Update: (9/29/06) — The CCC Planning Group has released a white paper with much more detail on the structure and purpose of the CCC. They’ve also released a timeline of future activities.
The first step in “Bootstrapping Phase 1” has been completed with the naming of an interim CRA GENI Community Advisory Board. Its members are:

Charlie Catlett, Argonne National Lab
Vint Cerf, Google
Susan Graham, University of California, Berkeley
Ron Johnson, University of Washington
Anita Jones, University of Virginia
Ed Lazowska, University of Washington (Chair)
Peter Lee, Carnegie Mellon University
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech

Finally, we’ve set up a page for all CCC related information: https://cra.org/ccc.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Peter Harsha, CRA
202-234-2111 x 106
NSF TAPS CRA TO CREATE COMPUTING COMMUNITY CONSORTIUM
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2006 – The National Science Foundation today announced an agreement with the Computing Research Association (CRA) to establish a consortium of computing experts that will provide scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects.
Under the three-year, $6 million agreement, CRA will create the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) to identify major research opportunities and establish “grand challenges” for the field. The CCC will create venues for community participation for developing visions and creating new research activities.
One of the first tasks of the CCC will be to assume the role of community proxy organization for the NSF’s Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) Project, providing broad scientific oversight to its potential construction and operation. In addition, the CCC will provide scientific oversight for future NSF large-scale computing research initiatives.
A council of 9 to 15 members and a council chair will lead the CCC. All council members will be leaders of the computing research community and will represent the diversity of that community.
“We’re pleased that NSF has charged our organization with establishing the CCC,” said Dan Reed, chair of the Computing Research Association and director of the Renaissance Computing Institute in North Carolina. “Computing research continues to fuel the innovations that drive economic productivity. We see the CCC as a mechanism that will enable continued innovation by enhancing our community’s ability to envision and pursue long-term, audacious computing research goals.”
Reed said the main challenges for the CCC will be to catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives.
About CRA. The CRA was established 30 years ago and has members at more than 250 research entities in academia, industry and government. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in the computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.

We’ll have more on this announcement shortly, including a white paper that will help provide a little more detail. But in the interim, you can get some additional context by looking at NSF’s original solicitation for the CCC, “Defining the Large-Scale Infrastructure Needs of the Computing Research Community.”