This fall marks the official launch of O3 Collaboration, a new web-based collaboration service for researchers and educators.

ORION gave a sneak peek of the new platform at the Discovery 09 conference last spring, and over the summer has been busy previewing the service at various events and institutions across Ontario and signing up new users. Nearly 200 users have already signed on.

Introduced as a value-added service for member institutions, O3 seeks to encourage collaboration, the sharing of ideas and research results, and connecting with colleagues across academic disciplines. It is a unique professional networking and collaboration platform developed by and for the research and education community.

"O3 is the place where researchers and educators can connect to the minds and resources they need to work faster and more effectively," says Gary Hilson, ORION's Projects and Alliances Consultant.

Available at no cost to researchers, students and educators at ORION-connected institutions, O3 is designed to become the "go-to" place to find colleagues and experts, share ideas, gain feedback from different academic perspectives on early research, build communities of interest, and work with team members online. Users can share, review and edit documents, post photos and videos for comment, create blogs, Wikis, forums and events calendars, all in one online location that also features powerful professional networking tools.

Any researcher, educator or student based at an ORION-connected institution is welcome to form a community on O3 and may invite others to join their community, even from outside Ontario. ORION encourages principal investigators and research team leaders to sign up and invite team members onto O3.

To celebrate the official launch, a reception will be held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in early October.

ORION will be launching a series of Webinars this fall to introduce new users to O3 Collaboration as well as showcase specific functions for existing users. O3 Community Manager Gary Hilson is also looking to arrange on-campus events to introduce O3 to any faculty member or researcher who is interested in setting up a free space to collaborate online. Finally, O3 is looking for contributions to the site in the form of blog postings, calendar events and Wiki entries. For more information, contact Gary at gary.hilson@orion.on.ca or 416-507-9860 ext. 232.

Visit www.othree.ca for more information and to sign up.