[wfc] FITS Committees

[Rots, Arnold]

Dear WFC members,

I trust you are still aware that WFC stands for WGAS FITS Committee,
i.e., the North American regional FITS committee.

Lucio Chiappetti sent a message around to the IAU FITS Working Group
with some issues on which it would be good to hear the opinion of regional
committee members.

The most basic question is whether the regional committees still fulfill a
useful function. Around the time we were founded the world of FITS looked
different: the global communication environment was dramatically different
and three distinct FITS communities could easily be identified: North
America,
Europe, and Japan (though much smaller than the other two).

Today we live in a different world as far as electronic communication is
concerned, communities are more defined by research interest than by
geographic location, and, not withstanding the addition of Australia, large
parts of the world are not represented, most notably India, China, Africa,
and South America.

Basically, there are five options:
- Leave things the way they are
- Add more regional committees
- Redraw the boundaries of the regional committees
- Change the regional committees into, e.g., wavelength/frequency/energy
  defined committees
- Abolish the regional committees

Before you run off and jot down you opinions on this matter (and I would
very
much like to hear them), you may want to take into account that:
a. there are discussions ongoing on the question whether the IAU FWG should
    cover more file format standards than just FITS (HDF5, NDF, ...?)
b. the next (and possibly last) major component of the standard, the Time
WCS,
    might conceivably come before us during this calendar year (yes,
really);
    if we were to abolish the regional committees, the completion of that
standard
    might be considered a natural breakpoint in FITS history.

Enough said - let the comments fly.

Ah, no, there is one other thing: a number of IAU FWG members are stepping
down. If you have any comments or suggestions on IAU FWG membership, throw
that in the mix as well.

Cheers,

  - Arnold


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Arnold H. Rots                                          Chandra X-ray
Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                   tel:  +1 617 496
7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                                      fax:  +1 617
495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138
arots at cfa.harvard.edu
USA
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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