Great Sensor Metadata Interoperability Workshop
Workshop Results Update: MMI put on a great workshop with 52 attendees -- the final list is now available sorted by breakout group. The materials for the workshop have been posted, presentations are being compiled, and the workshop's products are posted and in development.
About 10 months earlier, John Graybeal and Luis Bermudez discussed the possibility of a Sensors Workshop hosted by MMI. We envisioned experts from many manufacturers, institutions, and countries coming together to figure out the right way to represent sensor metadata, and forming teams and projects to fix any problems that they identified. The workshop could also be a training opportunity, for data systems developers who were not so experienced with managing sensor metadata to learn some of the basics involved in tracking such important metadata.
In October, this idea was realized in a big way. Carrying out along two related tracks of inquiry, workshop attendees learned a lot about sensor metadata interoperability and the state of the art systems used to describe sensors. 25 of the attendees were assigned to 5-person breakout teams to try to use existing sensor metadata standards to document real life instruments for use cases 'ripped from the headlines' of institutional projects. Meanwhile, experienced developers presented experiences and techniques for describing and processing sensor metadata descriptions using XML-based content standards. All participants gathered to produce a detailed list of suggestions for moving forward the state of the practice in sensor metadata management, and to highlight some of the most important suggestions.
More information on the results of this workshop will be published soon.
