Academics Overview

Be it in Technology (the Internet runs on Open Standards and Open Source Software), Science (the rapid development of COVID Vaccines is due to Open Research Data and Open Science practices), or simple Economic Growth (the Human Genome Project alone generated a return of $141 for each federal dollar spent and created 310,000 jobs in its first 20 years), the world runs on Open Work.

The benefits of Open Work have become so clear that the majority of funders, from foundations to the Federal government now require that your work be Open licensed. The same holds true in the arts and humanities as well as in science and technology.

Given our experience in community building and our methodology described above, we are uniquely qualified to develop and carry out our comprehensive community project roadmaps to ensure their long-term sustainability through developing critical community infrastructure.

Researchers, industry partners, government agencies, and non-profits are increasingly leveraging Open Work as a key component of their goals. As reliance on Open Work grows, so too will the community maintenance needs for these key infrastructures.

RIT provides access to a massive community of multidisciplinary students and faculty. We seek to create an ongoing program to engage this group of students to support Academia and Research both within and outside of RIT, as well as NGOs and Civic entities leveraging Open Work.

In this consulting partnership with RIT’s cooperative education program, we are cultivating the next generation of multifunctional project contributors — community managers, open source designers, and various roles traditionally difficult to source for in Open.