I have been thinking whether there is some centralized channel where the
end-users (staff in the Research Services Office in various universities)
can interact with each other. This would open up a big platform for all the
end users to interact with each other where they can share ideas, questions
or tips related to Grants.Gov, FDP, NIH etc. My thinking was more towards
something like a Google Group or an open discussion forum. The advantages of
something like a Google Group would be:
- Several topics can be viewed at the same time and the topics are
searchable by keywords (also the topics are neatly arranged)
- If someone has a question and posts to the group, he or she can expect a
response almost immediately and these responses would be viewable to other
users too
- Unlike a listserv e-mail, it won't clutter up a user's inbox. People can
go to the group and check the messages rather then their inboxes getting
filled with messages. Also I have noticed that when someone posts a message
to the listserv, they get several vacation replies back. Sometimes it makes
it difficult to go through all the e-mails. In a group, when several people
respond to a particular question, the replies are tied up with the original
question and neatly stacked which makes it easier to view and read.
- All the topics are backed up by Google's powerful search so that people
can search by keywords.

If we do not want the Google Group to be open to general public, we can
always make it a private group so that the end users have to subscribe to
the group and only the subscribers can view the messages.

I would like to know other people's thoughts on this. I already floated this
idea to Steve (MIT) and David (NAS) and they agree with it. If several
people agree with this then we can start a group. I take the responsibility
of launching/moderating the group with the help of some people.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

--
Mauneel D Desai
Research Specialist, Information Systems
Project Coordinator, RiSC
Team Leader
Office of Vice Chancellor for Research
University of Illinois @ Chicago
Ph: (312) 413 - 7713

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