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In May 2009, the iPToL Grand Challenge Project "Kickoff" Kickoff” meeting was held to establish specific focal areas and to develop a high-level implementation plan for the project. From this meeting, it was decided to divide the grand challenge into six focus areas, each corresponding to a working group. Leads/co-leads for each working group were recommended by consensus and working group membership was drafted from meeting participants and non-participating community members. During the kickoff meeting, support was expressed for two other possible collaborations: The Angiosperm Phylogeny Web Site (APWEB2) and the The Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN). By consensus, these were determined not to be within the scope of the core iPToL budget but a desire to support these efforts was agreed. In the fall of 2009, new collaborations were established with these groups. The APWEB2 project is regarded as a Education Outreach and Training (EOT) extension of the iPToL project. The BIEN collaboration is also associated with iPToL and is meant as an expanded solution to the pervasive "taxonomic intelligence" problem (described below) and will also help to integrate ecological trait data with iPLant's tree of life discovery environment.
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