Report on Digital Earth Conference
Neither Ken Markowitz nor Greg Yetman were in attendance to give a meeting report.
However, we understand the presentation and booth were successful. The oil spill scenario was
presented as part of the Keynote talk by Jeff de la Beaujardiere. The Federation display was
staffed by Ken and Greg.
SWIL Update
Tim Rhyne has begun the development of the interface for SWIL users to access WMS datasets.
North Dakota Meeting
Ken M. will present the scenario and template at the North Dakota meeting. Rob will present
activities and successes of the Cluster and a report on the status of the Digital Earth
Program Office. However, there will be much less presentation time than in Tucson, where a full
presentation was made.
We are tentatively set to have a Cluster Meeting at lunchtime on Wednesday.
Cluster Funding
Thus far, one paragraph proposal has been put forth. TerraSip proposes to hold a workshop for its
MapServer map delivery tool. Tim will write a proposal for advancing the SWIL/WMS interface. Rob
will write a proposal for helping individual ESIPs to become WMS-compliant. It was suggested that
we try to tie the proposals into the NewDISS concept.
Becoming a GIS Cluster
We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a GIS Cluster. The advantages include
additional opportunities (e.g. in becoming active within OGC). Also, the Digital Earth Program Office is becoming a
Geospatial Applications and Services Committee (of FGDC), hence we will no longer be aligned with a national effort.
The disadvantages include a loss of focus on our initial goal of making
data products available to a wider audience. We'll discuss this issue at the Federation meeting.
However, there was no outpouring of support for a change. One other suggestion was a name change to
"Open GIS" Cluster.