I contacted Steve Bachrach in the States. He thought there was no other existing forum related to chemistry web matters, and that chemweb might usefully extend its scope.
He also raised the possibility of organising an international conference as the next step from the UK webmasters meeting. This would of course cost people to attend. Personally, I doubt if many people would be able to raise the funding to attend such a meeting, although the time may come quite soon when such a meeting would be viable. Any thoughts?
How about an on-line meeting in the first instance? The ACS poster session was useful. Perhaps an on-line meeting, with "posters" and "talks" (including real audio) would be a good way to get started and to extend the ACS poster concept. It would also help to cement standards for the chemical community world-wide. Ultimately, though, a real face-to-face conference would be needed. Everyone knows that the real business at a conference is done in the bar and a virtual bar does not quite have the same appeal as an unvirtual one! Dr Mark J Winter (Deputy Head of Department, Director of Studies) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 282 4498 fax: +44 (0)114 273 8673 e-m: M.Winter@Sheffield.ac.uk web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html CU-SeeMe: mac043078.shef.ac.uk ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)