SURF and Nextcloud

Sign up for Nextcloud within our co-operative

Great that you want to help advance Nextcloud in education and research. Starting early next year, we will roll out the collaboration platform Nextcloud more broadly among our members. Let us know now if you are interested in taking part. Each member institution must have at least 20 sign-ups to participate. This helps us test real-world collaboration. So inform your colleagues and encourage them to join as well!

The rules:

• Indicate your interest via this form
• All sectors can participate
• A limited number of places is currently available
• Each institution must have a minimum of 20 sign-ups
• Anyone can apply, but the coordinating SURF contact person (CSC) at your institution will ultimately decide whether you can take part
• SURF covers the majority of the costs; a small contribution will be charged per participant

What else are we doing?

SURF has been gaining experience with Nextcloud for some time. Four years ago, a delegation of members visited Nextcloud under the SURF umbrella to explore whether this collaboration platform could be a viable option for implementation within education and research.

At the moment, various pilots with the collaboration platform are underway to gain practical experience. For example, the AlgoSoc research consortium works with Nextcloud, which SURF provides for them. They collaborate through Nextcloud across the boundaries of the five participating universities.

In addition, SURF is running a Nextcloud pilot internally, allowing staff to gain experience and better understand what users and the IT organisation at our member institutions encounter.

Digital sovereignty

Digital sovereignty is an important theme within the SURF co-operative. Since its founding, SURF has been guided by key public values such as accessibility, reliability, freedom of choice and privacy. In recent years, awareness has grown that we need to take more control of our digital solutions, based on public values such as autonomy, humanity and justice.

SURF has initiatives at various levels to strengthen the sector’s digital sovereignty. Examples include the AI hub, investments in research infrastructure, and exploring the possibilities of PeerTube. The roll-out and pilots with Nextcloud are also part of this effort and are intended to examine to what extent this collaboration platform can contribute to strengthening the digital sovereignty and collective autonomy of education and research.