New Communities of Interest formed around Internationalization, Accessibility

May 27th, 2015
From the desk of Ian Dolphin, Executive Director Apereo Foundation

Apereo now acts as an umbrella for around a dozen projects and software communities. That’s a testament both the inclusive vision the organization was formed around, and the hard work work of our volunteer incubation mentors. With exciting new communities such as Xerte, UniTime and Opencast joining Apereo graduating incubation and reaching hundreds of new constituents, and newer projects such as Karuta and EDExchange developing rapidly, it’s an appropriate time to think about how our projects and communities might learn from each other. 

Apereo was formed with two types of constituent communities in mind. The first is, of course the software project or community, focussed on developing and sustaining software to support the academic mission. The second, we termed a community of interest. A community of interest is a looser association that might organize around a specific theme. It might (or might not) span more than one software project or community. It could look like the existing Sakai Teaching and Learning Community, or our Learning Analytics Initiative. 

Now that the dust has settled around the initial consolidation of Apereo, and the first wave of new projects are graduating incubation or progressing rapidly through the process, expect to see a renewed emphasis on communities of interest. We’ll be publishing a draft process for Community of Interest formation - you will find it on www.apereo.org. We are also announcing the formation of two new Apereo-wide communities of interest, around internationalization and accessibility. Nico Matthijs of *Research and the OAE Project has agreed to lead the formation of the first, and Matt Clare, from Brock University, the second. A big thanks to Nico and Matt for volunteering - and watch this space for more details.