[tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

Wed Feb 18 07:23:41 CET 2009

Hi Kevin

Sorry for the delay in responding. Been distracted with submitted standards
(a nice distraction).

The TAG should act as the 'glue' between the other TDWG groups. Is the key
issue therefore the vocabularies/ ontology?

I like the idea of a bunch of weasels. It would seem a good idea for the TAG
to disseminate a statement of intent as soon as your strategy crystallizes.
This would (hopefully) encourage the groups to aim in a productive
direction.

I'm still working on recruiting members of the Programme Committee. They
should have a significant input to the meeting. They will be the ones making
a call to Conveners for group activities including involvement across the
themes.

Lee

Lee Belbin

TDWG Secretariat

From: tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Richards
Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 7:41 PM
To: Technical Architecture Group mailing list
Subject: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009

Hello fellow TAGers,

I like the sound of Donald's mention of a "hackathon".  If anyone else is
keen for such a thing at TDWG 2009, then let me know.

Some ideas that we could work on:

- Tapir tools, services, enhancements

- LSID tools, services, enhancements

- LSID vocabulary work - elaboration of the vocabs, tools for working with
the vocabs, ?

- mash ups

- semantic web integration with tdwg standards/tools

Also had a few thoughts about how TAG ought to influence the the other sub
groups and their discussions.

A snippet from an email to Doanld...

"I do like the idea of concentrating more on the developing standards etc.  

I feel we will have to be careful though not to end up with different groups
heading different directions, or re-inventing wheels, because they are in
separate discussions/sub groups.  One of the main concerns here is subgroups
creating models for data types that have been done elsewhere - ie the
"reuse" of existing schemas issue.  I do have a cunning plan though that may
help (so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel :)).  As
this "reuse" issue is really a major concern of the TAG group, we could have
members of the TAG group spreading themselves through the different
discussion, making sure they are heading the same direction as other groups
and reusing models, etc, where appropriate.  It may help to have a short TAG
"plan of attack" meeting before the main meeting to work out strategies for
this??"

Any thoughts?

Kevin

  _____  

From: tdwg-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [tdwg-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of
Donald.Hobern at csiro.au [Donald.Hobern at csiro.au]
Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 5:27 p.m.
To: tdwg at lists.tdwg.org
Subject: [tdwg] TDWG in 2009

Dear TDWG Members and Friends,

TDWG 2009 will be help in Montpellier France from November 9-13. I thought I
would take this opportunity to outline the activities I see as important for
TDWG this year leading up to the conference this November. There are many
important things for us to be doing in the lead up to the meeting.

Consolidation of past work 

We have made much progress over the last few years in reworking our
standards for greater interoperability. The LSID work and the associated
LSID vocabularies have been a major part of this. These changes make it much
easier to reuse TDWG standards with different technologies, to embed TDWG
data elements in other structures, and to map other data formats into forms
which can be interpreted as TDWG-compliant data. However this work is still
incomplete. We need to formalise the vocabularies as an agreed high-level
ontology or data model to support cross-project data integration. Many of
our projects are awaiting a clear lead in this area. Please contact me if
you are interested in leading some of this work or contributing to the
discussion.

One obvious example of the importance of this work comes from Annie
Simpson's comments during her presentation in Perth. It should not be
difficult for a group like GISIN to adopt TDWG standards and be able quickly
to build a network to share data using those standards. I reiterate the
challenge for us to solve this problem this year, using GISIN's requirements
as a benchmark.

It is encouraging to see that NCD nears the end of its public review and
that TAPIR has just been submitted to the TDWG standards track. It would
appear that the submission of Darwin Core is not far off either. Please help
to ensure that we end up with effective standards that can be easily adopted
by a wide audience. 

e-Biosphere 2009

The e-Biosphere 2009 conference (http://www.e-biosphere09.org/) will take
place in London in June. This goals of this conference are to:

*	Present and discuss the extraordinary progress made in Biodiversity
Informatics over the past decade, 
*	Provide participants with demonstrations of current capabilities in
this field, and 
*	Bring stakeholders together to create a roadmap for the next decade.

The main meeting (1-3 June) has a programme of invited speakers who will
provide an overview of what is happening in biodiversity informatics and
promote a vision for the importance of this work. These sessions will
address the first and second of the goals above. At the end of the week,
there will be a smaller two-day workshop with representatives from a range
of biodiversity informatics projects discussing synergies and efficient
collaboration (the third goal).

e-Biosphere is significant to TDWG for several reasons:

1.	The opening session on 2 June will present the benefits of data
standards and integration, and we expect that many of the other sessions
will directly or indirectly highlight TDWG work. We are also organising a
booth to publicise the work of TDWG and hope that this will be an
opportunity to demonstrate the value of our role to a wider audience. 
2.	The e-Biosphere organisers have established an "Online Conference
Community" (http://forum.e-biosphere09.org/) to engage the wider community
in pre-conference discussions.  One of the categories (to be added soon)
will be on the role of standards and tools in biodiversity informatics.  We
encourage TDWG members to contribute to this and to the other conference
discussions. 
3.	TDWG will be represented in the roadmap discussions on 4-5 June.  We
trust that this session will help us all to clarify priorities for the next
few years and will feed into discussions at TDWG 2009 and beyond. 

TDWG 2009

In recent years TDWG conferences have moved away from their earlier format,
with significant emphasis on working group meetings, to become more of a
reporting conference on the activities of TDWG-related projects.  This has
had some benefits, but has also in some ways weakened the organisation by
reducing our focus on the core activity of developing and promoting
standards.  The vitality of our working groups in large measure depends on
the conference providing a focus for their activity.

For this reason, TDWG 2009 will be structured differently.  Monday and
Friday of the conference have been reserved for plenary sessions, but for
the rest of the conference we plan to run three parallel (and, I hope,
intersecting) streams of activities.  One of these will be on the use of
biodiversity informatics to support agriculture and crop diversity.  Another
stream will be for TDWG to initiate activity in response to the roadmap
developed at e-Biosphere 2009.  The third stream is still be be selected.
Each stream will include a range of activities (e.g. symposia, seminars,
task group sessions, hackathons) planned to address key issues and to result
in real deliverables to progress biodiversity informatics in the area.

We are establishing a Program Committee to plan the conference in detail and
will keep you informed of progress.

Best wishes,

Donald

Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601

Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 

Email:  <mailto:Donald.Hobern at csiro.au> Donald.Hobern at csiro.au

Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ 

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