Picture the following: An applications portfolio comprising a large number of tools from a wide variety of vendors, many performing the same function, and all with proprietary storage formats. A massive number of project files generated from these applications stored across shared drives, workstations and laptops. Requests coming from influential users who recommend two totally different applications for the very same purpose, and you stuck in the middle.
It?s a picture that will likely be familiar to many....

The converse of this situation: Agreement on as few different standard tools as reasonable that, using common data standards, support a well understood workflow.  And there lies the real problem ? what is the workflow? Ask any geoscientist and you will receive the same frustrating answer: It depends. It depends on the data, it depends on the people doing the work, it depends on the time and money available, and it depends on who you ask in the first place.

A means to communicate workflows is critical to building understanding across disciplines and to enable the design of an efficient applications and data system to support them.

The presentation will propose a flexible component based approach to describe workflows that allows for better communication between geoscientists and IT. The presentation will be followed by a (no doubt lively) discussion.