Chat Me Up

by David Dower

I was on a panel yesterday in Washington, DC focused on the topic of new play development and was asked to explain what I meant by a "distributed development process".  It reminded me that, in the course of disentangling some of the conflicts in the Intent to Apply letters for this program, where more than one institution was intent on applying with the same play, I suggested that the organizations design a collaborative development process for those plays and come in together on one application. In none of the conflict cases did anyone take that approach to solving it.  I'm curious about why that is.  Is it harder to pull off than I think?

Are any of you, dear readers, involved in applications that are built on more than one institution in conscious collaboration along the development path?  This is what I meant by a distributed development process.  But how much does it happen and what's in the way of more of it?

We're going to go live again on Wednesday with the weekly NPDP chat, so find us then and contribute your tales of partnership in new play development.

You can also join in to ask questions about the applications or selection process-- or just eavesdrop.  In any event, you'll find us live on line Wednesday at 3p EST.