The Bamboo Planning Project (Project Bamboo for short) launched four months ago to begin to tackle the question: "how can we enhance arts and humanities research through shared technology services?" Five structured workshops with community input between each workshop make up the program for the project and by September 2009, our goal is to have a roadmap, plan, and proposal to launch a community-based cyberinfrastructure initiative for humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences. We are happy to report that with the completion of Workshop One, over 350 people representing approximately 90 institutions and organizations joined us to share their thoughts and reflect upon current and future scholarly practices in the arts and humanities. As we are now moving into the community input stage between Workshop One and Workshop Two, we're extending another invitation to those interested in this topic to help us analyze the data and shape Project Bamboo as it moves forward.

Scheduled for October, Workshop Two will focus on three topics that were specifically identified and arose out of discussions in Workshop One. First, we will select and refine common themes that emerged out of the scholarly practices discussions. These themes will be used to identify and specify technology services that should be included in the services roadmap for Project Bamboo. The second topic, direction, will take the recommendations from the community regarding what Bamboo should become and refine them further. This will include adjusting the scope of Bamboo, exploring what issues the effort should concern itself with, and enumerating what relationships should be developed as the project moves ahead. Finally, we will engage in preliminary discussions around different organizational and consortial models as the capstone topic of Workshop Two.

Because the participants in Workshop Two need to grapple with the themes, directions and issues that emerge from the community, we are looking to the community-at-large to help us identify the important pieces Bamboo should tackle as a project. Therefore, we invite anyone who may be interested in Bamboo to join us in analyzing the data and sharing their thoughts on what we've collected to date.

If you are interested in assisting with this effort, please visit http://projectbamboo.org/join-us to learn more about how to contribute to the project. For more information on Project Bamboo, visit http://projectbamboo.org/. If your institution, organization, or company is interested in participating in Workshop Two, instructions for how to apply can be found on the "Join Us" page as well. Questions regarding Project Bamboo can be directed to bamboo_feedback@lists.berkeley.edu.