Subject: IEEE Sponsorship of Metadata Conference

From: [email-masked] (Dale Lancaster)
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 94 13:14:24 -0600

Charles Dollar writes:
 > 
 > Did anyone find Bob Coyne's explanation of what the IEEE is doing
 > about regional metadata conferences enlightening or helpful?
 > 
I did, but I have been involved in this process from before we had
the first workshop.  Bob explained exactly where we fit in, which
was needed so we can make ourselves more "legit" as you implied
later on in this mail.

 > It is clear that at Austin we were all working under a different set
 > of assumptions.  It would have been useful to have had the full
 > picture laid out for us there.  Doubtless, this would have occurred
 > had Bob been present on Friday morning when we discussed this topic.
 > 
I think the key thing is that the group affirmed/decided that this
type of effort needs to be under the IEEE and under the MSS&TC and is
appropriate, especially since it was responsible for the original idea
of having such workshops on data management and the MSS&TC is working
on the problem of standardizing efforts on data and data management.

 > The impression I have from Bob's statement about the intent of the
 > IEEE is that for some unspecified time (perhaps six months or a year)
 > the IEEE through its sponsorship will "test" the metadata water, so to
 > speak.  This suggests that the focus is more on enlisting support and
 > building a network rather than on sorting out fairly quickly the
 > intellectual issues (assuming this is possible) and then moving on to
 > doing real things, like prototypes.  It is clear to me now that the
 > Austin group/meeting was an ad hoc activity that from an IEEE
 > perspective was useful but lacks legitimacy in terms of having a
 > strong influence on what happens next.
 > 

I think your description is not too far off the mark.  Bob initiated
these workshops to basically get some activity started on data
management.  At the original meeting that described these ideas, one
particular workshop was highlighted, which was the one that was to
take place at Oakridge National Labs and was to deal with something
like Management of large scientific databases.  It did not appear at
the time to Jim Almond and I that this necessarily had anything to do
with metadata.  So Jim and I ask Bob about having this workshop under
the IEEE MSS&TC hat.  We all agreed and Jim and I hit the ground
running.  Since then this other workshop basically discovered it was
directly interested in metadata.  So now we have a point of
convergence on this issue.  Bob, Jim, Otis and I have discussed this a
bit to determine what is the best next step.  To be honest, until this
last workshop it was not apparent to me or a couple others involved in
both metadata workshops where this effort would go.  It now appears
that it has formalized itself a bit more and that we now need also
formalize the leadership of this metadata group to manage this effort
from an IEEE perspective.  I believe Bob is more than willing to
entertain ideas on who/what should be leading this effort and where it
should be going.  We obviously have Otis, Jim and myself doing some of
this, we now need to see what needs to change or be added to make this
more official. The key thing is to get movement and momentum.  In a
democratic/volunteer effort, its hard to get enough real workers to
work on things and make things happen.

I hope this helps :-))

dml