Dear All,

I would encourage any of you who are interested in this topic to join in (see info below). Note that you do not need to participate during the whole time, this is just meant to be a window of time for the group to focus on the topic. We all need focus :-)

Best, JAmes

Dear TDWG BSCI Members,

The TDWG Biodiversity Services and Clients Interest Group (BSCI, http://www.tdwg.org/activities/biodiversity-services-clients) will hold an open virtual hackathon in the week November 14-18. In the hackathon, we will define technical and organisational aspects of biodiversity informatics web services, which should be considered for achieving improved harmonisation and interoperability of APIs. We will also compile existing best practice documents for service implementations from different domains and consider their application for biodiversity informatics. During the week, all materials will be compiled publicly on the BSCI wiki at http://tdwgbsci.biowikifarm.net/wiki/.

Results of the hackathon as well as the roadmap to a biodiversity service implementation standard will be further discussed during the 2016 TDWG conference in Costa Rica (Workshop 01, "Towards Best Practices for the Implementation and Documentation of Biodiversity Informatics Services", http://www.tdwg.org/conference2016/).

The hackathon will be open to all interested participants. For more information or to be added to our list of participants please contact James Macklin (James.Macklin@AGR.GC.CA) or Anton Güntsch (a.guentsch@bgbm.org).

With best wishes,

James & Anton