A Penn State colleague who we were fortunate enough to meet at (and before) Drupal Camp WI blogs about how we might keep the momentum of this event going. He’s right that there are a number of similarities between our schools, and hopefully this will be an incentive to keep the connection alive. Sharing ideas about technology was great, but the real take-away was the idea of forming a Drupal in Higher Education consortium. What makes this idea special is that we, as universities, face challenges that are different from other sorts of Drupal users–both technological and political. I’m not sure whether it would be attached to other Drupal camps, the CIC, or just be an online group (one thing that ComETS has taught our campus is that events are key to keeping connections alive). I wonder if a good way to start might be to find out who is interested, and then to find out what the strengths/needs of each are. We found a lot to agree about–even regarding the role of central vs distributed systems–so it would be a shame to let geography keep these good ideas from coming to fruition.
1 thought on “Keeping the momentum locally and nationally”
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I think maybe we need to talk about a domain / web presence and move the Drupal in Education handbook there as a starting point. If we can create a ComETS like community that has it’s own branding and blogs and things for members it could be a great way to keep the conversation going. We could also start to point other universities there after only having phone / email conversations. The ideas we are generating about what to do next we could start discussing at that location. Just gotta come up with a good name for the site and some founding principles and what not.