Keynote Speaker: Joe Mambretti, Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research, Northwestern University (www.iCAIR.org), Director of Metropolitan Research and Education Network (www.mren.org)

 Creating Communications for the 21st Century:  Applications, Architecture, Technology, and Facilites

On-going demand for new applications and services, increased technology innovation, and rapidly changing economics require a substantially new infrastructure architecture for 21st Century digital communications.  Meeting the challenges of these changes requires replacing traditional infrastructure with one that provides not only for higher performance, but also for significantly more flexibility and determinism.  The design of today's basic communications infrastructure provides for minimal performance communication services that are non-deterministic, and inflexible.  The traditional architectural model has been oriented toward meeting the exacting requirements of a finite set of well-defined services, essentially, a fixed set of modalities, with known parameters.  Consequently, this infrastructure has become a restrictive barrier to the deployment of new and enhanced capabilities.  As an alternative, an innovative digital communications infrastructure is being designed, prototyped, and provisioned in early implementations.  This new design provides for a foundation infrastructure consisting of reconfigurable common, shared resources.  This infrastructure could be considered a programmable platform that can support many more services than traditional deployments, including highly differentiated and deterministic services.  This approach enables the design, provisioning, and customization of an unlimited number of services.  This design provides for a large scale, distributed facility, which is in essence a highly distributed environment, within which it is possible to create many different networks, each with distinctive characteristics, and each capable of many individualized services.  This design can be used to create flexible infrastructure foundations, or platforms, that can be major catalysts for innovation, enabling new communication services that cannot be implemented on traditional systems.  This new architecture is already emerging from research labs and is beginning to be implemented within metro, national, and international prototype facilities.  These facilities are being used to demonstrate a wide spectrum of innovative high performance large-scale applications, advanced data services, and specialized networks. 

Joel Mambretti is the Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern, which is focused on developing digital communications for the 21st Century.  The Center, which was created in partnership with a number of major high tech corporations (www.icair.org), designs and implements large scale infrastructure and applications (metro, regional, national, and global).  He is also Director of the Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN, http://www.mren.org), an advanced high-performance network interlinking organization in seven upper-midwest states.  MREN, which designed and developed the world's first GigaPOP.  With its research partners, iCAIR has established several major testbeds, including OMNInetm, to develop new architecture and technology for dynamic lightpath switching.  iCAIR has partnered with the Electronic Visualization Lab of the University of Illinois at Chicago to create StarLight (www.startap.net/starlight) an advanced global communications exchanged based on leading-edge optical technologies in Chicago.  He is one of the PIs of the national TeraFlow Network, a member of the executive committee of I-WIRE (a state-wide optical research network in Illinois), a founding member of the Global Integrated Lambda Facility, a world wide distributed optical communications infrastructure, a member of Chicago's Council of Technology Advisors (MCTA), and Co-Chair of the Illinois Broadband Deployment Council's Committee on Infrastructure.  He has been a member of numerous committees, projects, and initiatives directed at shaping national, state, local, and international communications policy related to large-scale communications infrastructure.  He has served on the advisory boards of major technology corporations, and he is a frequent speaker at national and international communications technology forums.  He has published multiple articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.  Among his publications are two co-authored books published by Wiley, "Next Generation Internet," and "Grid Networks:  Enabling Grids with Advanced Communication Technology." 

Reception:  San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo located in Balboa Park, San Diego, California is one of the largest and most progressive zoos in the world.  It is privately operated by the Zoological Society of San Diego with all animals and assets owned by the City of San Diego.  The San Diego Zoo grew out of an exotic animal exhibition that was abandoned after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition.  Many foreign animals were brought to San Diego for the exposition and put on display, and were subsequently abandoned.

The zoo is extremely active in conservation and species preservation efforts.  Its research division, the Center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) raises California Condors, Pandas, Tigers, African Black Rhinos, and a large number of other endangered species.  Many are bred in captivity for release into their natural habitats, where appropriate.  The zoo employs numerous professional geneticists, cytologists, and veterinarians and maintains a cryopreservation facility for rare sperm and eggs called the Frozen Zoo.

The Junior San Diego Zoological Society was created in 1917.  The purpose of the Junior Zoological Society was to build relationships with the children of San Diego and to give them educational experiences that would enrich their lives.

The San Diego Zoo continues to build relationships with children.  They have created a program that enables children from around the country to interact with Zoo educators and animals from the animal ambassador collection.  The animal ambassadors include a variety of birds, mammals, and reptiles from around the world that can be handled by the educators and are brought to the classroom for an up-close look on camera.  The programs cover a variety of topics such as animal classifications and endangered species and all originate in a Zoo classroom.

Our reception will cover animal adaptations and how an animal's body parts and habits help it survive in its environment.  This reception will be held at a distance.  

San Diego Zoo Trivia

The first two Giant Panda cubs in U.S. History to have been born in the U.S. and survive into adulthood, Hua Mei (female) and Mei Sheng (male) were born at the San Diego Zoo, in 1999 and 2003, respectively.

The San Diego Zoo currently has the largest population of Giant Pandas outside of mainland China.

The Zoo has been a pioneer in building "cageless" exhibits.

The Zoo is one of the world's few major zoos to have almost all of its major exhibits be open-air; the only major exhibition building on grounds is the Reptile House.

The San Diego Zoo has the largest number of Koalas outside of Australia.

The Beach Boys' 1966 album, Pet Sounds has a cover and various album photography from the San Diego Zoo. 

Annual Member Meeting - Beyond Grow Smart Panel Discussion

This year's annual member meeting will be focused on Grow Smart and Beyond.  There will be a panel discussion about how our new fixed-cost network access model is changing the way our members manage their networks.  There will also be time for a question and answer session.  Be sure to check your conference materials for the Beyond Grow Smart Road Map.

Moderated by:  Kathy Pletcher, UW Green Bay

Presenters:  John Reiels, Nicolet High School; Sathish Gopalrao, UW Madison Housing; Ross Wilson, CESA10; Stef Morrill, South Central Library System 

Emergency Communications Panel Discussion 

In this session panel members will describe what their institutions are doing to facilitate commmunications in the event of a crisis.  Given the numerous and varied tragedies across the nation, emergency communications has become a focus.  A question and answer period will follow, where attendees are encouraged to ascertain how their schools can best prepare for communication in a crisis.

Weston School District experienced an act of violence in the school on September 29, 2007.  The situation identified the positive and negative aspects of Weston's preparation for a crisis.  Communication was an important aspect of the minutes, hours, and days following the incident.  Weston has made changes in its procedures and in their communications equipment and protocol.

Western Technical College has been very concious of tragedies at other educational institutions.  As with all other institutions we are working quickly to enhance our communications systems and our internal plans and protocols to prepare ourselves in the best way we can in hopes we never need to use them.  Our situation is a little different in that we have seven campus locations with students and staff moving freely between them, making communications difficult.

Crisis notifications on the UW-Madison campus are accomplished using multiple systems and in conjunction with UW's Crisis Response Plan.  We will give an overview of UW's plan and will talk about the four notification methods UW has in place, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes technologies used to manage crises. 

Moderated by Perry Brunelli, UW Madison

Presenters:  Tom Andres, Weston School District; Bruce Mathew, Western Technical College; Catie Isenberg, UW Madison; Dave Crass, UW Milwaukee 

Presentation: Crisis Communications 

Email Retention 2008

A review of the requirements and challenges of retaining public records that occur in e-mail.  There will be both a presentation and an opportunity for discussion.

Presenter:  Amy Moran, Wisconsin Department of Administration

Presentation: Email Rentention  

Personal Digital Certificates for Encryption, Digital Signing, and Strong Authentication

As the internet has evolved over the past decade, so have the needs of people who are using electronic communication as a means to conduct secure personal and business transactions.  Personal digital certificates are growing in usage as the technology of choice to enable secure communications across organizational borders.  From encrypting email to ensure privacy, to digitally signing Office and PDF files to prove data authenticity and integrity, to dual factor  strong authentication for web applications, digital certificates have proven to be an enourmously powerful tool.  This presentation focuses on why and how the UW-Madison has leveraged personal digital certificate usage in support of our evolving electronic business processes.  Learn from real world examples, how personal digital certificates actually function, and how they can be easily incorporated into your existing IT environment to help secure the sensitive electronic communications of your employees as part of your HIPAA and FERPA compliance initiatives.

Presenter:  Nicholas Davis, UW Madison DoIT Middleware Systems 

Presentation: Personal Digital Certificates

New Member and First Time Conference Attendee Meeting

New to WiscNet?  New to FTC?  During this session the WiscNet Executive Director and Staff will be talking about the inter-workings of WiscNet.  Learn how we operate, about our resources, and how the WiscNet community collaborates.  Hear a little about our history and organization from a Board Member.  This is also an opportunity to ask questions and get to know some of the staff face-to-face.  We look forward to seeing you!

Presenters:  Ross Wilson, CESA10; Dave Lois, Kika Barr, and Heidi Genthner, WiscNet 

Presentation: WiscNet 2008  

WiscNet Filtering 2.0 - Stopping Anonymous Proxies PLUS Enhanced Reporting

Anonymous proxies are one of the biggest obstacles to employing a good internet filtering system.  Students find ways around rules and central filtering systems by using these sites, where owners try to stay one step ahead of the URL based filtering by continuously changing domain names.

WiscNet's Local Filter Service uses 8e6's R3000 to tackle this problem.  Pattern based blocking detects these sites even when they're not in the URL library.  With a local filter, ALL of your traffic has to pass through the R3000, so it catches the information that is trying to sneak through your filter.  With its enhanced Enterprise Reporting Suite built into the system, the R3000 is a great device for getting better control of your web traffic.

Presenters:  Rich Turiel and Joel Mundt, WiscNet 

Presentation: WiscNet Filtering  

Building the Network Around the Network

Web 1.0 was about connecting people to things.  Web 2.0 is about connecting people to people.  Nice and simple.  But what does this actually look like?  More importantly, what does this mean for the future of our networked things and our networked members?  This session mixes equal parts demonstration and conversation.  We'll gaze a bit at what "networked learning" means through the perspective of WiscNet's new Educational Technology Liaison John Pederson.  We also want to hear from you about issues facing members as we grapple with what "networked learning" means in our schools and libraries.

 Presenter:  John Pederson, WiscNet

Presentation: Building the Network Around the Network 

PCI Compliance for Government and Education

Does your organization process, transmit, or store credit card information?  Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is not just for Retail.  Please join Cisco to discuss:

• What is PCI
• What are the penalties and risks of not complying
• What your organization may have to do to comply
• How Cisco's Self-Defending Network solution maps to the 12 rules

Presenter:  Bret Straffon, Product Sales Specialist - Security, Cisco Systems 

Wireless Standards

An update on the new Wireless Standards including 802.11n and MIMO technology and the benefits compared to the previous Wireless Standards.  Topics covered will be:

• What is 802.11n?
• What is MIMO?
• How is 802.11n different than current generations of WI-FI?
• What are the benefits in 802.11n in K12?
• Migration path from old standards.

The evolutionary adoption of 802.11n is not logical, it will ultimately be the primary WLAN infrastructure standard as enterprises migrate toward converged high-speed wireless networks.  Businesses will eventually need to upgrade their wireless infrastructure to accommodate the greater bandwidth and throughput capabilities of next-generation applications, along with voice and IP-based solutions.  802.11n delivers wire speed performance and increases the RF coverage area significantly, helping to provide enterprise wide mobility while maintaining security and tracking information.  This session will provide a technology overview and discuss design practices.

Virtual WLAN (vWLAN) is a new technology that allows utilization of the existing switched network and provides edge based policy and routing, eliminating a major bottleneck with existing centralized authentication solutions.  Policy is applied at the access layer and all traffic then goes directly to its destination.

Migration is a key element to any technology upgrade and 802.11n allows for dedicated radios to be utilized for the new technology and a traditional A/BG radio for existing users, providing for a seamless migration path in a single AP.  Learn the best practice methods for implementation of 802.11n technology.

Presenter:  Cindy Peters, Delta Communications 

Growing Smart with Moodle:  Panel Discussion on Moodle Technology and Pedagogy in Wisconsin

Join our panelists from education institutions that have implemented and integrated Moodle into their environment.  Panelists with both technology and pedagogy backgrounds will discuss their experiences implementing Moodle into the technology and people infrastructure of their schools. 

Moderated by Craig Stephenson, WiscNet

Presenters:  CESA10, CESA12, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, School District of the Menomonie Area 

Presentation: Growing Smart With Moodle  

Chippewa Valley InterNetworking Consortium - A Community Area Network Ongoing Success Story

The CINC success story is rooted in the diverse needs of the diverse membership, which has formed an incredibly strong partnership, network, and opportunity for the future.

Representatives of the membership will share thoughts through their institutional lenses - UW, City and County Government, School District, Regional Agency, and Health Care.  There will be ample time for questions and concerns - wear your can-do hat!  Oh - and we will have maps to share with squiggly lines on them.

Presenters: Daren Bauer, UW Eau Claire; Jim Hadlock, Chippewa Falls School District; John LeBrun, City of Eau Claire; Pete Nohelty, Sacred Heart Hospital; Bob Scidmore, Eau Claire School District; Ross Wilson, CESA10 

Presentation: CINC FTC 2008  

What is a Security Architecture?

In this talk Jim Lowe will discuss what it means to have a security architecture and why you want one.  Jim will discuss what we are trying to achieve through an architecture, how best practices, processes, standards, and enabling technologies can help create a common understanding (an agreement) of how information is managed, how processes are automated, and how the privacy and assurance of the information is maintained.

Presenter:  Jim Lowe, Director of Office of Campus Information Security, UW Madison 

Presentation: Security Uncertainty: What Matters, Motivates and Moves  

Educational Technology Liaison 2.0

Maddy Covelli is thrilled to be one of WiscNet's newest Educational Technology Liaisons.  Get to know Maddy by attending this session and learning about her and her previous work with academic technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She will share personal and professional interests, wisdom gleaned from working with today's "wired" students, and research that has shaped her current view of educational and research technologies and what the future may hold.

Presenter: Maddy Covelli, WiscNet 

Presentation: Educational Technology Liaison 2.0

Ludology and Education

It takes intelligence to create the artificial world of video games.  

Designing and creating games educates our youth in science, technology, engineering, math, and problem solving.  In the virtual world of games, object-oriented programming concepts, math algorithms and artificial intelligence are used to create a real world experience.  Creating games is not easy but the reward is an exciting, fun, and social adventure into virtual worlds.  Many tools are available to create games, game mods, or content.  Judy Ligocki and Alain DeMars will present an overview of the computer simulation and gaming associate degree program at MATC Milwaukee, the reasons behind our choices and a demonstration of tools they are using.  The degree program officially kicks off this August.  These tools can be used at various levels of education to get students interested in programming, multimedia design, gaming, and problem solving.

Presenters:  Alain DeMars and Judy Ligocki, Milwaukee Area Technical College

Presentation: Computer Simulation and Gaming

Lecture Capture with Apple Podcast Producer

Join representatives from Apple Computer to discuss Podcast Producer, Apple's new automated lecture caption solution.  During the presentation we will demonstrate and discuss:

• Podcast producer out of the box.
• Strategies for scaling a lecture capture solution, from the podium to the campus.
• The Podcast Producer automated workflow.

Plan to join Apple for this fascinating Technology Briefing.

Presenter:  Bob Boyle, Apple Computer 

Communications in Education:  From Daily Operations to Managing Emergencies

Communications have always played a vital role in the ongoing accomplishment of the mission of education.  Advances in technology and the near ubiquitous adoption of wireless devices for voice and data have changed the landscape for administrative leaders, CIO's, faculty, staff, and students.  Learn how we can leverage new wireless capabilities to improve operational efficiency, communicate during and manage a crisis, improve academic engagement and build community on campuses.  

Presenter:  Michael Flood, Sprint 

Education in a "Flat" World

How do we help students thrive in an International Environment?  It is important to provide students with an education that will prepare them for the increasingly complex world of the 21st century.  Students need to be able to use 21st century skills to understand other nations, cultures, and global issues.  We can ensure that they are receiving a global perspective by assisting them in obtaining skills and cultural understanding needed to thrive in an international environment.  Topics covered will include how to connect your classroom globally/virtually, project based collaborative projects, videoconferencing, collaborative tools, e-field trips, etc.

Presenting:  Keith Schroeder, Howard Suamico School District 

Presentation: Education in a "Flat" World  

Virtual Server Environments, The Basics

We will cover the basics of virtualization technologies, with an emphasis on VMware virtual environments. 

Presenter:  Bob Plankers, UW Madison DoIT Systems Engineering 

Presentation: Virtualization Basics 

R&E Network Models: Current & Future

In the spring of 2007, The Quilt and MIDnet, Inc. began a collaborative project to document the business models of research and education optical networks.  Specifically, the two organizations were interested in collecting information on organizational structure, governance, management and operations, initial funding sources, cost recovery methodologies, services and service pricing strategies, outreach, lessons learned, and future directions.  A summary of the findings will be presented during the session.

Presenters:  Jen Leasure, The QUILT; Carol Farnham, MIDnet, Inc.; Jim Moran MERIT 

Presentation: Research & Education Business Models  

UW System Desktop Encryption Project

In order to reduce the risk of a data breach, users that store sensitive data on laptops and desktops need a method of easily and securely storing their information.  This presentation is an introduction to full disk encryption.  We will discuss the reasons encryption is desirable, review the requirements and product selected for our ongoing encryption project, and highlight the various challenges we are facing.

Presenter:  Allen Monette, UW Madison Office of Campus Information Security

Presentation: Endpoint Encryption Project

ARIN/IP Legacy Discussion

This session will be a facilitated discussion among participants that have IP address space allocated directly to their institutions (not allocated by WiscNet) by Internet registrars prior to the inception of ARIN in 1997.  ARIN has been sending letters offering holders of this "legacy IP address space" an opportunity to register with ARIN to ensure ongoing use of their addresses and some additional services.  There are may opinions about what institutions in this position should do and even what authority ARIN has over such legacy addresses.  We will provide an opportunity for members to share their thoughts on the topic and hopefully help us all better understand the issues.

Facilitated by:  Brian Remer, WiscNet/UW System

WHY Unified Threat Management

This session is designed to be a vendor neutral presentation of the architecture called Unified Threat Management.

In the not too distant past, the information security needs for most organizations were fairly straightforward.  From a technology perspective, core defenses included a handful of perimeter-based firewalls to policing traffic originating from the Internet, along with software at desktops, and perhaps email gateways, to counter the emerging threat from viruses.  A smattering of tools were subsequently added either to "enable the business" or to achieve an incrementally greater degree of defense in depth.  Most notable among these were virtual private network (VPN) technology, to support secure remote connections over the Internet, and intrusion detection systems (IDS), essentially to obtain a network based variation of anti-virus controls - and inevitably yielding a mountain of "event" data requiring a very time-consuming analysis by the security team.

A closer examination of the ongoing changes to the security landscape is essential to better understanding both the market need for multi-layer security platforms and the requirements that must be met to achieve a best-of-breed solution.

Arguably the greatest security challenge facing organizations today is the evolution of threats, those bad elements, (e.g. viruses, worms, hackers) which seek to exploit a system's vulnerabilities.  Most notable among these is the fact that threats are now being created more quickly than was historically the case.  Equally troubling is the fact that threats are becoming more elusive.  On one hand, this stems from a rise in the frequency of blended threats.

To keep up with these changes to the "threat-scape," security strategies and solutions must evolve as well.

Significant changes in the threat, technology, and regulatory landscapes are forcing organizations to implement an increasing array of security controls in an increasing number of locations throughout their business environments.  What is Unified Threat Management and do we know enough or what this architecture can do to help our organizations.

Presenters:  Jim Dziak and the Fortinet Team 

Enforcing School Filtering Policy on Remote Students

The emerging need to provide students laptops to access educational material on the Internet is driving the need to keep students on task while away from the school network.  Ken Donze from 8e6 will explain how to keep students on task and within CIPA compliance with your school assigned laptop program when that laptop has left the school.

Presenter:  Ken Donze, CISSP, 8e6 Senior Solutions Engineer 

Impact Through Innovation - Redrawing the Big Picture

This session will illustrate firsthand how web casting transformed how a campus and community communicated utilizing innovative rich media opportunity.  From early pilot demonstrations to multi-million dollar fund raising, from classroom captures to international collaborations, see and learn how innovative transmissions helped to redraw the traditioal big picture communication efforts.  Bring your paper and your pen and learn how to begin drawing your own "Big Picture" of messages with far reaching impact.  Be ready for an interactive and engaging experience.

Presenters:  Jim Jorstad, UW La Crosse; Terry Wirkus, UW La Crosse; Chuck Coopman, Sonic Foundry 

E-Rate Policies and Bandwidth

This presentation will explain how to leverage E-Rate funding to purchase data circuits that are large enough to meet your educational objectives.

Presenter:  Jim Young, WiscNet 

Growing the Backbone Smartly

WiscNet's Grow Smart initiative is freezing WiscNet members' network access fees for the next two years and allowing members to use as much bandwidth as they need.  During this two-year period the WiscNet Board and members will develop a new funding model that will look at continuing a bandwidth insensitive billing system.  These new models will drive network growth at a faster pace than we have seen.  Come hear how the WiscNet backbone has evolved and what future changes are planned to help it scale wihtout increasing costs.  Topics will include core router upgrades, BOREAS, peering, and upstream transit.

Presenter:  Jeff Bartig, WiscNet Network Engineer

Presentation: WiscNet Backbone Update  

Using a Special Purpose Implementation of Moodle for Teacher Alternative Professional Assessment

The School District of the Menomonie Area (SDMA) APA task team has recently designed and is in "beta testing" of a special purpose application of Moodle for use as the management information system for their districts supervision and evaluation model, "Alternative Professional Assessment (APA)."  Moodle was an excellent source to use as the foundation for making the APA a paperless approach to supervision, evaluation, and mentoring.  The use of this paperless approach through the application of an online model will save time for both the teacher and supervisor, it will allow for a quality record of the interaction, plus save significant money in copying costs and storage costs.

Learn how Moodle is a good pedagogical approach to learning for SDMA Alternative Professional Assessment (APA), which is the district's supervision and evaluation model.  Please plan on attending this session to learn about SDMA's approach from the developers of this innovative approach to supervision and evaluation.  Also, learn what built-in Moodle resources and add-on modules the team chose to use where and why. 

Presenters: Garland Green, Dennis Kieser, & Dudley Markham, Menomonie Area School District 

Presentation: Register for an iLearn Account | Join APA 

Unleashing Creativity in Web 2.0 Environments Through Creative Commons

Copyright is complicated.  Many educators claim "fair use," say "it's for the kids," and don't want to think hard about the implications of copyright compliance.  Meanwhile, the ease of use with new digital technologies makes breaking the law orders of magnitude easier.  Copyright becomes a very messy topic.  What if we just bypassed it all together?  This session explores the role Creative Commons plays in the digital copyright landscape.  Creative Commons allows content producers and content consumers to share their creativity in a more flexible manner.  This session will share strategies for finding Creative Commons licensed images, audio, and classroom content.

Presenter:  John Pederson, WiscNet 

Presentation: Unleashing Creativity  

OSFORA:  An Open Source Federated Object Repository Architecture

Imagine having a local respository that was linked to any number of others by a central search function; a repository on which you could store digital content you are developing and, when you like, share with any number of others including the NSDL and your peers.  OSFORA describes just such an architecture.  The Academic Advanced Distributive Learning Co-Lab, as part of its research and development efforts has created an exemplary instance, the Wisconsin Federated Repository, based on OSFORA and built around open source, freely available, Plone and the CWIS registry software from the Scout Project.  This discussion will include demos of digital math and science content being developed at the Institute for Innovation in Undergraduate Research and Learning at UW-La Crosse, the first ever local server application.

Presenters:  David Wirth, Assistant Director, Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab; Chris Raasch, Chief Technology Officer, Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab; Hal Schlais, UW System Wide Liaison, Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab/Institute for Innovation in Undergraduate Research and Learning

Presentation: OSFORA Presentation  

How to Make your Network More Secure

Enterasys Networks will present policy enabled networking and what it can do for your organization.  Leveraging Enterasys switches, we will show you how to implement guest access, classroom control, and per port security roles.

Presenter:  David Savage, Enterasys Networks