Subject: Invitation to Open House of Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems (CENS) Consortium

From: "Rich Lysakowski, Ph.D." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 03:39:54 -0400

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Dear Colleague,

We request your attendance at an End User Open House of the 
Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems (CENS) Consortium.  

PURPOSE OF THE MEETING:  to disclose to you the strategies, products,
processes, and schedules for the CENS Consortium’s Knowledge, Software 
and Hardware Deliverables.  From this meeting you will get a lot of useful 
information about electronic notebook systems and the CENS Consortium’s 
work that will help you decide about your company’s level of membership 
and participation.

MEETING TIME:  1:30 PM to 4:45 PM , Thursday, September 11, 1997
This immediately follows the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Symposium  
on ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOKS AND INTRANETS at the Las Vegas Convention Center, 
from 9 AM until 12 noon.

MEETING PLACE:  The CENS Consortium Open House will be held in the 
Capri 1 Room at the Riviera Hotel, in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 11 
from 1:30 PM until 4:45 PM.  The Open House Agenda follows below.  

The Riviera Hotel & Casino is located at 2901 Las Vegas Boulevard South.

COST TO YOU:  Free to Confirmed Attendees.  Free lunch will be provided 
to the first 40 confirmed attendees!!

INTENDED AUDIENCE:  Scientists, engineers, attorneys, librarians, 
records managers, archivists, intellectual property specialists, 
information technology and laboratory automation experts.  

ACTION REQUIRED BY YOU:  Please send e-mail to Leslie Doyle at CENSA
([email-masked]) to register and to have the CENS Consortium 
Nondisclosure Agreement sent to you.  See below for details.

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THE ACS SYMPOSIUM ON ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOKS AND INTRANETS:  

Dr. Rich Lysakowski will chair the ACS Symposium on "Electronic Notebooks
and INTRANETS" as part 8 of the 12-part series of symposia designed to
forward research and bring commercially supported electronic notebooks into
global usage.  In Las Vegas, many experts will present technical and legal
research results and their views on commercial products applied to this
area.  

Alternatively, see http://www.censa.org/CENSAp/ACSsym, papers 54 to 59 
for Symposium details.

See www.lib.uchicago.edu/~atbrooks/CINF/cinflas.htm, for abstracts
of all ACS' CINF papers at the Las Vegas Meeting.

See www.acs.org/meetings/lasvegas/welcome.htm for ACS Meeting details.  

The Las Vegas Convention Center is located at 3150 Paradise Road. 

The ACS Symposium and the CENS Consortium Open House will give you 
a solid view of the state of industry for electronic notebook systems 
and collaborative computing in science.

For more information on CENS and CENSA, please see http://www.censa.org
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WORK OF THE CENS CONSORTIUM:

To better understand the Consortium's work -- think about having a
"collaborative electronic lab notebook system" that your teams of
scientists worldwide can use to reliably capture, manage, securely share
and permanently archive and retrieve ALL common data and records generated
in R&D and testing labs.  Then embed this tool into powerful, easy-to-use
enterprise scalable frameworks that easily support complex R&D project data
management and collaboration.  Then include powerful tools that make it
easy to integrate all your existing software tools.  This integrated vision 
is a major goal of the Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Consortium.

THE CENS CONSORTIUM'S MISSION:  to drive creation of open, commercially 
available, reasonably-priced and supported advanced software to support 
intra-enterprise R&D team project data management and collaboration, 
focusing short-term on complete electronic notebook systems that meet 
end user, and corporate scientific, patent, regulatory, and technical
requirements.  

CENSA is using the best available processes and methods for accelerating
development work by handling most operational details for Members, such as
eliminating unnecessary and costly preliminary meetings.  Many other steps 
are being taken to speed development and reduce costs to Members.

At this meeting you will learn about the processes being used to fulfill
the Consortium’s mission, including:  

1) Prioritizing the functional and business requirements for R&D team
computing and collaborative electronic notebook systems, in a few months,
rather than years proposed by others;

2) Rapidly assessing commercially available and emerging technologies, 
with the objective of building upon more than one set of base platforms,
middleware, and desktop components;

3) Contracting with the best qualified vendors to enhance or construct 
the necessary base platforms, tools, and applications so they become robust 
and full-function R&D Team Computing Systems with electronic notebooks;

4) Overseeing and administering the development and testing processes for
the resulting software;

5) Pre-testing and certifying the software and hardware deliverables in the
CENS Consortium Testbed Laboratory before it ships to Members; and

6) Issuing certified products to Consortium Members at substantial discounts.

We are also sponsoring CENS Program Groups, which are CENS groups focused
on regulatory processes and technology development.  Key deliverables
include detailed System Specifications, Statements of Best Practices, and
SOPs for Fully Electronic Records Management and Recordkeeping in Regulated
Industries.  Some Members have told us that the CENS Program Groups alone 
are worth the price of joining.

The Consortium is selecting base platforms and vendors based on the rigorous 
screening process developed by Members.  Vendors and systems include those 
for electronic notebooks and recordkeeping, groupware, document management, 
the World Wide Web, LIMS, instrument interfacing, chemical, biological, 
spectroscopic, and materials data management, and other tools.  The CENS 
Consortium emphasizes an open process, driven by end user and vendor needs, 
to result in products marketed by Consortium Vendors with truly open, modular 
and extensible designs, using or defining standards wherever possible.

If you want to know more about CENS and the CENS Consortium, we
wholeheartedly invite you and your company to attend this Open House.  

Please feel free to call if you have any questions.  We look forward to
seeing you on September 11, and working with you in the near future as 
part of the Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Consortium.

Sincerely,

Rich Lysakowski, Ph.D., Executive Director, 
The Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Consortium
Phone: 617-935-9600; fax: 617-935-3113; 
E-Mail: [email-masked]; Web: www.censa.org

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P.S.  THIS MEETING IS ONLY OPEN TO END USER COMPANIES IN THE CHEMICAL, 
PHARMACEUTICAL, BIOTECHNOLOGY, AGRICHEMICAL, FOOD AND BEVERAGE, OIL 
AND GAS,CONSUMER PRODUCTS, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND RELATED INDUSTRIES. 

THIS MEETING IS NOT OPEN TO COMPUTER, SOFTWARE OR SERVICE VENDORS 
OF ANY KIND. HOWEVER, FUTURE MEETINGS WILL BE OPEN TO VENDOR MEMBERS.

To attend this disclosure meeting, you must return a current CENSA 
NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT signed by a legal representative of your company, 
because we will be disclosing significant proprietary information that 
took years to develop.  This is the only way to be confirmed as an 
attendee.  Please send e-mail to Leslie Doyle at CENSA ([email-masked]) 
to have the CENSA Nondisclosure Agreement sent to you.

No person can attend the Consortium meeting without a signed agreement 
received by CENSA at least two days ahead of the meeting.  Please call 
617-935-9600 if you need further clarification or questions about this.  
If you have recently signed this agreement then you have already 
fulfilled this requirement for attendance.

Copyright 1997 - CENSA, All Rights Reserved Internationally

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                       MEETING AGENDA FOR 
 THE COLLABORATIVE ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOK SYSTEMS (CENS) CONSORTIUM 
                          OPEN HOUSE

  1:30 PM to 4:45 PM , Thursday, September 11, 1997, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Free Lunch served at 12:30 PM to the first 40 confirmed attendees!!

MEETING AGENDA 

 - Introductions of Consortium Participants and Meeting Attendees

 - Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems (CENS) & The CENS Consortium 

 - Business Problems The CENS Consortium is Solving

 - R&D Team Computing Consortium Deliverables 
     - Legal and Regulatory Program
     - Technical Program Knowledge Deliverables
     - Software and Hardware Systems and Tools

 - CENSA Technical Architecture for Electronic Notebook Systems

 - Project Management, Product Management and Delivery Processes 

 - Consortium Research and Development Schedule

 - Fiscal and Human Resources Required From Participants

 - Closing the Loop on Your Company’s Participation 

 - General Discussion and Next Steps for Your Company

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EVENING CLOSED-DOOR MEETING - FOR CONSORTIUM MEMBERS ONLY

Reviews of:

 - System Functional Specifications for Notebook Clients, Servers, 
    and Integration Tools 

 - Consortium Technical Architecture

 - Progress on Engineering Work and Schedules

 - Progress on Vendor RFPs and Vendor Participation

 - Other Ongoing Work with Vendors 

 - Consortium Membership Activities

 - Discussion of Next Steps

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