Hi Rod, Your comment facility is down or I would have added this to the blog ... I think that most of the talk re serving XML from LSIDs was by way of an upgrade path rather than as a final goal. As you say (rightly or wrongly) the community has put a lot of effort into XML schemas and it worried me (and others) that tying LSIDs to RDF might mean that the LSID baby got thrown out with the RDF bathwater as the community rejected it wholesale. But I was persuaded this wouldn't happen and now I face some scepticism here at Kew about the benefits of RDF so a killer app would be good...

On the meeting itself, yes it was frustrating (and interesting and useful as well) and it struck me on my return that we might have got further had we had some professional (and neutral) facilitators - not to say that the chairs didn't do a good job getting us all to a decision in the end, but that we are all (me included) so parti pris and bound up in the subject that herding cats didn't even come close ... For the next meeting the decisions will be harder and more concrete and there will be a lot to decide. It might help having people who know how to facilitate useful debate and close off some of the blind alleys and circular pathways we have a tendency to wander into Sally

For those at the workshop, it was great to meet you and to discuss GUIDs. I've posted a personal view on proceedings on one of my blogs: http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2006/02/globally-unique-identifiers.html . Comments are welcome.

Regards

Rod

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Professor Roderic D. M. Page Editor, Systematic Biology DEEB, IBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QP United Kingdom

Phone: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

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*** Sally Hinchcliffe *** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew *** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708 *** S.Hinchcliffe@rbgkew.org.uk