Moore Foundation Support of TDWG -- A new era dawns

Jim Beach beach at KU.EDU
Tue May 10 17:24:04 CEST 2005


Congratulations are indeed in order for spectactular recent news of Gordon
and Betty Moore Foundation funding for TDWG's standards development
activities.

Kudos to the matchmakers, Stan Blum, Walter Berendsohn, Donald Hobern,
among others for approaching the GBMF for support, and kudos to recent
GBMF Program Manager John Marchioni for recognizing the societal and
research value of a stable, supported, biodiversity informatics network
infrastructure. Great job, great insight, and congratulations all.

I find it most heartening however, in the face of all of the challenges
that we constantly face with funding, technology development, deployment
and support, to realize that TDWG's first meeting was held 20 years ago,
in 1985, as a 'blue sky' vision primarily of Professors Vernon Heywood and
Frank Bisby. All of us who work in this field owe a debt of gratitude to
them for their inspiration to imagine a standards-based, global
architecture, and for their determination to strive over many years, with
all those who followed and toiled, to make it real.


Jim Beach
Biodiversity Research Center
University of Kansas




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