Subject: Re: Upcoming meeting in Munich
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2004 12:09 PM
From: David Barnes <dbarnes@physics.unimelb.edu.au>
Reply-To: dbarnes@physics.unimelb.edu.au
To: Peter Quinn <pjq@eso.org>
Cc: <ivoa@ivoa.net>, David Barnes <dbarnes@ph.unimelb.edu.au>


A quick Aus-VO report in advance of the meeting:

In Q4 2003 the main Aus-VO activities included the Aus-VO
workshop 2003, a substantial ramp-up in Theory VO activity,
continuing visualisation, data products and federation work,
and work towards a number of funding opportunities.

The Aus-VO Workshop 2003 in November gave us the chance to
review progress so far, and have community-wide, open discussions
on the way forward for Aus-VO, and on how we can improve our
collaborative efforts nationally and internationally.  We 
identified four national working groups to set up, viz.
Science, Theory, Technical and Visualisation, and we are
in the initial stages of setting up membership and priorities
for these groups.  They will primarily discuss issues relevant
to Aus-VO but in some cases (eg. Theory) will be expected 
to play a major role internationally.

Regarding Theory VO, under the 2003 LIEF funding, work
commenced at Melbourne to design and implement a prototype
portal for configuring, submitting, monitoring and analysing
the results of theoretical simulation jobs, using the Grid
paradigm.  This has formed the core of a new proposal to 
the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing to generalise
this work to many astro simulation codes, and also to include
Experimental Particle Physics aspects.  Additionally, a 
VO-related theoretical astrophysics Discovery Project, led
by Geraint Lewis (U/Syd) was awarded funding by the Australian 
Research Council.

Finally we have spent a lot of time exploring new funding
schemes. After receiving AUD10K in seed funding for the 
Research Networks program, we will abandon this effort after
discharging our responsibilities to the seed funding.  The
amount awarded was seen as a strong discouragement.  In 
addition to the VPAC request noted above, a new Grid
infrastructure program has been announced by APAC & VPAC,
and we have put in Expressions of Interest for "Data 
Warehousing for the Australian Virtual Observatory" and
"Grid Computing and Workflows for the Australian  Virtual
Observatory".  If successful these proposals will see 
significant support services provided to Aus-VO by the
national computing facilities.

Here endeth my view on Aus-VO activities for Q4 2003.

 - David Barnes, 22 Jan 2004.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 02:43:14PM +0100, Peter Quinn wrote:
> Dear IVOA Exec and WG Chairs,
> 
>     Firstly Happy New Year! I think we are heading into a very important
> year for the IVOA with several new standards in development, central
> documents to be finalized and new projects to join our efforts.
> 
>     I would like to remind you all of the upcoming IVAO Executive Meeting to
> be held in Munich on 29 January
> (http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaExecMeeting4). The AVO January
> 2004 demonstration will take place on January 27 and 28 as part of the AVO
> Science Working Group meeting and the IVOA Exec is most welcome to addend
> this demo. There will be a working dinner on the evening of 28 January.
> 
>     I will circulate an agenda within the next week. Please forward specific
> proposals for agenda items in the next few days. I would like to receive
> written (short ~ 1-2 page max) reports from the WG Chairs on their progress
> since July 2003. In particular, I would like to see the status of new
> standards and systems involved in 2004 demos and plans for upcoming v1.0
> documents. One of the central items for the agenda of the upcoming meeting
> will be the revision of the roadmap priorities and milestones as we did in
> Seattle last January. In particular I would like WG chairs and the Exec to
> be thinking about the number and scope of the WGs we have. Over time, we
> have developing significant overlaps in some areas that we need to address
> and maybe redefine scope. The agenda will also contain short project reports
> from all projects (no more than 5 minute each) and specific reports on the
> January 2004 demos.
> 
>     Please review the outstanding actions from the July 2003 meeting in
> Sydney and the IVOA telecon of 29 September 2003
> (http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaRepMin). I am working on
> several documents that I will circulate in draft from by the end of next
> week for review before the meeting.
> 
>     Looking forward to seeing you all in Munich!
> 
>     Regards
> 
>     Peter
> 
>