On Monday, May 12, NU hosted the National Forum on Interdisciplinary Team Development to lead both a face-to-face and virtual dialog between directors of NIH Roadmap grants who are all attempting to answer the same core question: How do we structure and manage interdisciplinary and inter-institutional science research consortia?
AT helped manage the event – developing a website for the forum participants, broadcasting the event via Adobe Connect to partners at the NIH, and covering the entire event on HD Video for future use.
Clearly, though, such a discussion could not be fully covered in a single day. So we are working to continue that discussion in a way befitting interdisciplinary and inter-institutional consortia. We are extending the life and functionality of the forum website to act as a continuing collaborative space with updated materials produced at the May 12 meeting, discussion forums, and video archives.
![IRC Forum](https://mediadesign.it.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/irc_site02.jpg)
At the meeting it was noted that tools developed to support research are themselves successful products of the research process. The same is true of collaborative technology – those tools we are creating to assist in collaborative workflows are themselves enablers and subjects of discussion.