CNI Plenary in D.C.

Last week, Mark and I gave the Closing Plenary at the Spring 2005 Coalition for Networked Information Spring Task Force Meeting in Washington DC on April 4-5. The meeting offered a wide range of presentations that advance and report on CNI's programs, showcase projects underway at Task Force member institutions, and highlight important developments at a national and international level. Washington D.C. was delightful this time of year and the cherry blossoms were fantastic in their first day of real bloom.

Clifford Lynch does a fine job of organizing this very exciting and informative meeting. The Croquet presentation was warmly received and we now assembled a list of many more potential members of a Croquet Consortium (more on that in a future posting). Here is how Clifford described Croquet to the membership in his personal guide to the meeting:

The Closing Plenary: the Croquet Collaborative Learning Environment

"We've seen very few large-scale information environments recently that stretch our thinking beyond the model of the worldwide web. Croquet, however, is one such development; it integrates high end three dimensional sound and graphics, collaboration technologies, simulations and other tools to create a powerful shared space for the creation, use, and re-use of digital content. I believe that this project is important for three reasons: for what it offers directly; for the way it can expand our thinking about new information, collaboration and learning environments; and for what it can teach us about how to design new and innovative software environments that build upon, rather than directly compete with, the existing information infrastructure"