IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM15)

Logistics

• The meeting will be held in the Kyoto International Conference Centre, Room 104.
• A working lunch will be provided
• Those attending by phone will be called from Kyoto - please provide number to Masatoshi

Agenda (Draft)

1. Roll Call
2. Minutes of FM13
3. Review of Actions
4. Reports from VO projects (to be uploaded to web page)
5. Reports from WGs
6. Progress on Technical Roadmap
   • review of milestones
   • general review on technical progress : are we still focused ?
7. Key IVOA positions
   • new Deputy chair
   • Secretary and Technical Lead
   • Applications Interest Group
8. Kyoto meeting - review of progress
9. Prague 2006 conference : next steps
10. IVOA Calendar
11. AOB
12. Summary of Actions

Reports from the Projects

AstroGrid - AndyLawrence, 13 May 2005

AstroGrid just passed a major milestone - our first public release of an open system for astronomical end-users - AstroGrid-Release V1.0. This is a preliminary release, with limited documentation and known bugs, but we are encouraging astronomers to register, start using the system, and feedback their experiences. We anticipate a fuller release in late summer - V1.1. This will be a release of an improved end-user system and a release of the AstroGrid software suite, which of course all other VO projects are welcome to make use of. Since the very recent announcement, we have 26 new registered users, making 71 in total now; it will be interesting to see how this grows.

The release is described on AstroGrid News and is available at http://www.astrogrid.org/release-v1.0

This release has a portal; access to virtual storage (MySpace); a browsable Registry; a query builder; a workflow building system; some simplified "science services" parameter driven tasks; and links to third party applications, like TopCat and Aladin. Some things work directly through the portal, using Cocoon. Others are launched on the client machine using Java Webstart, using an "AstroGrid Desktop".

Given that we now have a fully working system, we are having vigorous debates about how to maintain and support such a system, and the relation between the AstroGrid project and the UK data centres. (I bet this all sounds familiar to some of you ..)

The other thing of note is that we running a workshop for users in July in Cambridge. For further details see the news announcement, or the full details here.