Networking has taken on new meanings with the fast-paced changes in technology.  (Networking used to be going to lunch with someone to see if they could help you along in your career.  It DOES still mean that, but social networks have expanded far beyond the old limits of face-to-face interactions.)

If you don’t know about Software-Defined Networking, take a look at the Wikipedia page for some detail.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of higher-level functionality. This is done by decoupling the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent (the control plane) from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the selected destination (the data plane). The inventors and vendors of these systems claim that this simplifies networking. [Source: "Software-Defined Networking: The New Norm for Networks" (PDF). White paper. Open Networking Foundation. April 13, 2012.]

There’s a whole conference dedicated to this growing field, and this year’s event is being held in Dusseldorf Germany in October.  Here is the link to the

SDN & Open Flow

World Congress

If you are a student in Germany or have a desire to visit Germany, this may be the spot for you to check out the sites AND get in on some cool tech talk.  Even if you can’t attend the conference, take a look at the list of speakers and sponsors – they are many and varied (from all over the world…)  and one might just be a future employer for you!!

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