An idea for a VO Applications Newsletter

[Mark Allen]

Dear all,

A few of the astronomers associated with the Apps WG have
been discussing the possibility of a newsletter about VO Applications
that would communicate short news items about advances in VO tools
to astronomers.

Many of the new capabilities that are announced on the Apps mailing list,
or shown at the Apps sessions at interop meetings would be immediately
useful for astronomers. The idea is to make this news available to
astronomers with a short and sweet newsletter, designed to be attention
catching, and quick to absorb. e.g. 'VO can be accessed by powerful command
line tools, here's one example', 'New great tool released, here's the link'
'Large data sets can be stored in and accessed from VOSpace, here's where...'.

We've put together a draft in order to explore the ideas of what sort of
content or format such a newsletter might involve. This is attached as a
pdf file (that includes http links), where the articles are a mix of
real articles and ideas for sections. The articles are intentionally short
and not as detailed as say a project newsletter (e.g. NVO newsletter) would
be.

We've had some discussion on how such a newsletter might be managed -
2 or 3 issues per year, rotating editors assigned by chair of Apps, editing
contributed articles for astronomer audience, possible different delivery
formats (pdf, email, html..). Also in discussing the scope, we were quite
clear about not trying to make an overall IVOA newsletter, and to target
astronomers. As such it would be a 'VO Applications Newsletter' rather
than a newsletter of the Applications WG if I can make that distinction.

This is all at the 'ideas' stage, and with just a few days before the
Trieste meeting I'd like hear any first impressions or input the Apps
group might have on this. I plan to bring it up at the Trieste meeting.
Also there may be some discussion about IVOA newsletters as a result of
IVOA Assessment Committee report, so it would also need to be considered
with respect to that too.

best regards,
Mark Allen


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