It's all over bar the shouting, as they say in some parts of the world. HCSNet, which has been a fixture in the lives of many of us for the last five and half years, formally comes to an end on June 30th. As you may be aware, the ARC has no current plans to renew funding for any of the 25 networks that were initially created, despite a strong case having been made collectively by all the networks. We think this is a real shame. So, as part of our final report, we'd like to strongly make the point that HCSNet really did make a difference, and that its absence will leave a big hole in our research and networking infrastructure. It can take years for the ARC to decide to fund a program like this, so we don't expect any immediate effect; but Who knows, we might have an impact in encouraging the ARC to fund a similar exercise at some point in the future.

So here's how you can help. We've had lots of informal feedback on how much people have appreciated the HCSNet experiment in bringing people together across a broad range of disciplines. We'd like to make that a bit more formal. We ask you to think about how HCSNet has impacted on your life and work over the last five years, and then send us a letter -- long or short -- that talks about your particular individual experience. Your letters should be addressed to the HCSNet Executive. We'd like to receive actual letters on letterhead, rather than just emails, since we think this will have more impact. Ideally we'd like letters emailed to us as scanned PDFs, but hard copy is ok too, provided you can get your contribution to us by no later than FRIDAY 26TH JULY 2010.

Please email your scanned letters to christina.cassidy@mq.edu.au, or if you'd prefer to send hard copy, send them to

Chris Cassidy
HCSNet
Faculty of Science
Macquarie University
North Ryde
NSW 2109
Australia

Thank you for your support!