Personally, I don't find the suggested topics for the next Unidata workshop as summarized below to be very stimulating. I don't really see the purpose of bringing a whole bunch of people together and spending alot of NSF funds and our time in preparation just to talk about what data is available and how it can be applied. It is not that it is overly broad of a topic (though it most certainly is), but it is, quite simply - boring and uninteresting. I'm being candid, yes. Who can possibly benefit from such a workshop, and why would you expect NSF to be willing to help defray the costs? Our last workshop was of immense personal benefit to just about everyone who attended, whether they actually changed their lives as the result of that experience (some of whom did) or not. All the attendees became better informed about computer-interactive education, the techniques of building a web page and properly designing one, available educational resources at Unidata and COMET and elsewhere to enable them to develop their educational modules, and pedagogical principles. If you want to educate the community about data available through Unidata, then ask the Unidata folks to put together informational packets and distribute them via the web, the mail, or whatever, but please don't hold a workshop for that purpose.

Looks like we'll have much to discuss in March at our next meeting. Or maybe I just completely misunderstand what you guys are talking about.