Office of the
Chief Information Officer

Home

Index to Current and Past Years

Contact Us

By Emmett Crawley

From 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on December 10, 580 Baker Systems Engineering will be abuzz, as Megaconference V takes place. Hosted by OSU and organized by Robert Dixon, chief research engineer for the Office of the CIO and OARNet, Megaconference V is the world’s largest Internet video conference, and the only event of its kind. Faculty and staff are invited to stop in 580 Baker Systems anytime during the conference. Dixon says the conference will be especially relevant to faculty involved in distance learning.

At approximately, 4:15 p.m., OSU President, Karen Holbrook, will greet the conference’s worldwide participants from Baker Systems. Between 3:30 and 3:45 p.m., during one of the conference’s musical mini concerts of holiday songs, the Marimba Duet, featuring Jerry Johnson, administrator, Dept. of Surgery, OSU College of Medicine & Public Health, will perform to the world-wide audience from Weigel Hall.

This year, conference presenters are all end-users and will cover topics under the theme, "Sustaining Global Communities through Videoconferencing." Approximately 200 institutions from around the world, representing every continent, are participating in Megaconference V. It is like other professional conferences, but there is no central location for either the speakers or the audience; they are all distributed throughout the world. Speakers propose papers that are refereed and selected just as in other conferences, but they present them from their home institution. Everything will be fully interactive, permitting the audience to ask questions of the speakers. High-quality video conferencing will be used, so everyone will view full-screen, full-motion video at near-television quality.

Dixon says, "In the past, Megaconference presenters have come from places as remote as Antarctica and Uganda." This year, among the presentations, the audience will hear about distance learning in Brazil, New Zealand, and Poland; experience a collaborative music program across Canada, as well as reenactment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For additional information, visit the Megaconference web site at www.megaconference.org