Email from John Pickering to Connal Eardley, 4 July, 2005

Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 17:35:46 -0400
To: EardleyC@arc.agric.za
From: John Pickering
Subject: Technology centers to support Africa, Madagascar, and the Middle East
Cc: dl@discoverlife.org, gary_alpert@harvard.edu, mbounfour@yahoo.com,
mbounfour@menara.ma, bfisher@calacademy.org, shubbell@plantbio.uga.edu,
tomasp@uga.edu, l.rogo@bionet-intl.org, praven@nas.edu,
samper.cristian@nmnh.si.edu, s.soetikno@cabi.org, asimpson@usgs.gov,
R.SMITH@cabi.org, btorres@gbif.org, ewilson@oeb.harvard.edu

Connal,

Delighted to hear from you again. No worries about me moving east. My
biological heart is firmly rooted in Kruger Nation Park. Please forgive my
infidelity for planning to visit the orangs in Borneo. The sacrifices one
must make to support an offspring with interests in primatology.

Okay. It's now your turn. My flood of recent emails regarding setting up
8 regional technical support centers are copied below. Please send me your
thoughts on the best way to put together two technical support centers for
Africa, Madagascar, and the Middle East. Where should we base them? What
are your specific local needs, target taxa, etc.?

Again, I'm copying this to Richard, Lucie, Malika, and others for their
input. I ask that you consolidate support from your regional loops and
help us to develop two technical centers in the region. Please forgive me
for this. We can build more centers after we have the first eight up and
running. In short, how can we best support BioNET's five loops with two
technical centers?

Please include Brian Fisher at the California Academy in your planning
process. He is doing some fantastic work with ants in Madagascar and is
part of our team.

Also, please help us to build bridges between GBIF and our proposed effort.
We need to work together better. Discover Life's network has a flat
organizational hierarchy. Our technology now enables us to work across
database and credit contributors through translators rather than through
standardization. Thus, I hope we will be able to include information from
your catalogue via SABIF without extracting more than its index. Suggest
that you check out "Solenopsis invicta" via Discover Life's new search box
at http://www.discoverlife.org. Hope to do the same for your bees when
you're ready.

Look forward to working with you again. As always, love to Pam.

Cheers,
Pick

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