National University's live/virtual InCommunity Weekend (November, 2006) was designed to extend the reach of the 2006-07 HASTAC Information Year and Cyberinfrastructure vision to create a public awareness that leads to collaborative, interdisciplinary research , and new ways of improving the quality of life in our interdependent world community. Our challenge was to find ways to forge a new civic culture for the common good and pervasive global awareness in a fragmented and interdependent world through collaboration and creative community-building. we decided to take advantage of new and emerging technologies to engage people everywhere in open dialogue and explore opportunities for improving the quality of life for everyone.

Today, Cyberinfrastructure, which is defined as the integration of hardware, software and human resources to facilitate science, engineering, and societal goals, is charting new directions across academic disciplines and public spaces. Technology has altered our thinking about the future without our even knowing the extent. Innovation, knowledge sharing, and discovery stir and stretch global strategies for tolerable competitive advantage and prosperous coexistence.

In short, we need to rethink our understanding of people, place, time, technology, and money and envision a new sense of community building and growth opportunities. That task will call for greater public awareness of the "dynamics of discovery" in a cyber world and broadening the participation in future-think dialogue. It also requires us to consider the social implications of the constant change and the threat to sustainable development.

That was the crux of our threaded HASTAC InCommunity themes of "Toward a New Civic Civic Culture: Civil Society and Community Building," 'Connecting Cyberinfrastructure to the Community," "Impact of Use of Technology in the Community," and "Making the School-Community Connection in a Digital World." Through live and virtual discussion and interactions with thought leaders and practitioners we wanted to raise a level of awareness among the humanities and social science community that would stimulate needed dialogue for smart and creative community building. We were pleased to learn how well our efforts were received and how this special InCommunity event (see the Agenda) is contributing to bringing knowledge worlds and engaging people from various communities to envision and shape a sustainable future.