APWEB2 initial proposal

Hi Mike, Mike, Pam, and Doug,
Cam, Peter Stevens, and I recently had a conference chat to discuss moving towards APWeb2, the demo that we presented at iPlant (<http://www.phylodiversity.net/apweb2/demo/>http://www.phylodiversity.net/apweb2/demo/). We recognize this is not an informatics challenge but perhaps an outreach project. The database is already in existence and we already have solutions for implementing what we envision doing.

In our minds, this is a completely unique database that most in the scientific community support and rely upon regularly. Additionally, Peter has set up a series of teaching pages and from now forward will be implementing an economic botany section including major domestication events. Furthermore, it has been designed to be low tech and easy to navigate so that anyone anywhere in the world with access to the internet can view the pages. This seems to fit well in the scope of the outreach description in the iPlant proposal ("The iPlant Collaborative offers exciting and novel approaches to education, outreach, and training at a multitude of levels, from K12 to the citizen naturalist to the scientifically literate layperson to the fledgling scientist in training. We envision creative ways to use cyberinfrastructure to teach about plant biology and new opportunities to train teachers and students in the use of cyberinfrastructure.") What is particularly exciting about our approach is that these same data can be matched to any user selected tree.

What limits us is money (estimated to be $50-60K) to hire a programmer for ~3 months to design the XML schema and a sharp undergraduate or graduate student to shift the data. This is a pretty pitiable amount considering the amount going towards many other cyberinfrastructure projects. We have a database already in existence and assured to be used and cited broadly. So the project would be BIG bang for the bucks.

Any thoughts about whether this would be useful and relevant to iPTOL and if so how we could proceed forward?