e-AGE 2016, AROQA 2016, and OSSCOM 2016 conferences Convene in Beirut
BEIRUT- HE Mr. Botrus Harb, Lebanese Minister of Telecommunications has inaugurated the 6th International Platform on Integrating Arab e-infrastructure in a Global Environment (e-AGE 2016), the 8th Annual Conference of the Arab Organization for Quality Assurance in Education (AROQA 2016) and the 2nd International Conference on Open Source Computing (OSSCOM 2016) at the American University of Beirut under the presidency of HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of AROQA and ASREN.
HE Mr. Harb expressed his strong interest in advancing the Lebanese network infrastructure to support not only the research and education communities, but also all the citizens of Lebanon as motivated in the telecom vision 2020. He noted that Lebanon is acknowledged among the first three most dynamic countries in terms of the ICT development and the second biggest mover in the year 2015 on the Network Readiness Index. These developments will of course strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship movement in the Lebanese mobile Internet ecosystem supported by high speed networks and open source technologies. He declared his support for the Lebanese Education and Research Network (LERN) for which highly discounted connectivity prices will be provide.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh said “we witness today growing interests of Arab National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in joining ASREN in addition to National Research and Education Networks in Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Somalia, Iraq and Palestine”. He noted “we are looking forward to active participation of Arab NRENs in ASREN to support and enhance the development of research and e-Infrastructure in the Arab region”. He pointed out that ASREN shall continue to serve the Arab region in developing best practice NREN model and to provide pan-Arab e-Infrastructure connectivity at the regional level.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh further announced the establishment of the Arab Association of e-Universities under the umbrella of the League of Arab States. He also announced strong interests of partners to adopt open source software technologies as means for innovation and spread of technology at a wider scale in the framework of OSSCOM project supported by Tempus in partnership with universities in Jordan, Lebanon, Germany, Spain and the UK.
It should be noted that the conferences were attended by HE Mr. Yasser Abdel Moneim, Director of Education and Scientific Research at the League of Arab States in Egypt, HE Dr. Fuad Qasem, Secretary General of the Ministry of Higher Education in Iraq, and official representatives of international organizations, researchers, experts, and academics from across the Arab region and the world.
e-AGE 2016 attracted high level and distinguished speakers from around the world. More than 50 speakers from 25 countries presented topics related to research and education with a focus on the importance of ICT, e-Infrastructures and networking for the development of research and education.
It was decided that the next year's conferences will be held in Egypt under the patronage of HE Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, Secretary General of the League of Arab States.
