CQU recently hosted more than 360 delegates to the annual conference for QUESTnet, the Queensland Education, Science and Technology Network.

There were delegates from 33 of the 39 universities in Australia and also 15 international visitors, including those from universities in New Zealand, Hong Kong and South Africa. Forty vendors had technology displays.

The QUESTnet conference is an annual event aimed at network technologists and those ICT professionals who work closely with network technology. QUESTnet is the Queensland regional component of the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet).

The annual event has become the de facto national higher education conference for networking technologies.

CQU's John Voss was conference chair and his colleague Merv Connell was program committee chair for the Cairns event which attracted speakers from organisations like Hewlett Packard, CERN (the world's largest particle physics laboratory), Cisco Systems, Nortel, Streaming Media Technologies, NEC and Google.

There was also a keynote from Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), a consortium of almost 50 research and higher education institutions in the Washington, DC region.

Mr Connell said networking technologists were constantly confronted with providing infrastructure that will accommodate the next Killer Application.

"Killer Apps are no longer solely applications in the traditional sense but have evolved into web sites, mobile broadband or just novel online communities of interest," he said.

"QUESTnet2007 was able to provide insight into developments that are occurring across a range of areas that will impact our organisations."

The event was held in Cairns during July and was officially opened by CQU Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Angela Delves.

Distinguished guests included:
    Peter Grant Qld Government CIO ( and recent appointee as CIO Qld Health)
    Peter Nicholson DEST
    Peter Nissen DEST
    Chris Hancock CEO, AARNET

Details are available at: http://www.questnet.net.au/questnet2007/