It's not often that my usually divergent interests move the opposite direction: toward convergence. This seemed to change, at least in a small way, yesterday, when Arizona State University announced that they are completely switching over their email communications infrastructure so it is hosted by Google. This is a relatively new area of growth for Google, and one I think is pretty cool, especially for schools and non-profits. Here's the info:
http://asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061010_asugmail.htm
I've never been to ASU's campus, and I don't work on Google Apps for Your Domain, so why would I say these things are convergent? At first glance, I admit it is a bit of a stretch! But, it's not so far-fetched a connection when one considers how far-flung my interests have been over the past few years. I work for Imagining America, a consortium of higher-educational institutions. Arizona State University has been one of the earliest consortium members to join up. I've been very impressed with their commitment to public scholarship and community involvement for several years now.
The connection: I've worked with both ASU and Google. Not very strong connection, huh? Ok, I admit it's a tangential connection at best. That other part of my life, the working at Google part, doesn't involve public scholarship, and I don't think anyone at Google has ever heard of Imagining America. Consider this though: Google does want to use its philanthropy arm to do public good, and this makes me think that more substantive convergence might be possible! What a great potential avenue for philanthropy to take: offering non-profits basic applications like email, chat, calendar, and basic web-site hosting so that non-profits can work on the things they need to without having to worry so much about IT infrastructure. This could really revolutionize the way that non-profits work.
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