What is the IVOA?
The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) was formed in June 2002 in order to foster international coordination and collaboration towards building the Virtual Observatory: A seamless, integrated research data infrastructure for astronomy and its neighbouring disciplines. The IVOA now comprises over 20 member organizations from around the world. Membership is open to other national and international projects according to the IVOA Guidelines for Participation.
Much of the IVOA’s work is about developing standards for how astronomical data should be found, queried, and read. This happens in Working Groups that develop and finally agree upon these. The IVOA’s process ist modeled after the World Wide Web Consortium’s one, in which Working Drafts progress to Proposed Recommendations and finally to Recommendations, which are the IVOA’s endorsed outputs. The IVOA also has Interest Groups that discuss experiences using VO technologies, often from a sub-discipline point of view (solar system, time domain, high energy, …) and provide feedback to the Working Groups.
Senior representatives from each national VO project form the IVOA Executive Committee. A chair is chosen from among the representatives and serves a one-year term, preceded by a one-year term as deputy chair. The Executive Committee regularly meets to discuss goals, priorities, and strategies.
The IVOA holds two Interoperability Workshops each year: a week-long meeting in spring, typically May, and a shorter meeting in fall back-to-back the annual ADASS conference. These meetings are opportunities for the VO community to meet face-to-face and to resolve questions and problems in a concentrated effort.
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