4. February 2022 Prague, February 4th, 2022. Under the title 30 Years of the Internet in the Czech Republic, CESNET in cooperation with CZ.NIC and NIX.CZ will organize a full-day conference on Thursday, 10 February. It will be held on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the first official connection of our country to the Internet, which took place on February 13th, 1992. The meeting can be watched remotely by the general public.
The event will feature speeches by EU Commissioner Věra Jourová, Deputy Prime Minister for Digitalisation Ivan Bartoš and leading experts, including Jan Gruntorád, founder and long-time director of CESNET, who was the main driver of events thirty years ago when he led the team that launched the first connection.
Thursday’s conference will take place in the same place where the first connection took place, i.e. in the lecture hall number 256 in the building of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Dejvice, Prague. The participants will first be greeted remotely by one of the creators of the network, Vint Cerf, who is referred to as the “father of the Internet”. After his greeting, a series of lectures divided into several thematic blocks will begin. Speakers will include Vojtěch Petráček, Rector of CTU, Jakub Papírník, current Director of CESNET, Ondřej Filip, Director of CZ.NIC, Adam Golecký, Director of NIX.CZ, Jaroslav Šmíd, Deputy Director of NÚKIB, Josef Chomyn, member of the CTU Council, Vladimír Mlynář, former politician and journalist, and other guests.
Those interested in the event can watch it live via a stream that will be broadcast by the CESNET association at www.30letinternetu.cz. A detailed conference program is already available there.
CESNET was founded in 1996 by universities and the Czech Academy of Sciences. It is engaged in research and development of information and communication technologies, building and developing a national CESNET e-infrastructure for research and education. Thanks to its research activities and achievements, it represents the Czech Republic in important international projects, especially in building the pan-European network GÉANT or grid projects (EGI.eu), and participates actively in their implementation. The association is also working on the use of high-speed networks for sharing multimedia data, both synchronously in the form of video conferencing and shared applications, and asynchronously in the form of streaming. Since December 2020, CESNET represents the Czech Republic in the international association dealing with the open science paradigm – EOSC AISBL. More at: www.cesnet.cz