DIVERSE is a living community: and you are part of it!

Have you ever left a conference bubbling with great ideas? You intend to contact the people you met to build collaborations, write Journal articles, write grants, and develop new curriculum -- but life gets in the way and all the good ideas are left behind.

We, the members of the DIVERSE conference committee, enjoy the community -feeling of DIVERSE and the possibilities this brings to us. We would like to share this with a wider group of people allowing more collaboration. To this end we would like to establish the Creative Concept Coffees as part of the DIVERSE conference.

The Creative Concept Coffees will provide a forum for you to process all those wonderful ideas that got left behind. We invite you to bring a partial manuscript, ideas for grants, or pedagogical needs with you to the conference. By joining one of the coffee break -- forums you will have an audience to process these ideas with. You are not alone! When you get to the conference and look around you will see at least a hundred colleagues who would love to help you out when you experience a technological or pedagogical problem. At the Creative Concept Coffees your colleagues can brainstorm with you on scientific articles or collaborate with you on projects. This will not end with the conference -- we intend to develop a place on the website to continue these collaborations between conferences, this could be a place to find a sparring partner that you can bounce ideas off once or twice or a few times a year. The Creative Concept Coffees are especially organized to establish and enrich the DIVERSE community.

If you would like to participate there will be three opportunities during the coffee breaks on the first two days of the conference, and from 15:10 – to 16: 00 on July 2nd we will host a wrap up session presenting all the ideas that came from the coffee breaks. One final opportunity will be provided the last day (July 3rd) for additional thoughts and ideas. Please e-mail your interest in participating to either Dr. Lori Schnieders or Drs. Maaike vanLeijen. Sheila Buckingham and Herve Thily will also help facilitate sessions so we can host up to 4 groups per coffee break. Participation will be limited to 10 per group per session; therefore it would be helpful to know how much of an interest there is so we can plan accordingly for the sessions.You are DIVERSE and DIVERSE is you!