VIVO Conference Open for Registration!

The National VIVO Conference 2010 web site is now open for registration. See the announcement banner at http://vivoweb.org. A direct link to the conference web site is http://vivoweb.org/conference. Promotion materials for the conference include a flyer, postcard and PPT advertisement – all are available for download on the following page in the Confluence Wiki: https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ennsrd/Conference+Marketing+and+Promotion

If you are asked about the conference, please refer people to the conference web site. If you are presenting at an upcoming conference or meeting, please help promote the conference by printing postcards to handout and including the PowerPoint slide at the end of your talk.

The VIVO Collaboration

There are a large number of people working on VIVO across the seven schools. Collectively, the group of people working on VIVO is known as “the VIVO Collaboration.” Most of the folks receiving this newsletter are working on VIVO and are members of the collaboration.

The following page in the Confluence Wiki lists all people working on VIVO across the schools:
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ennsrd/VIVO+Collaboration

Please make sure your name is on this list. Team leads are responsible for updating this list. Please notify your team lead if:

• Your name is not on this list
• Someone you know is not on this list
• Someone has left the project

This list is the one and only, official, authoritative, one stop shop, final, place to get the names of the people working on the project. All other lists are mere imitations. If you are using other lists – in presentations, spreadsheets, listservs, documents, web pages, wiki pages, and all other formats – please recognize that these sources are not official. The official list of the people working on the project is the Wiki page above.

If you are giving a presentation or making a poster and wish to cite the members of the VIVO Collaboration, please use the content from the Wiki page above. Please do not send out emails or efforts to update the page for your presentation. Team leads will make sure the page is updated as people come and go. Rely on them for an up-to-date page.

VIVO 1.0

The schools are making good progress getting their VIVO 1.0 servers up and running. The table below shows the various servers and the status for each:

Notes: “pre” indicates a version of VIVO pre-award and “future” indicates a server not yet publically available.
As you may recall, VIVO 1.0 servers can provide Resource Description Framework (RDF) output as data for potential applications. You can find Dr. Conlon’s RDF data at http://vivo.ufl.edu/individual/n25562/n25562.rdf

Profile data available as RDF allows developers to write applications using profile data. Now that RDF is available, collaborators are free to develop VIVO-based applications for the science community.

A Special Inquiry

We receive many inquiries at http://vivoweb.org – from potential adopters, partners, collaborators, application developers and many others. We recently received a rather special inquiry. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of many World Wide Web core technologies and more recently the creator of Semantic Web core concepts including RDF, posted an inquiry regarding his interest in VIVO and its use of RDF. We are excited to have Tim taking a look at VIVO!

VIVO in the Press

Many things have been written about VIVO and more is written each month. Information Today runs a recurring series on VIVO. The latest article is titled “What’s Driving the Data” and is available at: http://www.infotoday.com/IT/apr10/Brynko.shtml

VIVO User Scenarios – A Progress Report

Elly Cramer and the User Scenario team are processing the 139 user scenarios submitted by all of you. The scenarios can be roughly grouped as shown in the pie chart below:

As you see, there are many topics and a great deal of work is required to “lump” and “split” the scenarios and identify duplicates or variations on themes. Not all scenarios will be part of VIVO, so we need to make decisions about what belongs in VIVO over the life of the grant, what may be in VIVO after the funding period and what is best done using other tools.

VIVO on VIVO

VIVO on VIVO is an effort to visualize the VIVO team using approaches from mapping of science. No additional data entry is required. Katy Börner and her team are hard at work producing visualizations for the VIVO on VIVO effort, and the results should be informative as well as attractive.

Improving Communication

We continue to improve intra and inter team communication. Some tips:

• Communication takes two. Saying or writing something is not sufficient. The recipients of the communication should understand what was said.
• Be proactive. If you feel someone is missing information, please provide it. If you feel there are other problems with communication, please discuss them with your team.
• Be careful in communication regarding your expertise. We all have expertise and we all use jargon, acronyms and implied context in our communication. VIVO is a big project involving people from many disciplines. Extend empathy to your listeners. Explain more than you might in a regular conversation with colleagues from your discipline. Be prepared to take questions.
• As a listener, question what you do not understand. Follow-up to ensure that you heard correctly. Repeat back in your own language key concepts to improve understanding

  Ideas, Questions, Comments

  Have an idea, question, or comment about VIVO? Pass along your thoughts to your team lead for inclusion in the wiki!