At Workshop 2 in San Francisco, the Bamboo program staff presented a framework for thinking about seven initial directions for the Bamboo implementation proposal (https://wiki.projectbamboo.org/display/BPUB/Directions). The program staff asked the approximately 140 participants from 60 institutions and organizations to consider these broad directions in workshop breakout groups to further define the scope and rationale of what Bamboo will propose for implementation in July 2009. Participants at the workshop defined eight potential working groups that included proposed charters and timelines for each.

Two key issues that emerged over the three days were the need for the program staff to articulate a more defined scope for Bamboo and the value that Bamboo can deliver to different institutions, organizations, and individuals. This document addresses both the preliminary scope for Bamboo and the charges to working groups for the next phase of activity that will lead up to Workshop 3.

At present, the planning project is in the seventh month of an 18-month planning process that is centered around the organizing question of "how can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?" The overarching goal of the planning process is to explore this question through a series of workshops and inter-workshop activities and ultimately develop an implementation proposal. Over the course of the planning process, participating institutions and organizations will help to define the final scope of Bamboo, and formulate a set of activities, processes, and projects that will guide implementation and shape the community that supports it.

To realize and sustain the vision, Bamboo will need to be a consortium of universities, colleges, libraries, organizations, and industry partners who are committed to supporting research, teaching and learning in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The approach that is central to this planning project is one rooted in creating, reusing, remixing, and sharing technology services across project, institutional, organizational, regional, and national boundaries. The fundamental thought behind this approach is that if we can share technologies and content in common ways, we will be able to reduce the overall effort in the long term to create new digital projects, increase the potential for greater innovation as more effort can be placed on new ideas rather than recreating existing solutions, take best advantage of specialized skill sets across the various communities to solve problems, and leverage institutional and community-wide economies of scale to tackle problems and sustain critical projects. This is a vision shared by many who see the promise of cyberinfrastructure and e-infrastructure worldwide.

As we learned over the first two workshops, this approach involves much more than technology – it places new demands on people, processes, institutions, and organizations. Underlying Bamboo is an idea that by working together within and across our institutions, disciplines, organizations, and areas of expertise, we have the potential to do a better job of supporting humanities scholars and practioners, whether students or faculty. Achieving this idea is and will be challenging, but the benefits have the potential to far exceed anything we can envision within our brief discussions at planning workshops.

Based on the work to date on the planning project, the preliminary focus of Bamboo includes education, scholarly networking, tool and content interoperability, building and sustaining partnerships both within institutions and across the Bamboo community, and the services framework that is fundamental to Bamboo. Each of these areas map to specific working group activities that shall occur before Workshop 3 in January 2009.

The Bamboo Leadership Council intends to a release a more detailed scope and value proposition for Bamboo in late November – the halfway to point Workshop 3. This proposition statement will draw from some of the initial ideas generated by the working groups.

It is important to note that overall scope of Bamboo will continue to evolve over time. Over the course of the planning project, we will post updates to the scope so that the Bamboo community and interested parties can better understand what Bamboo is and where it is heading.