In June 2005 I became the Network Manager for NECTAR, the Canadian Network for Effective Collaboration Technologies through Advanced Research. NECTAR links 14 HCI researchers at UBC, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Toronto, Queen's and Dalhousie universities, and is administered from the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) in Toronto. A 5-year project which runs through 2008, NECTAR is part of the government’s Strategic Network Grants Program, and like all networks in the program, it is funded by both the Canadian government (NSERC) and the private sector. In our case, major sponsors are Microsoft and SMART Technologies, though NECTAR has support from a number of other companies too.
Among NECTAR's many goals is to improve communication among our own labs, preferably via technology. Yet we find that without annual network-wide meetings at which our faculty, postdocs, and students can interact face to face, collaboration is less likely to flourish. Last Autumn we tried to improve network synergy via a postgraduate Computer Supported Collaborative Work course, webcast live to all NECTAR sites via an open/community source tool called ePresence (a version is available at SourceForge, and you may also be interested in this podcast about ePresence on the Educause web site). The course attracted students and/or speakers from all six NECTAR universities; built-in text chat, synchronization of audio/video with PowerPoint slides, and experimentation with a new (and pedagogically controversial) Voiceover IP module all contributed to each week’s presentation.
ePresence is one of many projects sponsored by NECTAR, and one of numerous collaborations underway at KMDI. Project Open Source|Open Access (OS|OA) is another: a tri-campus initiative, it seeks to develop a networked community of individuals interested in distributed peer production at the University of Toronto and beyond.
I must admit that I get a bit lonely amidst all of these virtual communities. From Toronto I co-ordinate the activities of researchers up to 3,000 miles away, most of whom I have never met. We keep in touch via Instant Messaging (MSN, Trillium), VoIP (Skype, Google Talk), the telephone and email – lots of email. But there are no immediate colleagues to celebrate with when, for example, I finish a big project. Perhaps this is one more reason to support HCI research: with an adaptive enough interface, I might not notice the difference.
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