastructures are evolving into powerful scientific tools, sensing the pulse of our planet in real time. We will be highlighting how data movers are becoming data generators, from Polar Connect’s strategic potential in harsh and unexplored environments to the SUBMERSE project’s transformative vision of turning network into proof-of-concept environmental observatory. Become a part of the growing, collaborative community illuminating the ocean’s hidden dynamics—seismic shifts, marine life, and other interesting things—with each bright strand of cable lighting the path to the future.

Thursday 12 June 11:00 - 12:30 BST | Studio Theatre
Chair: Ieva Muraškienė (NORDUnet)

The Global Research Platform (GRP) is a worldwide collaboration designing, implementing, and operating the largest, globally distributed, high-performance computing and communications environments for data-intensive science, including high-energy physics, astrophysics, bioinformatics, computational science, fusion energy, atmospheric and oceanographic science. GRP communities create advanced, innovative communication services embedded in high performance networks, e.g., 100/400/800 Gbps and Tbps. Participants collaborate to customize services, fabrics, and distributed cyberinfrastructure in support of optimal data-intensive scientific workflows and to facilitate high-performance data gathering, analytics, transport, computing, and storage among scientific research instruments and computing resources worldwide. 

Joe Mambretti

Friday 13th June 09:00 - 12:30 BST | Noblesse Room

As an NREN, a working group, or as an individual, we do a lot of things: we create, engage, connect, inspire, collaborate, fix, work, break, learn, innovate, support, solve problems, adapt, grow, win, and sometimes fail. In this session you will learn how to share our successes more effectively and examples how it has been done right. By doing this, we can make sure our hard work gets noticed and has a bigger impact and becomes more visible, helping us build a stronger and more connected digital community.

Thursday 12th June 14:00 - 15:30 BST | Studio Theatre
Chair: Renato Furter (Switch)