You are invited to participate and contribute to the first Virtual Observatories in Geosciences (VOiG) conference to be held 12-15 June 2007 in Denver, Colorado, USA. This conference is sponsored by the Electronic Geophysical Year, USGS, NASA, NSF and NCAR. While this conference focuses on geosciences, all interested disciplines are invited to participate.
This event is motivated by the Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY - egy.org) recognizing the 50th anniversary of the 1957 International Geophysical Year. eGY's Declaration for an Information Science Common is based on the quote "Knowledge is the Common-Wealth of Humanity". eGY sets out a set of eight principles related to data and information as being fundamental building blocks for the conduct and advancement of modern science.
Among eGY activities is the advancement of the concept of virtual observatories to embrace and integrate a significant number of the eGY principles.
It is now at least seven years since the virtual observatory (VO) paradigm appeared and over 15 years since distributed data systems (DDS) started appearing. These efforts have produced numerous successes, failures, lessons, new concepts, new designs, and copious experience with sources of data, user communities and changing technologies. Numerous communities and agencies stand ready to utilize emerging common VO and DDS concepts to their fullest extent in meeting the challenging explosion of data from instruments and models in the present and next decade.
This conference, to be held immediately before the official launch of eGY on 7 July 2007 in Perugia, Italy, is aimed at defining and documenting the current state of virtual observatories, including common and distinct elements and set a challenging goal for all VOs to make substantial progress during the eGY. This conference will be complemented by another gathering to be held late in the eGY (which ends December 2008).
This conference features invited and contributed presentations and posters from those involved in VOs and DDS at all levels: science and education/outreach developers/users, interdisciplinary researchers, designers/architects, developers, and data providers to contribute their experiences and indicate their success, outstanding needs and future vision. Contributions may be oral presentations, discussion/special topic items and/or posters.
