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As the usage of online experiments gains traction in the educational community, there is
increasing interest in developing such labs on a common infrastructure. A unified
architecture is essential to convert the current tremendous interest for online experiments
into an economy of labs that can be efficiently shared around the world. You and your
institution have expressed interest in and support for the iLab Shared Architecture. At
present, MIT continues to develop the iLab infrastructure largely alone, but your
university and others are now creating the majority of new online labs.
The goal of this meeting is to convene a group of universities and corporate
sponsors to explore the merit in establishing a consortium to further iLab development
and dissemination.
If the attendees favor the idea of a consortium, we would also plan to discuss (1) the
critical path to launching such an organization, (2) immediate next steps for the founders
to take, (3) the complementary roles of academic and corporate members in the
consortium, and (4) plans for joint fund-raising and development. We are limiting this
first founders' meeting to universities and companies that we expect to play a leading role
in launching the consortium. If we jointly decide to launch an iLab Consortium, we
would plan to hold a meeting for a much larger audience within six months. At this
second meeting, we would expect to address the following issues:
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