Asia Pacific Internet Summit APRICOT 2018 in Nepal 19-28 February 2018, exceeds 1,000 participants
APRICOT 2018, hosted in Kathmandu, Nepal, is set to be largest in the summit’s 22-year history. As the pre-conference workshops come to an end on the 23rd February, the number of registered participants has soared to 990 and is projected to exceed 1,100 before the event closes on 28 February. The regional competition is being hosted in Nepal during 19-28 February 2018 by Internet Exchange Nepal (NPIX).
The largest contingent of attendees are from Nepal (250), followed by 271 from the rest of the SAARC region. Large groups of participants from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, USA, and the UK have already arrived. Attendees from 65 countries and economies are expected at the event. Some of the attendees are visiting from as far as South Africa and Uruguay in South America.
The first phase of the event, which included training from experts, concluded today with 190 trainees gaining hands-on experience on the Internet of Things (IoT), Security, Network Management and Routing.
The formal opening of the event will happen on the 25th of February. Kathmandu Mayor, Bidya Sundar Shakya, will open the game by formally welcoming the global participants to the capital city.
The hosts and organizers are excited about a large number of foreign participants, as it demonstrates global confidence in attending significant events in Nepal.
Asia Pacific Internet Association (APIA) and Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) along with the local support of Internet Exchange Nepal (NPIX) are organizing the mega event. The event brings together global Internet technologists to discuss advanced networking topics during the 10-day celebration. The summit is a combination of Asia Pacific Operations Forum, APNIC Conference and Members meeting, South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG) 31, as well as meetings for security communities of FIRST, APCERT and other Asia Pacific Internet Organizations.
The event is supported by the Nepal Telecommunications Authority in the public sector and local IT organizations – Nepal Network Operators Group (NPNOG), Nepal Research and Education Network (NREN), Federation of Computer Associations of Nepal and the Internet Society (Nepal Chapter). Global companies including Google, Facebook, Equinix, VeriSign, DE-CIX, Netflix, Telstra, LINX, Airtel, Juniper, Amazon Web Services and others are sponsors for the event.
The International opening keynote for the conference is Mr. Amir Khan, co-founder of Viptela, an Internet networking company that was acquired by global giant Cisco last year for 800 million dollars. Mr. Khan will share his experiences of the previous two decades and what he sees shortly.
Mr. Will Charnock, co-founder of Packet Fabric, in his closing keynote will take a future view of the evolution in networking technologies. Mr. Charnock previously built much of the network for Soft Layer, which was acquired by IBM in 2008.
The local keynote will be presented by Dr. Mahabir Pun, public Internet, and wireless technology leader. Dr. Pun will talk about how he envisions the smart cities of the future may look like.
The event started with five days of pre-conference workshops on the 19th and will conclude on the 28th with the closing ceremony. After the conclusion of the studios today, the event will continue with the conference and tutorials including topics such as DNSSEC, Secure Routing, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) on the technical side. Non-technical discussion on cross-border co-operation, and enhancing government and Internet community co-operation will also take place.