21 September 2004

Dear Colleague:

The AIBS-NEON Design Consortium is pleased to announce the completion of the Cooperative Agreement between the National Science Foundation and the American Institute of Biological Sciences under which NEON will be fully planned, designed and budgeted. The NEON Project Office has opened its doors, at AIBS Headquarters in Washington DC. Complementary press releases are posted on the NSF website, at www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=15100000000112, and on the new NEON website, at www.neoninc.org

We solicit your help. In 21 months we will deliver the documents that, we trust, will fully support the case for the funding of NEON by the NSF via a specific federal appropriation - a schedule responsive to the federal budget calendar. Having said that - It is time to get to work!

The NEON visioning process we will undertake, as detailed in our proposal, is community-based and is structured around working committees and subcommittees. While the leadership of these committees has been partly established, the committee membership will be drawn from the broader community. We encourage you to nominate yourself or other skilled and thoughtful members of our community. Three major meetings are planned for the first half of 2005 (Meeting dates = January 3-7, March 14-18 and June 6-10). It is essential that committee members attend all three meetings; substitutions and the back-tracking that results cannot be entertained. The NEON project will cover expenses and provide an honorarium for service.

We hope that our colleagues who cannot fully commit to the extensive work that will be required to bring NEON to fruition will faithfully review the documents generated during the NEON design process and provide council. We will also encourage graduate students to join in this vetting process as NEON will serve their careers for at least the next three decades.

The new, interactive website, http://www.neoninc.org, serves as the nexus of NEON activity on the web. There you can find posted a document entitled "The NEON Design Process," which briefly lays out the upcoming process, and, for those inclined to delve in deeper, the summary and project description sections of the project proposal. We also provide electronic committee nomination forms and current job openings at the NEON Project Office, as well as announcements and other resources. Nominations for committees will be reviewed beginning 8 October 2004.

Sincerely,

Co-Directors Bruce Hayden (UVa & AIBS), William Michener (UNM & AIBS), Project Manager Jeffrey Goldman (AIBS)

with Carol Brewer (U. Mt.), Deborah Estrin (UCLA), Chaitan Baru (UCSD), Jerry Franklin (U. Wash.), Leonard Krishtalka (U. Kan.), Jim MacMahon (USU), Elinor Ostrom (Ind. U.), and CoIs Carmen Cid (E. Conn.), Sharon Collinge (U. Col.), David Foster (Harvard), Deborah Goldberg (U. Mich.), Laura Huenneke (NAU), James Levitt (Harvard), Knute Nadelhoffer (U. Mich.), Margaret Palmer (U. Md.), James Reichman (NCEAS), Hilary Swain (Archbold Biol. St.), and Michael Welge (U. Ill.).

And on behalf of AIBS, AIBS President Joel Cracraft (AMNH) and AIBS Executive Director Richard O'Grady.