A couple of days ago I had a conversation with John Dyer in his capacity as a trustee of the Vietsch Foundation which was established in memory of Karel . I understand the foundation will do two things; issue an annual medal for contributions to research networking and contribute to small projects. This post is about the latter. In John’s words, it would be projects that contribute to research networking in the wider sense and that without a contribution like this wouldn’t happen. For over a decade I’ve been walking around with the idea to establish a continuous team of students to do very early stage technology scouting for NRENs. I did my graduation work in an environment like that and found it both inspiring and worthwhile. I believe it would give NRENs a continuous influx of fresh ideas, a number of students an inspiring first encounter with the wonderful world of research networking and standardisation bodies and the people involved a great time. This idea to me seemed to fit the purpose and goals of the small project fund of the Vietsch foundation. After talking it through with John he invited me to write it down and put it forward. So here we go. You’re being missed Karel, I’m glad I can contribute to your legacy.
A proposal for a student programme for very early stage technology scouting.
Introduction
In the early years of research networking European NRENs were active participants in the IETF both as participants and as active observers. This ensured early knowledge of the technologies that would become generally available some years down the line. Over the years the NREN participation has gone down, both in absolute terms and relative to the amount of technology developed the IETF and W3C. The relevance of the standards defined in the IETF and the W3C has gone in one direction only: through the roof. Current day research is impossible without the infrastructures built with these standards, education is rapidly going in the same direction. There are reasons why the NREN involvement has diminished but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Challenges
- Many students and young professionals I’ve met over the years are unfamiliar with the processes by which standards are established. I don’t think that’s a good situation for a technologist to be in. Black magic has no place in building Internet infrastructure.
- The IETF and W3C are responsible for most of the standards that make our research and education infrastructure tick. From IP-over-whatever to standardised ways to access a web camera, the entire stack is covered. The breadth of technology developed in both IETF and W3C has widened since I started working in this industry in 1998. Back then one could have the illusion to read all RFCs in use at that time. Very quickly it became apparent there was more development going on than one person could reasonably follow. From my observation there’s more technology development going on than the NRENs can reasonably be expected to keep track of. Most NRENs are business case driven these days. This means there’s limited resources to do R&D. That does not combine too well with an ever growing body of “stuff” to possibly do R&D on.
- Timing is important. Invest too much too early and you’ve blown your resources on technology that wasn’t at the right maturity level yet. Invest too late and you’re in the dinosaur/laggard group and others will have defined what you and the HE&R (higher education and research) setor have to live with. Both have happened in the NREN world and are likely to happen again. How to deal with this reality where your resources will not map on the challenge?
Be creative 🙂
Proposal
I propose to establish a permanent systematic very early stage technology scouting capability manned with students and volunteer mentors to do systematic very early stage technology scouting for R&E networking.
Students are selected through a competition, based in proposals they sent in. We don’t provide any subjects, we only provide some boundary conditions. Proposals have to specify the relevance to the R&E community. The most promising proposals are selected. Students should come in a team of at least two. This makes life easier on the mentors as they’ll reflect to themselves. Students are paired with a volunteer mentor relevant for that particular project. The mentor is responsible for introducing the students to the right people, providing reflections and historical background end explaining the written and unwritten rules of the environment the student works in. The students get at least one funded trip to the standardisation body together with the mentor.
Such a project would typically be short term. Maybe 3 months is enough. Maybe 6 months. There might be pursuits that last a year. It could be thesis work, it could be a summer holiday project. If at any point in time we would have a couple of these projects going on, then after a couple of years you’d have an interesting portfolio of emerging technology that had been looked at and judged on for relevance to the R&E world. View it as shooting with hail. Not all of it will hit the mark but some will. In addition we’ll have introduced at least a number of promising young technologists to the value and values of open systems and open standards and the mechanisms producing them.
A setup like this would help us identify promising emerging technologies for the higher education and research world at an early stage. Help us decide when to start investing, when we should start building more competence on that particular technology. Should we maybe get involved in a particular standardisation effort to ensure the use cases of our sector are included in the requirements specification for those standareds?
A programme like this contributes to NREN involvement in standardisation processes and does so in a systematic way. It promotes our core values of open systems and open standards to fresh blood. It sustains our community. Worst case scenario it will have introduced a number of promising and motivated students to the IETF.
Obviously how many of these types of projects you can have at any point in time depends on the amount of funding available. Once a programme is in place and has proven itself, it should be possible to expand funding if needed. Another limiting factor will be the number of available mentors. I guess you would need a pool of volunteer mentors together covering the different layers in the stack. Assuming this programme is a longer term effort, a mentor doesn’t have to be available all the time to be part of the fun but could plan periods of availability. I can’t imagine it would be problem to find enough people for mentoring, as long as travel expenses are covered the work sounds like fun!
With a number of student projects going on at any time after a few years you’d end up with an interesting number of emerging technologies that have been looked at at an early stage in the context of higher education and research applications. The competition element helps to get the best & brightest in the programme and introduce them to the NREN world. It glues NRENs, universities and standardisation bodies closer together. The programme would provide a steady stream of early stage technology scouting input to the NREN world. I think these would be good things.
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