This week was a busy week, and a longer week in many different ways. The original plan was Luleå in Sweden and then Brussels before heading back home. However in the end it didn’t go to plan.

I was travelling to a GÉANT SIG-EDU meeting in Luleå in Sweden. The meeting was all day Monday, so I planned to arrive on Sunday, this meant a morning flight from Heathrow, which meant an overnight stay at the airport on Saturday night. After the SIG-EDU meeting the plan was to fly back to London on the Tuesday.

Having had a great time in Luleå I made my way home. The flight from Luleå to Stockholm was fine, I then made my way to the departure gate for my flight to Heathrow. 

However…

This was the day that the air traffic control system at Heathrow failed and over a thousand flights were cancelled.

My flight was that evening, and I think SAS thought they might be able to take off, however in the end that was not to be the case. With the number of cancellations, the earliest flight SAS could rebook me onto was three days later. So, SAS booked me a hotel for three days. I now had three unplanned extra days in Sweden. I also had to cancel my trip to Brussels, as I had no way of getting there from Stockholm.

Anyhow back to SIG-EDU in Luleå. The focus of the meeting was education and AI. I was attending as I was thinking about the European perspective on AI and how NRENs were positioning themselves in relation to that perspective.

Often the focus of these kinds of meetings is on the use of LLM AI by students, though there was some of this, other aspects of how the university sector could utilise AI for supporting the business function was also discussed, as well as the political position as well. I was intrigued that quite a few NRENs are looking at providing AI services for their university customers. Another aspect was the cost of AI, not just the environmental impact (which has been making the news) but also the cost of “tokens” when using AI.

The following day I was going back to Heathrow, but as mentioned, my connecting flight was cancelled and I was stuck in Stockholm for three days.

In the end I was able to attend my meeting in Brussels remotely, as a special case was made for me. However, what did miss was the informal conversations I wanted to have with colleagues pre and post the meeting.

I eventually left Stockholm on Friday evening and my flight back to London was without incident.