Re: National Data Service: Thank you and invitation

Folks,

I want to thank you all for contributing to the remarkable National Data Service (NDS) proposal that we pulled together over the last few weeks. I really appreciate how everyone on this team contributed to the final proposal that we submitted last week.

The fact that literally everyone we spoke to about these activities agreed to join us (over 25 partners around the world) confirmed our feeling that we have touched on something that is seriously needed. The idea of creating an “NDS Consortium” emerged as a result of the enthusiasm we encountered as we were initially developing the proposal itself. The consortium presently links together NSF DataNet (DataOne, Data Conservancy, SEAD), DIBBs (Brown Dog, DataScope) and other major community projects (e.g. ICPSR, ADS); MREFCs (LIGO, LSST, IceCube, NEON), universities, libraries, and national organizations and services that connect them (Internet2, XSEDE, Globus); publishers (e.g. APS, Science, Nature, Elsevier, PLOS, JORS); and important international efforts (e.g., EUDAT, OpenAire, RDA).

Your support in establishing this consortium of like-minded partners became a critical element of our proposal to develop an open framework that supports an integrated set of national-scale services. This idea is at the core of our collaboration, which goes beyond the NSF proposal itself.

To advance our common NDS vision, I would like to invite you to participate in our inaugural NDS Consortium Workshop to be held June 12-13 in Boulder, CO (with kind assistance from CU Boulder, NCAR, and NEON). This will be our first opportunity to come together and further refine our thoughts and ideas about an open framework that will revolutionize how we share data. We recognize that this is quite soon during a busy time of year, but we hope you can save this time in your schedule. We will be distributing more details about the workshop agenda and meeting location soon. In the meantime, we have established an initial website that we plan to develop further to help draw attention to our joint efforts (http://nationaldataservice.org)

Thank you again for your extraordinary efforts in helping to define NDS and we are looking forward to working with all you on the National Data Service.

Best,

Ed Seidel