Sci-Board-1

[Andrea Preite Martinez]

Dear colleagues,

this first message is for setting up our roadmap and organizing the Board
and our work on the UCD-vocabulary..

A. Roadmap.
Our goal is very simple: we need to stabilize (which means adding, deleting,
transforming ) the present draft list of  ucd-words, that you can find at

http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/UCD/ucd1p-words.txt  (just the list)
http://www.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/IvoaUCD/WD-UCDlist-20050429.pdf (the WD
document)

in order to (i) reach  consensus, and (ii) be able to promote the list (and
the associated document) to the level of IVOA Proposed Recommendation as
soon as possible (within June).

B. The Board
1. Duration.
There will be a Sci-Board as long as UCDs will be in use in the VO, in order
to maintain the vocabulary. The mission of the board is described in the
main UCD document, that you can find at

http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/UCD.html

now under minor revisions as suggested during the Exec Meeting in Kyoto.
It is possible that in the future the Exec could change the mission to suit
new needs of the VO.

2. Participation.
Participation is on a voluntary basis. Colleagues can ask the chair of the
Board to be inserted in (or deleted from) the mailing list of the Board,
and to work for a specific task (see below).

3. Chair
For the transition period required to set up the Board and let it run, I
will act as chair person of the Board (by the way,  setting up the Board
and upgrading the present list of UCD-words to the level of IVOA PR is a
formal action for the chairman of the UCD-WG). I propose to go for an
election of the chairman of the Board in a month from now.

C. Organization
1. What (Tasks)
Time is very short, at least for this first phase of our work. I propose
then to define a number of key tasks and form task-groups on different
aspects of the vocabulary. The most urgent cases were well pinned down
during the last InterOp Meeting. My first draft proposal is to organize our
work around the following tasks:

T1: the "velocity" and the resolution(s) problems
T2: theory and simulations (sim ?)
T3: at/mol physics
T4: curation (humans, organizations) and other "meta"-likes
T5: flux (total, net, backgr. and various "flux densities") and time (period
of, instant of)
T6: solar system
Txx : ??

T0: Coordination, general issues, not included in the above Ts.
Like the Board, tasks are not "closed". The discussion is open ("plenary")
and contributions are welcome from every member of the Board. It will help
people with an analytical mind (like mine!) to see "T5" appear in the
subject of your message, if dealing with "net flux" or mid-time of
exposure.

We need a coordinator for each task, with the responsibility to make a final
proposal to the Board.
There is nothing formal in the following list of people, I'm just asking
them to pay more attention to the discussion relevant to the corresponding
task, and summarize the discussion to the Board in due time.
Making use of the list of members (as of today) I propose the following
coordinators:

T0	General		Andrea
T1	Velocity/resolution	Alberto Micol
T2	Theory/simulations	Volunteer(?)
T3	At/Mol physics	Marie-Lise Dubernet
T4	Meta			Sébastien D.
T5	flux/time		Jonathan MD
T6	Solar system		Pierre Didelon


2. How
Through the Board's mailing list. Always "reply to all". The chair will
record all messages.
In this first phase of our work time is very short. So please answer within
the given deadlines. We won't wait for late messages.

3. When
FIRST ACTION: please comment on the above organization/rules/tasks within
Thursday the 2nd of June.

This message is sent (for the last time) also to the wider interop at ivoa.net
community to ask the laziest to join in.

Best regards

Andrea



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Andrea Preite Martinez                  andrea at rm.iasf.cnr.it
Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale        Tel.:+39.06.4993.4641
Area di Ricerca di Tor Vergata          Fax.:+39.06.2066.0188
Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100         Cell:+39.339.3817355
00133 Roma
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