Action Items

• Sheldon will move the FMNH wiki link to a more prominent position on the page.
• Michael G will provide link to the Google calendar to the members of the group - http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/sncj6jjg7utrgcgv7h5ilj6ick%40group.calendar.google.com/private-27b6a6348aa8afa3f33ef85c50bf909b/basic.ics
• Michael G will solicit agenda items for discussion from Mike S and Karen before each meeting.
• Michael G to work with Karen on budget questions

Agenda

• Review action items from previous meeting
• Who else should be invited to the working group? What expertise do we need?
• How should we move forward - do we need to plan a face-to-face meeting?
• How should we allocate the postdoc budget line?
• Open discussion

Notes

Attendees: Michael Sanderson, Karen Cranston , Michael Gonzales, Adam Kubach, Natalie Henriques

Who else should be invited?

• Karen suggested brainstorming as together whether we needed to add additional people to this working group. Do we want to come up with what we want to accomplish first and then add people when needed?
• Michael G – We should engage those appropriate and involve them, but we need to work on what this group will provide and look for the expertise after.
• Mike S – We can bring in people with different perspectives and conduct a larger working group but I am more inclined to start with who we have, get busy starting on something now rather than to wait.
• Karen – we should keep in mind what the needs are for the other working groups as they will be providing us the data. They may have expectations that are not on our radar.
• Michael G – I agree that we should forge ahead and start to address issues and what we define as critical needs, but is it prudent to survey the other groups to get a broader perspective.

Face to Face Meeting

• We need to plan a face to face meeting and put together a one to two day workshop. Members from the other groups would be invited where we can discuss what we want to accomplish what it would ultimately be in real terms and get a reality check. The soonest it could be planned is early in the New Year, and the tentative location is Austin, TX.
• Mike S – There has been a lot of meetings and we have mock up examples, it would be useful if developers could start to put codes together to start the discussion. We have enough code already; I wouldn’t want to wait another two months to start writing codes.
• Karen – I think a big issue is trying to answer the question why there are so many viz tools already and why we are not using something that already exists? I don’t want to create just to create.
• Michael G – My understanding is that we are trying to aggregate functions, provide scalability and a level of standardization and usability to biologist not necessarily tech savvy people.
• Mike S – Format is less of an issue, the biggest are scalability and functionality.
• ACTION: We need to send a survey to other groups to find out what they are using, what they want, and work in cooperation with the other working groups. (Karen)
• Those on the phylogenetics side put together a wish list of what we want out of these tools.
• Michael G – Go on the wiki and look at the project charter. Adam can start testing and building the prototype
• ACTION: Adam can begin working on a prototype for the meeting.

Open Discussion

• Discussed what is considered a prototype, and how does it play out? Does the Core Software group have expertise in user interface? Where do we find that expertise