Community Meeting Oxford 2026 Frequently Asked Questions

The NetDRIVE Community Meeting, “Creating a New Reality: A Sustainable Digital Transformation.” will take place in Oxford on 22-23 April 2026.

This meeting is part of the NetDRIVE project, which focuses on delivering authoritative advice to UK Research and Innovation on sustainable digital research infrastructure. It will promote discussion on the shape, constraints, and opportunities of the emerging UK power supply, alongside broader questions of community leadership, scientific credibility, and digital transformation in support of net zero.

Please see a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) about the event.

Q: Is travel and accomodation support available to help people attend the event?

Please indicate if you need support to attend the event by selecting that option when you register, we will then contact you to request details. We are able cover the cost of return train tickets for some attendees, subject to justification, availability and funds. In some circumstances we may also be able to offer funding towards overnight accomodation, subject to justification, availability and funds.

In the case of accomodation requests, we will provide an accommodation request form that needs to be returned to netdrive@eng.ox.ac.uk before end of March 16th.

Q: I'm keen to attend but I am unable to join in person. Will there be the option to stream?

We intend to run the meeting primarily as an in-person event, but due to demand we have decided to make some of the plenary sessions and discussion sessions available for people who cannot join us in-person. Please select the 'Online option' when you register for the event, and we will send you joining instructions for the online sessions ahead of the meeting.

Q: Will there be recordings of the sessions available?

Yes, subject to agreement from speakers, we will provide access to a recording for a limited period after the meeting.

Q: The initial announcement included two keynote speakers, both white male. I can't promote such an event to my networks. Will NetDRIVE live up to its diversity ambition?

We acknowledge the deficit and expect to have some very good female keynote speakers in the final line up. We do not expect to achieve complete gender and ethnicity balance in every event because of the main factors outside of our control, but we will note any deficits and commit to balancing them, as far as possible, over the course of the project.

Q: On day one there will be an opportunity to present on the NetDRIVE community projects, it would be great to have a little detail on the time/format for this?

It is understood that this should be about intentions and aims of the project. You may also wish to include discussion of motivation and ongoing work which fed into your project plans. We have 15 minutes allocated, including time for discussion. 

Q: The day two agenda appears to be focused on NetDRIVE project delivery. How should the leads of the community projects engage with this day, and if a project lead is not able to attend the second day what impact this would have on their understanding of delivery priorities and mechanisms?

We will be discussing NetDRIVE project priorities, and also talking about how to enhance participation of early career scientists and how to deal with regional and temporal variations in the price and footprint of power. We do not expect all community projects to be represented, but certain projects were invited to present on day one because we felt that there was an overlap between the theme of the meeting and the objectives of these projects. Your input into the early career discussion on day two will be valuable. There will be opportunities to talk to the core team and raise issues around delivery priorities and mechanisms.