Director's Corner
Barry Barish
I have been writing the Director's Corner weekly since 8 June 2005, and this edition represents my tenth column. It was never my intent that the Director's Corner be a standalone communication, but rather that it be part of a weekly newsletter called ILC NewsLine. I began writing my column before ILC NewsLine started, however, due to the high demand to know the latest news about the GDE. I am happy to announce that as of today, my column will become a regular feature of ILC NewsLine, which will now become our main communication tool for the global ILC community.
Each issue of ILC NewsLine will contain feature stories, profiles, images, news articles, announcements and a calendar. The GDE Regional Directors and GDE Deputy Directors will also regularly contribute to the newsletter. Because ILC Newsline is a publication for the entire ILC community, every issue will contain stories about activities around the globe. Our GDE communicators will develop all of the content for each issue, and they welcome your suggestions and feedback.
The second and equally important development this week is the launch of our ILC website. Our website is at www.linearcollider.org, and we thank Norm Graf of SLAC for giving us this url that he had the foresight to obtain. During the Snowmass Workshop, the website features "Live from Snowmass," a section that is updated daily to give those not at the workshop a chance to follow some of the highlights. In addition, working group agendas with links to talks are being linked from our website.
The goal of the ILC website is to provide "one stop shopping" for anyone interested in finding out something about the ILC and GDE. We plan to incorporate an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) that will enable sharing and updating technical documents, drawings and other material. that will be needed to carry out the ILC design effort. A flexible and useful EDMS is essential to doing our design effort with such a globally dispersed collaboration. I am appointing a subgroup of the GDE to evaluate the various EDMS systems that are available and to recommend which system we should adopt for the ILC. In addition to this very important technical feature, the website will include news, calendar of events, educational materials and communications for the broader community.
I invite you to look over our new website and to read the first edition of ILC NewsLine. We welcome suggestions as to how to make our website most useful, and we welcome contributions to ILC NewsLine.