PILOT is a research project within the French PEPR (Programmes et Equipements Prioritaires de Recherche) initiative focused on providing technologies, visions, and guidelines that promote better collaboration in the long run while preserving participants’ interests and enforcing their specific requirements. The project addresses the fundamental challenge that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for collaboration, and provides tailored approaches meeting different domains’ constraints. PILOT aims to build a repository that becomes a national and international reference point for individuals and organizations seeking resources to support long-term distributed collaboration, encompassing all dimensions of the collaborative socio-technical stack including technology, use cases, demonstrators, guidelines, and visions. The project spans domains including civil security (crisis management), education, publishing, and web development, applying practice-based computing approaches to understand and support collaboration in these varied contexts. It is particularly relevant in Software Engineering, Education, Social Sciences, Publishing and Disaster Response.

PILOT: Technologies for Long-Term Collaboration supports interdisciplinary, co-design and co-production collaboration and is suited for multi-organization networks in hybrid settings.

As an emerging case study, PILOT: Technologies for Long-Term Collaboration is still developing its evidence base and community adoption. This case study examines the collaborative practices at PEPR / French multi-institutional research consortium, drawing on experiences since 2023.