Hello everyone and welcome to the FISH GIS e-conference.
We have seen a large expansion in the list membership for this inaugural FISH e-event, so I am hoping that there will be a wide ranging discussion from as many people as possible on all aspects of data standards and their application in GIS. As you will have seen in the pre-conference emails, the e-conference will be divided into three sessions:

1. Presentations from existing Sites and Monuments Records and other heritage data 'content' providers on current issues and concerns. Organiser: Nigel Pratt

2. Presentations from GIS industry and government: vendors, mapping agencies, standards setting authorities on current developments in GIS. Organiser: Brian Hopper

3. Presentations from research projects on future technologies using combined GIS / SMR type data to present cultural heritage information. Organiser: Matthew Stiff

To simplify things, these will be dealt with in order, so this week we will start with Session 1 and we have presentations from Jason Siddall of the National Trust and Paul Gilman of Essex County Council, Rebecca Jones of the Scottish Royal Commission, and to get the ball rolling Edmund Lee from the Data Standards Unit at English Heritage.

Above all this your forum, so please do not feel constrained by the content of the presentations, if there are any issues you wish to raise this is the place to raise them and if there are any terms or acronyms you are not familiar with please ask.

I suspect that many of you, especially from a SMR background like me, have been on a pretty steep learning curve with GIS and this is the ideal opportunity to take stock and think where we are going with this and how we want to get there. I think that three of the fundamental questions, which I hope we will be closer to answering at the end of this e-conference, are:

Do we, as heritage information providers, really need data standards for GIS? If so, Do we want to have any input into data standards or can we rely on the "professional" GIS community to take care of these for us? and if we do wish to develop our own standards for heritage systems, How can this goal be realistically achieved?

Over to you.....

Nigel.

Nigel Pratt
FISH Convenor

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