National Science Foundation
Data Infrastructure Building Blocks

Brown Dog

...

Early User Workshop 

July 22 - 23

Brown Dog is one of latest projects in the NSF ACI data program, following efforts like DataONE, the Data Federation Consortium, and SEAD.  Brown Dog will address problems involving the utilization of uncurated and unstructured data collections through the development of two services: the Data Access Proxy (DAP) to aid in the conversion of file formats and the Data Tilling Services (DTS) for the automatic extraction of metadata from file contents.  While these two services will be developed to support three use cases involving Biology, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Social Science it is a driving goal of the project to support as broad a number of communities as possible.  Towards this we invite you to join us at our first workshop as we gather these additional requirements and determine how best to support as many groups as possible. 

In terms of requirements we are looking for We are seeking specific data collections, the file formats they contain, and the types of data you would wish to be derived from the raw contents of that data.  If your research involves such utilizes collections of uncurated/unstructured data, or potentially could involve utilize such data but you have thus far considered it impractical, then please join us.  The workshop will provide an overview of the project goals, the core technologies, and provide a venue for you to voice your needs and potentially gain support from this latest NSF infrastructure effort. 

...