sTeam ( www.open-steam.org ) will be part of a consortium to create a virtual knowledge-environment.

because sTeam is written in pike an uses caudium as a webserver we want developers of both communities be part of this project. this project is planned as an EU-Project with a consortium of partners in Europe. this EU-projects are focused on small and medium sized businesses and research groups. they are also interested in supporting european union candidate countries. this consortium will supported with a huge amount of grants from the EU. this could mean to pay companies and individuals to develop pike and caudium. we are looking for potential partners which are intrested to participate on this project.

this paticipation could mean short term contracts to work on specific features or work on pike or caudium development on a long term basis.

at this point we need companies and indiviuals to tell us if you are interested to participate. you do not need to be interested in the primary goals of the project but only to do some pike or caudium development.

because we need to know who our potential partners are before we can formally form the consortium we would like to ask you to respond as soon as you can.

this does not mean any commitment but is just to let us know if there are any optential partners in the caudium and pike communities. (i would also like to get your response if you are not interested)

below you find an abstract about the virtual knowledge-environment that we want to build.

greetings, martin.

What is: Multiverse is a virtual knowledge enviroment for research and teaching of mathematics, one of today's key technology for the advancement of science and engineering. It provides natural forms of research and teaching in virtual knowledge spaces where stoppage by geographical, technological or application specific boundaries do not exist anymore. It provides new and integrates existing advanced e-teaching and e-learning enviroments as well as virtual laboratories for experimental mathematics, engineering and natural sciences, with the most comfortable communication and cooperation scenaries.

Goal: Within the next five years a mathematical multiverse will be established that allows practitioneers and researchers, teachers and students to exchange and process all kinds of mathematical knowledge and integrate it in a multiverse of individual environments.

How to: To create such a mathematical multiverse, different goals have to be accomplished. The granularity of mathematical objects will be boiled down from large documents and textbooks to mathematical expressions which can be flexibly processed by any mathematical device as well as assembled into larger units. Self-administrated virtual knowledge spaces will provide the means to cooperatively create, process, manage and store such mathematical knowledge across any workplace in Europe. Virtual laboratories provide a new kind of setting for experimental mathematics. New types of media objects will bridge the existing gap between different representations and functionalities of the same conceptual object through application service providing. Specific tools will provide new human-computer interfaces such as pen-based and speech-based formula creation. New kinds of knowledge retrieval mechanisms provide access to such distributed mathematical knowledge. An architectural framework will integrate different individual universes into a multiverse by specifying interfaces, protocols and standards for implementing individual components and integrating existing ones.

Role of Mathematics: Mathematics as key-technology provides the common reference point for all these activities, because it is of paramount importance for many scientific and engineering disciplines. Thus, Multiverse shall become a european wide virtual knowledge enviroment for research and teaching of mathematics that can be accessed, processed and modified individually and cooperatively from any workplace and within any form of research and learning, from individual studies through traditional classroom teaching to wokplace-integrated lifelong learning.

Modern technologies drive the rapid change from an industrial to an information society. Mathematics is drastically changed as state of the art computer algebra and software packages revolutionize the fields of mathematical modeling, simulation and visualization of complex processes. The potential of these modern technologies also offers the opportunity to handle the resulting necessary changes in mathematical education and research, digital representation of mathematical objects, cooperative studies and professional collaboration.

Bologna: A Europe of Knowledge needs an mobile, interconnected scientific community: Multiverse is in direct support of the idea of the Bologna Declaration as it enhances cooperation, communication and mobility of students, teachers and researchers. A european-wide "single sign on"-infrastructure may serve as one key example; the ability to establish cross-server and cross-platform access structures for context aware mobile devices in ad hoc networks is another.

Breakthrough: Thus, Multiverse shall become a european wide virtual knowledge enviroment for research and teaching of mathematics that can be accessed, processed and modified individually and cooperatively from any workplace and within any form of research and learning, from individual studies through traditional classroom teaching to wokplace-integrated lifelong learning.