A meeting was held at King's College, London, on 26th and 27th October 2009, between representatives of the following networks, infrastructure projects, and planning initiatives working with digital technologies in the Arts and Humanities:

• arts-humanities.net (http://www.arts-humanities.net/)
• ADHO - Association of Digital Humanities Organisations (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/)
• CLARIN (http://www.clarin.eu/)
• centerNet (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/centernet/)
• DARIAH (http://www.dariah.eu/)
• NoC - Network of Expert Centres in Great Britain and Ireland (http://www.arts-humanities.net/noc/)
• Project Bamboo (http://projectbamboo.org/)
• TextGrid (http://www.textgrid.de/)

We identified the current fragmented environment where researchers operate in separate areas with often mutually incompatible technologies as a barrier to fully exploiting the transformative role that these technologies can potentially play. We resolved that our present, proposed, and future activities are interdependent and complementary and should be oriented towards working together to overcome barriers, and to create a shared environment where technology services can interoperate and be sustained, thus enabling new forms of research in the Humanities.

In order to achieve these goals we agreed to form the Coalition of Humanities and Arts Infrastructures and Networks – CHAIN. CHAIN will act as a forum forareas of shared interest to its participants, including:
− advocacy for an improved digital research infrastructure for the Humanities;
− development of sustainable business models;
− promotion of technical interoperability of resources, tools and services;
− promotion of good practice and relevant technical standards;
− development of a shared service infrastructure;
− coordinating approaches to legal and ethical issues;
− interactions with other relevant computing infrastructure initiatives;
− widening the geographical scope of our coalition.

CHAIN will promote an open culture where experiences, including successes and failures, can be shared and discussed, in order to support and promote the use of digital technologies in research in the Humanities.

Sheila Anderson, King's College, London (DARIAH)
Andreas Aschenbrenner, State and University Library Göttingen (TextGrid, DARIAH)
David Greenbaum, University of California, Berkeley (Project Bamboo)
Seth Denbo, King's College, London (DARIAH)
Neil Fraistat, University of Maryland (centerNet)
Chad Kainz, University of Chicago (Project Bamboo)
Steven Krauwer, Utrecht University (CLARIN)
Lorna Hughes, King's College, London (ADHO, NoC)
Tobias Blanke, King's College, London (DARIAH)
Torsten Reimer, King's College, London (arts-humanities.net)
David Robey, University of Oxford (NoC)
Harold Short, King's College, London (ADHO)
Katherine Walter, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (centerNet)
Peter Wittenburg, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (CLARIN)
Martin Wynne, University of Oxford (CLARIN, DARIAH)

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information or if your institution or organization would like to become a Bamboo member or partner, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu

Project Bamboo has moved into its latest phase with the drafting of the year one Bamboo Technology Proposal to the Mellon RIT Program. We are now focusing in much more detail on Bamboo's technical deliverables. From now through November, we will be publishing iterative drafts of the Bamboo Technology Proposal, and contacting institutions and organizations who have communicated partnership or membership interest in Bamboo to clarify future contributions and roles.

For those institutions and organizations that specifically expressed interest in being partners or members or participated in Workshop 5, weekly updates will be emailed from now through the end of November. These will be both status updates as well as responses to questions we've received. Periodic updates (such as this) will be communicated to the broader community via email and the Project Bamboo website.

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information or if your institution or organization would like to become a Bamboo member or partner, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu

The hard work, discussion and debate carried out by those who attended the Bamboo Planning Workshop 4 on 16-18 April 2009 provided considerable material and guidance to advance the planning effort of Bamboo. Since the end of the workshop that was hosted by Brown University, the Bamboo program staff at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago have been hard at work consolidating ideas and recommendations from workshop participants into a scope of work for the first implementation phase of Bamboo.

The over 80 participants who represented nearly 40 colleges, universities and  organizations from Australia, Italy, Germany, UK, Canada, and the United States gathered in Providence, RI, to review and discuss the workshop draft of the Bamboo Program Document. Discussion centered on the long-term (7-10 year) vision for the project with a goal of narrowing the focus of effort toward an initial two-year phase of work that proposes to start in 2010.

Eleven different areas were identified as possible directions for Bamboo over the next decade and through both discussion and two rounds of polling and voting, participants prioritized the major areas Bamboo should undertake early in implementation. Immediately after the workshop, the program staff held a retreat in Chicago on 20-21 April to coalesce the workshop outcomes into a subset of activities that could potentially launch Bamboo. This work was shared with the Bamboo Leadership Council on 1 May. The council members reviewed the material and recommended further refinement. Based on the output of Workshop 4 and the Leadership Council's feedback, first discussion draft of the Bamboo Implementation Proposal has been posted on the Bamboo Planning Wiki:

https://wiki.projectbamboo.org/display/BPUB/BIP+Discussion+Draft+v0.2

The discussion draft is largely an outline for the proposal with considerable detail expressed around section four, "Major Areas of Work." For the first phase of implementation, the proposal concentrates on three areas:

1. Scholarly Networking to enable "people to discover resources, build relationships, and connect with others across the Bamboo community and beyond;"
2. Bamboo Atlas to provide "avenues for scholars in the arts, humanities and interpretive social sciences to express their practice, participate in its analysis from methodological and technological perspectives, and locate community-vetted services, tools, and digital content repositories applicable to areas and practices of pedagogical and research interest;" and
3. Bamboo Services Platform to "deliver the technical infrastructure that permits humanities projects to transition from project-specific applications to longer-lived, more broadly supported, more efficiently operated, and more widely useful services, setting the stage for a future in which many scholars, content stewards, and technologists can easily discover, combine, re-mix, and share content and technology to create new forms of digital research and teaching."

In addition, Bamboo will continue to develop and grow the global Bamboo Community of scholars, researchers, technologists, librarians, content experts and others who are interested in the future of arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences research, teaching, and learning.

The purpose of this discussion draft is to share Bamboo planning progress to date, assist with discussions among institutions wishing to participate in Bamboo, and solicit input from the community regarding the development and ongoing revision of the Bamboo Implementation Proposal. Comment is open to the broader Bamboo Community which are those individuals who have signed up on the Bamboo Planning Project Wiki:

http://wiki.projectbamboo.org

If you are not currently registered on the wiki and would like to take part in the discussion and comment on the draft, sign up by clicking on the "Sign Up" link in the upper right corner of the wiki page.

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information on Bamboo, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu

The web page for Project Bamboo's Workshop Four has been updated with details about travel to and around Providence, Rhode Island, as well as information about the room block at our conference hotel, the Providence Biltmore: http://www.projectbamboo.org/workshop-four

Thanks to Elli Mylonas of Brown University for putting this together.

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information on Bamboo, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu.

Project Bamboo's Workshop Four will be held in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 16-18, 2009. The three-day workshop will begin Thursday morning at 9AM and run through noon on Saturday. The preliminary agenda for this workshop will be posted to the Project Bamboo website by March 6.

Previous Participants
Registration is open for the workshop and will extend through March 6, 2009. Registration is available to all organizations and institutions whose application was accepted for either Workshop Two or Three. We are asking participants to register in advance so that we can plan for meeting space, food, and beverages.

Virtual Participation
If you cannot attend the physical workshop, but wish to participate remotely, please select the appropriate registration form above and click on the virtual participation link.

New Applicants
Institutions or organizations who have not previously applied to Project Bamboo but wish to participate in Workshop Four, please send an email as soon as possible to bamboo_event_coordination@lists.berkeley.edu.

As we process registrations and finalize workshop details, we will update the workshop page posted at http://projectbamboo.org/workshop-four. If you have any questions regarding registration, feel free to contact us at bamboo_event_coordination@lists.berkeley.edu.

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information on Bamboo, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu.

We are pleased to announce that Project Bamboo's Workshop Four will take place April 16-18 in Providence, Rhode Island, with support from Brown University. The workshop will begin at 9AM on Thursday morning. It will end at noon on Saturday, April 18.

As more information about Workshop Four becomes available, it will be posted here: http://projectbamboo.org/workshop-four .

Workshop Four is open to all institutions or organizations who were previously accepted to Workshop Two or Three. Virtual participation options will also be available.

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Bamboo is community-driven cyberinfrastructure planning project for the arts and humanities led by the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. Bamboo strives to create a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach central to the planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects.

For more information on Bamboo, send email to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu

Videos of plenary talks from Workshop Three are now available for download at http://projectbamboo.org/videos. These include the presentation of Project Bamboo's straw implementation proposal and straw consortial model, as well as multiple perspectives by Bamboo participants who currently lead efforts around scholarly practice, content and information technology.

As previously announced, Project Bamboo's Workshop Three will be held in Tucson, Arizona, on January 12-14, 2009. The workshop is scheduled to begin Monday morning and run through noon on Wednesday. Although the specifics have not been finalized, the agenda will include an update of the planning project, reports from the various working groups, sharing of and discussion around demonstrators, continued refinement of the scope of Bamboo, further exploration of the community and consortial model for the project, and time for working groups to meet.

Beginning today, the registration/application period is open for the workshop and will extend through December 1, 2008. We're asking participants to register in advance so that we can plan for meeting space, food, and beverages. To participate in the workshop, please complete one of the two options below:

A) Previously Accepted into Project Bamboo
For institutions or organizations who previously applied and were accepted into Workshops Two/Three, you must still register for Workshop Three by Monday, December 1, 2008. Colleges and universities whose applications were accepted for Workshop Two/Three may register up to two workshop participants where one individual should be a faculty member; industry partners and organizations may register one participant.

B) New to Project Bamboo
For institutions or organizations who never previously applied to Project Bamboo but wish to participate in Workshop Three, please:

• Email bamboo_event_coordination@lists.berkeley.edu and express your institution's/organization's intent to participate by Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008; and
• Submit a complete application to participate in Workshop Three by Monday, December 1, 2008. A complete application consists of filling out the online form, and for college or university applicants, includes an appropriate institutional letter of support. Detailed application requirements and a link to the online forms can be found on the Project Bamboo website at http://projectbamboo.org/join-us .

Please note that the registration of new institutions/organizations will be provisional pending the review and acceptance of complete applications. For new applicants, we will communicate the status of applications by Friday, December 5.

More Information
As we process registrations and finalize workshop details, we will update the workshop page (including the list of participating institutions) that is posted at http://projectbamboo.org/workshop-three . If you have any questions regarding registration, feel free to contact us at bamboo_event_coordination@lists.berkeley.edu