When organizations are driven by the similar goal of excellence, it is amazing what can be accomplished in two days of non-stop discussions. As I try to consolidate my thoughts from meetings the past two days, the following quotation rings particularly true.

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. ~ Henry Ford

There is still a lot of work to be done, milestones to be hit and unforeseen roadblocks to overcome before we give ourselves a pat on the back, but we are off to a good start.

For the perpetually curious, SURFnet, ESnet and NORDUnet stated their intentions to collaborate on furthering innovation in network research by working on open-source middleware to reserve and seamlessly allocate bandwidth across multiple domains  (http://www.lbl.gov/cs/Archive/news030910.html).  While our first planned meeting was delayed by volcano ash from Iceland, skies and schedules cleared enough for the Dutch to visit us at our facilities at Berkeley lab.  This week’s two day meeting of minds is a baby step taken towards an ambitious goal of open sharing of tools, knowledge, open-source software and other network-related research with the community.

We did let our visitors out of the conference room for just few minutes to enjoy the beautiful, albeit faint, backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge.