The following is an attempt to structure the topics that must be discussed. On a first level, I believe we need to discuss:

(GEN) General topics, e.g. discussion about the agenda in general, standardization process in general, perhaps exploration of funding possibilites to organize one or several workshops.

(RQT) Requirement analysis and information model for descriptive information in biology: Stepping back and asking ourselves what we need in terms of information model, entities/attributes or functionality. We should try to create an outline here to further structure this discussion

(XML) Exploration of the suitability or desirability of XML to be used as a metaformat for a new exchange format for descriptive data (incl. discussion of XML-Data, XML-Schema, XML-RDF, names spaces, Dublin Core, etc.

What else? RQT and XML should definitely be structured further. I will make a proposal for RQT tomorrow.

Please: - Always use a subject line - If possible, add the outline code (GEN, RQT, XML) and perhaps the number in the outline for this topic after your own subject in brackets. See the example for (GEN) in this posting. - When responding to a posting, please delete any information you are not commenting on. Do not just leave the entire posting as quoted text before or after your own text!

I believe that structuring will help the discussion, but please feel free at any time to submit a discussion paper on any topic you consider important!

Gregor ---------------------------------------------------------- Inst. for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Gregor Hagedorn Net: G.Hagedorn@bba.de Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203

Often wrong but never in doubt!