Presence and IntComm WG

[Candace Holman <>]

Please forward to interested parties:

Which open-source projects are the most useful or exciting to you 
right now? Which institutions (including your own) do you see as taking
leadership roles in collaborating to produce high-quality software for
higher education? If you could honor some of those institutions for
their contributions, which ones would you select?

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation invites you to participate as 
a nominator in an awards process that will recognize institutions that
have made leadership contributions to the collaborative development of
open source software of benefit to our traditional constituencies,
including higher education, libraries, museums and arts organizations,
and nature conservation.  The Mellon Awards for Technology 
Collaboration (MATC) will bestow prizes of $25,000 and $100,000 on several
institutions judged to have made important contributions to significant
projects. Your nomination(s) will be reviewed by a prestigious Award
Committee: Mitchell Baker, Tim Berners-Lee, John Seely Brown, Vint 
Cerf, John Gage, and Tim O'Reilly, as well as Ira Fuchs and Don Waters of 
the Mellon Foundation.

Our two hopes are (1) to highlight large-project success stories as away 
to encourage institutions considering commitments to collaborative
development projects, and (2) to distinguish exceptional smaller
projects that could benefit from greater awareness among both 
potential users and potential contributors.

The nomination process is simple: you tell us the institution, the project, 
and (optionally) offer a testimonial as to why the institution's contribution to the project is particularly significant.  You may self-nominate, and may nominate as many 
institutions/projects as you like. The deadline for nominations is Friday, 4 August. The full Call for Nominations and an online nomination form may be found at

http://rit.mellon.org/awards