This phase set the foundation for collaborative work by developing an understanding of the history upon which this project was building; individual and collective goals of the alliances, current measurement activities and seeking areas of commonality. This group also explored the current opportunities and limitations for reporting the true value of their work given NSF reporting structures. During this phase the group identified capacity building as the priority for exploration through this project. The group also reviewed and agreed to a recommended set of participation measures for gathering data about program participants.

At a two-day, face-to-face meeting the group did a deep dive into what capacity building looks like at the alliance level and they generated a set of constructs across the community to test through a shared reporting template.

Alliances tested and revised the reporting template. During this time the alliances met regularly to give greater definitional clarity to the constructs.

Aggregating results confirmed that the capacity building constructs could be gathered and aggregated across alliances with some confidence. During this time the participation measures were also piloted with the larger BPC community as part of the CISE-EWF PI meeting. The group met with the NSF and produced technical reports and recommendations to be hosted on the BPCnet.org website.