Oct. 22, 2003

Contact: Allison Rose Lopez, KU Information Services, (785) 864-8923.

KU to host telecommunications and networking conference Oct. 23

LAWRENCE -- The University of Kansas will host a regional meeting of 150 telecommunications and networking professionals Thursday in the Kansas Union. The meeting of the U.S. South-Central Region of the Building Industry Consulting Services International Telecommunications Organization (BICSI) will feature the latest technologies, trends, products and services for designers and installers of cabling infrastructure for communications systems.

The meeting is co-sponsored by BICSI and by Networking and Telecommunication Services, a division of KU Information Services.

"We're honored to host this meeting and welcome BICSI to the KU campus," said Marilu Goodyear, vice provost for information services and chief information officer. "BICSI-certified engineers are leaders in building telecommunications networks. There are only 6,500 BICSI-certified networking engineers around the world, and we are pleased to have two of them working for us at KU."

Based in Tampa, Fla., BICSI is a professional, not-for-profit telecommunications association that serves nearly 20,000 members in more than 90 countries. Its mission is to enhance the telecommunications industry by providing excellent education, promoting skill sharing and assessing knowledge with professional registration programs. BICSI began informally in the early 1970s when a group of building industry consultants from different telephone companies and telecommunications manufacturers began meeting annually to problem-solve and explore better ways to perform their jobs. Over time the meetings grew, with the first official conference held in 1973 and the incorporation of BICSI in 1977. BICSI still is consistently growing, and it offers courses, conferences, publications and professional registration programs for telecommunications distribution designers and installers.

"KU's selection to host this meeting is important because it demonstrates KU's contributions to the standards development process for building telecommunications networks," said Larry Lovell, one of KU's two BICSI-certified networking engineers and coordinator of the meeting. "The standards-development process is the boilerplate format that architects and consultants use to standardize communication about telecommunications needs in across many different, complicated construction projects around the world."

The 150 participants will be networking professionals from throughout the BICSI U.S. South-Central Region, which includes Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. They will represent universities, technology corporations, private businesses and government agencies, as well as building and telecommunications architects, electrical consultants and contractors, and low-voltage cable installers.