Dear colleagues,
Please excuse again the delay. I was away since Tuesday of last week and failed doing this before leaving.
1. Nicolas Bailly was very kind to offer the possibility of an additional "European" meeting in Paris in conjunction with another meeting. However, except for Nicolas, perhaps Yde de Jong, and me, we have no participants, so we will not hold that meeting and hope to meet at the TDWG meeting in autumn.
2. For the Australian meeting 13/14 March seems to be ok with everbody. I got 4 responses to my question regarding the Sydney vs. Canberra question. 1 was neutral, 2 prefer Canberra, 1 prefers Sydney. So Canberra is preferred.
However, the BioForum 2 schedule (see http://plantnet.rbgsyd.gov.au/bioforum/index.html) is much clearer now and I think we should meet in Sydney! Immediately after our meeting a Workshop for an Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms: "TOWARDS A CATALOGUE OF LIFE" will be held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, Australia, 15-16 March, 2002. The draft programme is not on the web yet.
The funding decision on which my travel money depends should have been in last week, but I haven't heard it yet. Assuming it goes through, Sydney seems the better place, since the Catalogue of life meeting is immediately afterwards.
Originally I had the impression that some GBIF meetings in Canberra may be occurring before that day, but now it seems that all Canberra is Tuesday 19th-Fri. 22th. So either we could meet in Canberra earliest Sa/Sun 23/24th, or well ahead of Sydney and leave at least one day travel time. As I understand, Bob has made early travel plans, I understand he will be in Canberra 10th March.
We could meet 11-13 in Canberra, then have 1 day extra day to travel to Sydney. That would exclude some people who may want to pop in before the Sydney meeting, but we don't know about that, so we should stick to our core group.
Karen Wilson has offered to provide us with a room in Sydney, I assume Steve would do the same for Canberra.
Please answer in direct mail to g.hagedorn@bba as soon as possible: _Will_ you come to a meeting:
Canberra 11-13 Yes/No Canberra 12-13 Yes/No Sydney 12-14 Yes/No Sydney 13-14 Yes/No
I will collect all answers until tomorrow, Tuesday evening and send the conclusion round on Wednesday morning UTC.
Gregor---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn@bba.de) Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203
Often wrong but never in doubt!