An idea for a VO Applications Newsletter

[Igor Chilingarian]

Hi Mark,

This is definitely a good idea, but I'm a bit concerned about how to reach
astronomers with such a thing. In my opinion, since astronomers are usually
quite reluctant to subscribe to any newsgroups/mailing lists, the best option
would be to put it on astro-ph on a regular basis. Since it's going to be
focused on real applications/services "directly" useful for science, I believe
this will be appreciated by the community. What do you think?

With best regards,
  						Igor

On Thu, 15 May 2008, Mark Allen wrote:

>
> 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
>
>
>