[tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

Piers Higgs Piers at gaiaresources.com.au
Wed Feb 18 07:44:55 CET 2009


Hi guys,

 

As another example of these type of events, the OSGeo mob (Open Source
GIS software) have run 'code sprints' for quite some time around their
conferences.  The next OSGeo conference, FOSS4G, is being held in Sydney
in October of this year, and some of my team are going along to
participate.   I'm happy to get the guys to give a brief description of
how that was organized and how it went, although timing wise it's not
far from the TDWG 2009 conference.  I might be able to get the FOSS4G
organizers in Sydney to give us some info on how they organize it if you
guys think it's worthwhile.

 

Now I suppose I better start getting distracted by submitted standards
too...

 

Piers

 

From: tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Blum, Stan
Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2009 3:29 PM
To: Lee Belbin; Kevin Richards; Technical Architecture Group mailing
list
Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

 

Kevin et al,

 

Here is another event that TDWG should be aware of -- the NESCent
sponsored hackathon on phylogenetic (database) interoperability.  
https://www.nescent.org/wg/evoinfo/index.php?title=Database_Interop_Hack
athon
<https://www.nescent.org/wg/evoinfo/index.php?title=Database_Interop_Hac
kathon> 

 

It would be nice if TDWG had someone there at least to observe, in
particular if this event could serve as a model for our own hackathons.

 

-Stan

 

________________________________

From: tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org on behalf of Lee Belbin
Sent: Tue 2009-02-17 10:23 PM
To: 'Kevin Richards'; 'Technical Architecture Group mailing list'
Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

Hi Kevin

 

Sorry for the delay in responding. Been distracted with submitted
standards (a nice distraction).

 

The TAG should act as the 'glue' between the other TDWG groups. Is the
key issue therefore the vocabularies/ ontology?

 

I like the idea of a bunch of weasels. It would seem a good idea for the
TAG to disseminate a statement of intent as soon as your strategy
crystallizes. This would (hopefully) encourage the groups to aim in a
productive direction.

 

I'm still working on recruiting members of the Programme Committee. They
should have a significant input to the meeting. They will be the ones
making a call to Conveners for group activities including involvement
across the themes.

 

Lee

 

Lee Belbin

TDWG Secretariat

 

From: tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Richards
Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 7:41 PM
To: Technical Architecture Group mailing list
Subject: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

 

Hello fellow TAGers,

 

I like the sound of Donald's mention of a "hackathon".  If anyone else
is keen for such a thing at TDWG 2009, then let me know.

 

Some ideas that we could work on:

- Tapir tools, services, enhancements

- LSID tools, services, enhancements

- LSID vocabulary work - elaboration of the vocabs, tools for working
with the vocabs, ?

- mash ups

- semantic web integration with tdwg standards/tools

 

Also had a few thoughts about how TAG ought to influence the the other
sub groups and their discussions.

 

A snippet from an email to Doanld...

 

"I do like the idea of concentrating more on the developing standards
etc.  

I feel we will have to be careful though not to end up with different
groups heading different directions, or re-inventing wheels, because
they are in separate discussions/sub groups.  One of the main concerns
here is subgroups creating models for data types that have been done
elsewhere - ie the "reuse" of existing schemas issue.  I do have a
cunning plan though that may help (so cunning you could put a tail on it
and call it a weasel :)).  As this "reuse" issue is really a major
concern of the TAG group, we could have members of the TAG group
spreading themselves through the different discussion, making sure they
are heading the same direction as other groups and reusing models, etc,
where appropriate.  It may help to have a short TAG "plan of attack"
meeting before the main meeting to work out strategies for this??"

 

Any thoughts?

 

Kevin

 

________________________________

From: tdwg-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [tdwg-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On
Behalf Of Donald.Hobern at csiro.au [Donald.Hobern at csiro.au]
Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 5:27 p.m.
To: tdwg at lists.tdwg.org
Subject: [tdwg] TDWG in 2009

Dear TDWG Members and Friends,

TDWG 2009 will be help in Montpellier France from November 9-13. I
thought I would take this opportunity to outline the activities I see as
important for TDWG this year leading up to the conference this November.
There are many important things for us to be doing in the lead up to the
meeting.

Consolidation of past work 

We have made much progress over the last few years in reworking our
standards for greater interoperability. The LSID work and the associated
LSID vocabularies have been a major part of this. These changes make it
much easier to reuse TDWG standards with different technologies, to
embed TDWG data elements in other structures, and to map other data
formats into forms which can be interpreted as TDWG-compliant data.
However this work is still incomplete. We need to formalise the
vocabularies as an agreed high-level ontology or data model to support
cross-project data integration. Many of our projects are awaiting a
clear lead in this area. Please contact me if you are interested in
leading some of this work or contributing to the discussion.

One obvious example of the importance of this work comes from Annie
Simpson's comments during her presentation in Perth. It should not be
difficult for a group like GISIN to adopt TDWG standards and be able
quickly to build a network to share data using those standards. I
reiterate the challenge for us to solve this problem this year, using
GISIN's requirements as a benchmark.

It is encouraging to see that NCD nears the end of its public review and
that TAPIR has just been submitted to the TDWG standards track. It would
appear that the submission of Darwin Core is not far off either. Please
help to ensure that we end up with effective standards that can be
easily adopted by a wide audience. 

e-Biosphere 2009

The e-Biosphere 2009 conference (http://www.e-biosphere09.org/) will
take place in London in June. This goals of this conference are to:

*	Present and discuss the extraordinary progress made in
Biodiversity Informatics over the past decade, 
*	Provide participants with demonstrations of current capabilities
in this field, and 
*	Bring stakeholders together to create a roadmap for the next
decade. 

The main meeting (1-3 June) has a programme of invited speakers who will
provide an overview of what is happening in biodiversity informatics and
promote a vision for the importance of this work. These sessions will
address the first and second of the goals above. At the end of the week,
there will be a smaller two-day workshop with representatives from a
range of biodiversity informatics projects discussing synergies and
efficient collaboration (the third goal).

e-Biosphere is significant to TDWG for several reasons:

1.	The opening session on 2 June will present the benefits of data
standards and integration, and we expect that many of the other sessions
will directly or indirectly highlight TDWG work. We are also organising
a booth to publicise the work of TDWG and hope that this will be an
opportunity to demonstrate the value of our role to a wider audience. 
2.	The e-Biosphere organisers have established an "Online
Conference Community" (http://forum.e-biosphere09.org/) to engage the
wider community in pre-conference discussions.  One of the categories
(to be added soon) will be on the role of standards and tools in
biodiversity informatics.  We encourage TDWG members to contribute to
this and to the other conference discussions. 
3.	TDWG will be represented in the roadmap discussions on 4-5 June.
We trust that this session will help us all to clarify priorities for
the next few years and will feed into discussions at TDWG 2009 and
beyond. 

TDWG 2009

 

In recent years TDWG conferences have moved away from their earlier
format, with significant emphasis on working group meetings, to become
more of a reporting conference on the activities of TDWG-related
projects.  This has had some benefits, but has also in some ways
weakened the organisation by reducing our focus on the core activity of
developing and promoting standards.  The vitality of our working groups
in large measure depends on the conference providing a focus for their
activity.

 

For this reason, TDWG 2009 will be structured differently.  Monday and
Friday of the conference have been reserved for plenary sessions, but
for the rest of the conference we plan to run three parallel (and, I
hope, intersecting) streams of activities.  One of these will be on the
use of biodiversity informatics to support agriculture and crop
diversity.  Another stream will be for TDWG to initiate activity in
response to the roadmap developed at e-Biosphere 2009.  The third stream
is still be be selected.  Each stream will include a range of activities
(e.g. symposia, seminars, task group sessions, hackathons) planned to
address key issues and to result in real deliverables to progress
biodiversity informatics in the area.

 

We are establishing a Program Committee to plan the conference in detail
and will keep you informed of progress.

 

Best wishes,

 

Donald

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601

Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 

Email: Donald.Hobern at csiro.au <mailto:Donald.Hobern at csiro.au> 

Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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