Chair:
Erik Kikkenborg (NORDUnet) is the NORDUnet Media Services Manager primarily working with management, organisation and distribution of cloud based hosted video services. He has been active in Audio Visual and communications technology for more than 20 years starting as technician and project coordinator, moving on to manager and video consultant for a number of media and audio visual companies.
Erik’s professional interests are to explore the potential of video as a way of communication in education. Currently he is working on how to change the educational landscape in developing countries applying online education platforms. Erik’s focus is always looking into new tools and technologies that can improve education.
Throughout the years Erik has provided advice to many companies and International Research and Educations institutions on how best to apply video communications, learning platforms & technology, online video and live streaming.
For the past 10 years Erik’s primary focus has been on collaboration with Nordic and International Research and Educations institutions in the area of online learning platforms for learning and collaboration, working on European and global projects under the GÉANT Event Team, GÉANT (eduCONF), Terena (NRENum), Global CEO Forum (GVA), (GRTC), asi@connect and Up2University (Up2U).
Another dedicated part of Erik’s activities include the role of Technical Project Coordinator of a vast number of NORDUnet, DeIC, SUNET, NeIC, GÉANT, and the former Terena conferences around the Nordics and Europe.
Erik’s specialties: film & video production, cloud video services, learning platforms, video platforms, video distribution, live streaming of large events, project management, wireless networks.
Coordinators:
Gyöngyi Horváth (GÉANT) is the Community Support Officer at the Amsterdam office of the GÉANT Association - formerly the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association, (TERENA) working with the organisation since 2007. Gyöngyi was born in Hungary and graduated from the University of Miskolc in 2002, with a Masters Degree in Sociology. Working with the community for over a decade and being responsible for organizing the community’s annual conference TNC she gained view on many future initiatives. GÉANT recognized the importance for our community to address the needs of students and educators with it supporting the educational institutions. For this a new role of Community Support Officer was created. With it lies the responsibility of working with the NREN community to support their efforts in enhancing their activities for education. Email: gyongyi.horvath@geant.org
Dragana Kupres (CARNET) is a project manager with 20 years of experience in educational technology. Her strong areas are strategic planning and project management in education, education research, innovation and policy related to educational technology. She was a chief editor of CARNET’s edu-tech journal Edupoint, leader and trainer in the E-learning Academy programme and is a main author and designer of the national e-Schools project with a proven track record in winning a 40million € contract. She is an advocate of participatory methods and is a practitioner of the art of hosting conversations that matters methodologies. Her educational background is in philosophy (University of Zagreb), educational technology (University of British Columbia) and is (for a quite some time) a PhD student at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She loves talking and thinking about the future. Email: dragana.kupres@carnet.hr
Members:
Esther Wilkinson (Jisc, United Kingdom)
Dr Esther Wilkinson is a specialist in international education in the UK, and the Head of International at Jisc, the body powering the UK’s higher and further education’s teaching, learning and research and inspiring its digital transformation. Esther leads Jisc’s international strategy and strategic development of Jisc’s transnational education support programme. A key part of Esther’s role is supporting the Global Research and Education Network CEO Forum, a strategic group of Chief Executives from a number of research and education networks around the world delivering global collaborations. Esther has worked in various roles in higher education, as Assistant Director at Universities UK International; the UK Research Councils for over 13 years; the Open University and a brief spell as a police officer. Esther has a BSc Hons, DIC and PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College, London. Email: esther.wilkinson@jisc.ac.uk
Tomi Dolenc (ARNES, Slovenia)
Birgitta Hemmingsson (ITHU, MIUN Sweden) was the chair of the Swedish Network for IT in Higher Education (ITHU) for four years and is educational developer at Mid Sweden Uni (MIUN). She has been working with educational technology, development and community building for 10 years, and is also one of the creators of sustainable (virtual) conferences. At TNC2020 she was supposed to be a speaker of the topic in one of the sessions of Community driven solutions. Another employment during early 2020 is within the Swedish Higher Education Authority where she works as a consultant for virtual conferences, now planning for the second conference in March. The first conference was held in September 2019 and was a huge success. The conference was held in Zoom, in the stabile technical environment that NORDUnet provides for the e-meeting service. Birgitta also worked as Product Owner of media services for the Swedish NREN, Sunet, for several years, and it was within that work she became a member of the NREN educational expert group.
Jasmijn Jacobs-Wijn (SURFnet, Netherlands)
Vegard Moen (UNIT, Norway)
Nathalie Roth (SWITCH, Switzerland)