[NeXus-committee] NeXus Advisory Committee

[Ray Osborn]

Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the new NeXus committee mailing list, <NeXus-committee at anl.gov>.
You are receiving this message as a member of the NeXus Advisory Committee,
which has been set up to supervise the development and ratification of the
NeXus data format.  The committee represents neutron, x-ray synchrotron, and
muon facilities around the world, and has terms of reference given in
<http://www.neutron.anl.gov/nexus/NeXus_advisers.html>.  Details of the
mailing list, which will be fully moderated with a closed subscription list
but an open archive, are at
<http://www.neutron.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/nexus-committee>.

The first order of business is to organize the first meeting of this
committee so that we can ratify the standard and set the course for future
developments.  I am pleased to report that we have funding to support NeXus
because of a grant awarded to Przemek Klosowski provided by the SIMA program
(Systems Integration for Manufacturing Applications).  We can therefore
provide travel support up to a maximum of $1500 per member.  Our current
plan is to hold the workhop at Cal Tech, Pasadena, USA, some time in
September, or possibly late August.  One attractive option is to hold the
workshop close to the time of SciPy'03, September 11-12 (see
<www.scipy.org>) since several US facilities are involved in the DANSE
project, which will use Python in a distributed data analysis framework.
DANSE will use NeXus as its standard data format.

Please send us your available dates in late August and September as soon as
possible so that we can complete arrangements quickly.  When they are
settled, we will discuss the agenda and other preparations that we need to
make before the workshop.

Finally, I am delighted to welcome Peter Peterson, who has joined me at
Argonne to work on the NeXus project.  He is a member of the Spallation
Neutron Source computing group, and has been assigned to Argonne for a year
with financial support from the SIMA grant.  I believe that this will allow
us to make significant progress on a number of NeXus developments.  I would
like to propose that he act as Executive Secretary of the Advisory
Committee.

With best regards,
Ray Osborn