Acceptance of GeoVRML Working Group - VRML Consortium

["Theresa-Marie Rhyne" <trhyne@vislab.epa.gov>]

Hi Lee: (cc VRML Community & ICA VR subgroup)

Congratulations on the acceptance of the GeoVRML Working Group
proposal by the VRML Architecture Review Board.

The ACM SIGGRAPH Carto Project is thrilled with this news.

As a follow-up on to Bob Crispen's request for wider involvement, let's
go outside the VRML box.

by way of this email, I am including the Members of the International
Cartographic Association (ICA) 's Commission on Visualization in on the
news about the GeoVRML Working Group.  Many of these members of the
ICA Commission have worked with VRML. It also goes without saying
too much, that they know something about cartography.  Perhaps their
input can be helpful. The Chair of this Commission is Alan MacEachren
and the Co-Chair is Menno-Jan Kraak. ICAvis web page is at:

(http://www.geog.psu.edu/ica/ICAvis.html)

Smiles... Theresa-Marie

Theresa-Marie Rhyne
ACM SIGGRAPH Carto Project Chair & SIGGRAPH Director at Large

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>From Bob Crisepen  (Robert.Crispen@hsv.boeing.com) to

Lee Iverson (leei@ai.sri.com), founding chair of the GeoVRML Working Group:

2/27/98

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Dear Lee,

I've been asked by the members of the VRML Review
Board to tell you that your proposal for a GeoVRML
Working Group has been approved, and to thank
you for taking up this work which has the potential
to improve VRML, to aid VRML content developers,
and to help VRML be useful to people working with
geographic data.

In reviewing your proposal and your web page at
http://www.ai.sri.com/geovrml/, several of us made
individual comments which I'd encourage your WG
to consider:

(1) Working Group Products: you might want to take up
what the outputs of your WG would look like, and you
might want to reconsider this from time to time and
update your web page accordingly.

(2) Timeline: as you determine the products you think
you should produce, you should set dates for their
production.  You may also want to consider at some
time in your process the criteria that would let you
declare victory and disband, if you believe that is
appropriate for your WG.

(3) Webpage and Archive Location: The VRB is encouraging
all WGs to locate their webpages on the vrml.org site.
The Consortium will provide you with an account and
directory tree, if you choose to do this.  One advantage
of locating on the vrml.org site is that list messages
will automatically be archived, and on-site search
engines will enable people interested in certain topics
to find relevant messages, not only on your list archives,
but on the archives of other WGs and on www-vrml.  Of
more relevance to you, that means your WG will be found
by these search engines if you're on the vrml.org site.
Please contact me <bob.crispen@boeing.com> and I'll
set it up for you with David Lewis, the system administrator.

(4) Wider Involvement: you may want to conduct some
of your early discussions on the larger www-vrml list
in order to attract people who may not yet have identified
themselves as interested in GeoVRML.  This may also
attract ideas about how the work of GeoVRML would
affect the work of other WGs, and may point you to
resources in other WGs that will help your work.
There were comments that whether you do this or
not, the attendance and enthusiasm at your workshop
at VRML 98 give reason for confidence in the level
of support for your WG.

(5) Leadership: you mentioned in your cover letter
that you were planning to have one or more co-chairs.
I believe there was consensus among the comments
that this is a very important thing to do, since there
are WGs whose level of activity seems to vary with
the chair's ability to spend the time.

Please let me know what you'd like the VRB to do
next and any other way we can help.  Thank you
again for taking up this important work.

Bob Crispen
bob.crispen@boeing.com

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