IT: Nothing beats personal contact

You can talk to your colleagues over the phone and meet through videoconferencing, but nothing beats face-to-face contact. The in-person progress meeting of the IT Working Group that was organized last week at ITER provided for just that.

Thursday 25 and Friday 26 March, some 20 IT officers from the ITER Domestic Agencies gathered here at Headquarters to meet their counterparts, present their own "IT landscape" and discuss such topics as unifying communication systems, database replication or applications interconnection.

In lay language, explains IT expert Cédric Chaumette who organized the event, this translates into "gains in efficiency and reductions in cost by using the same tools throughout the ITER worldwide network."

Considering the benefits of this type of "in person" meeting, IT plans to organize one every year.