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date	2009.11.12.16.14.24;	author AjayRanipeta;	state Exp;
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@%META:TOPICINFO{author="AjayRanipeta" date="1258042464" format="1.1" version="1.1"}%
%META:TOPICPARENT{name="Biodiversity2010"}%
Biodiversity Informatics is a rapidly growing field.  For example, the recent TDWG meetings have grown from 120 attendees in 2007, 175 in 2008, to 275 in 2009 (NOTE: approximated numbers here).  In addition, the pace of data accumulation has grown significantly in recent years, along with growing interest in a broadening set of interested data providers including germplasm, barcoding, and observational efforts. 

Urgently needed are novel applications to address inefficiencies in data flow, poorly structured or hidden data (e.g. old Monographs), and difficulties in visualizing the great biodiversity losses and challenges to a world that is not readily aware of the current crises.  We must move quickly to not only attempt to save our planets biodiversity, but even to grasp the current breadth of biodiversity.

There are currently a growing number of biodiversity software and programmers offering a variety of tools that often either duplicate other efforts, or do not effectively complement other efforts. In addition, there is many more developers not directly affiliated with BDI that can offer assistance.  Given the blessing of many interested developers, growing data sets, and a flowering of technology, the biodiversity community is presented with the challenge in how to best leverage its developer resources to solve the problems at hand.  Since the rate of innovation in the community is accelerating and developers are located internationally, we face a major challenge in developing effective communication channels and bridging technical divides including programming languages, spoken languages, non-ratified standards, and evolving requirements.  Current channels for communication suffer either from too infrequent occurrence (e.g. TDWG conference), or mostly static communication (e.g. Web pages, help files which frequently fall far behind development cycles), which leads either to the extremes of flooding of demand or isolation.

We propose a series of randomly integrated teams to compete on projects of interest to the Biodiversity community.   This process will address head-on cultural divides between developers and utilize, test, and stretch the current technical infrastructure to provide data and services to the community at large.  At the same time, we expect both novel solutions and failures from the competing groups.  The failures will be just as instructive as the successes, in highlighting those challenges that truly impede the developer community in working effectively together.


-- Main.AjayRanipeta - 12 Nov 2009@