PureGin.org

I'm about to meet with a group of eight or nine IT administrators in the Faculty of Science at UBC, about collaboration on areas of mutual interest via common open-source platforms. Since the adoption of Drupal at UBC has in the last few years skyrocketed, I imagine that this will be one of the first opportunities for collaboration.

Many individual and departments have of course been well-aware of the benefits of open source software, but it feels like the time is right to try for some economies of scale in terms of inter-department sharing and collaboration.

The following is a list of actions I'd like to see happening over the near term. I'd love to hear from anyone are engaged in similar projects, about things that worked, things that didn't work so well, or anything else you would like to share.

1. Communicate regularly to exchange knowledge about OSS software and and realize opportunities for collaboration around OSS platforms
   • set up a chat room (irc? xmpp? skype?)
   • set up an email list?
2. Seek areas of common need which can be addressed by shared OSS
   platforms, and work towards standardizing on these
3. Collectively and individually publish and promote our goals,
   discussions, and results of our collaboration
   • set up a public wiki, and repository (trac)
   • set up twitter lists
   • blog
4. Advocate for the contribution of code, documentation, and other
   resources to 'upstream' open source projects
5. Meet regularly with other open source interest groups on campus and beyond
   • host meetings
6. Educate our bosses, colleagues, users, and others about the
   benefits and advantages of adopting and supporting open source
   software
   • report on adoption, savings, opportunities realized