ANNOUNCEMENT - Boston Area BioPAX Group Meeting and Mailing List

ANNOUNCEMENT - Local BioPAX Group Meeting and Mailing List 

We are pleased to announce that there's enough interest in BioPAX
locally in Boston to warrant the formation of a local special interest
group. Our first informal meeting will be held on Friday, March 11th
at 3:30 PM at room 397 of the Stata Center at MIT (directions below).

If you're in the Greater Boston area and are interested in
participating in the development of BioPAX (http://www.biopax.org)
we'd like you to join us. Ê The group cannot make decisions for
BioPAX as a whole, but the hope is that by getting together we can
forge proposals and help to maintain momentum on BioPAX activities.

To get the ball rolling, we've set up a mailing list on Google groups
that is open to the public to read, but you need join to post.  The
URL for the website is:

   http://groups-beta.google.com/group/BioPAX-Boston 

Below is a long list of ideas that are kicking around for our
agenda. There's plenty to talk about and you may have additional items
we haven't thought about or forgot to mention.  If so, please send
them to Joanne Luciano and Jonathan Rees or to
BioPAX-Boston@googlegroops.com.  For the moment we're only taking
additions to the list. At the first meeting we will review this list
and come up with a proper agenda.

Level 1 - 
 Data import progress report. 

Level 2 - 
 Documentation needs and planning.
 What should be in a requirements document, and how should it be assembled? 
 External controlled vocabularies - how to integrate / refer

Level 3 - 
 What requirements are we aware of for new features such as generic
 pathways and hierarchical pathways?

BioPAX funding - 
     Sources - government, pharmas & biotechs, and infrastructure companies? 
     Consortium idea? 
     What would we do with funding should we obtain it? 

General - 
    What design principles (e.g. how to trade off completeness and
      simplicity) are being used or should be used?  
    What needs to be done, if anything, in the way of specifying semantics? 
    What design principles govern the design of the specialized or
      imported ontologies features (e.g. interaction types, evidence codes)?
    What should BioPAX's attitude be towards the semantic web, RDF,
      and OWL (embrace, reject, keep at a distance)?  

The future - 
    Is there a maintenance plan? 
    How do we know when we're done? 

Hope you can make it and remember to join the mailing list if you want
to participate.

Cheers! 
Joanne, Jonathan, Jeremy, Frank 


Map:
  http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=32&Buildings=go 

Directions to Stata:
  http://www.csail.mit.edu/contact/contact.html 

Location of room 397 on 3rd floor of Stata:
  http://www.csail.mit.edu/resources/maps/3/397.gif

Received on Wednesday, 2 March 2005 22:30:30 UTC