Thanks a lot to you all for accepting to be part of the AIMS consultative group. The group will start to be operational in 2013, meanwhile, we would like to share with you some further information before the end of this year.

The AIMS Consultative Group acts as an open channel of communication between AIMS and all of you, key persons in the agricultural information management domain that are also interested to build linkages between information workers. The objective is to involve you in the building process of AIMS, and assure that anything that goes on with the platform is known and shared with you. 

In simple terms, we look for an efficient way to provide as much transparency as possible on anything related to AIMS from outside FAO, and guarantee as much coherence among all of us in the work done in the agricultural information management domain as possible.

For those that have not actively followed up the latest developments on AIMS, in 2012 activities were largely to implement the recommendations received from the AIMS E-consultation 2011– which was an online consultation that provided a clear guidance of what AIMS should be and what it should deliver. Today the basis is consolidated, and now we are looking forward to built upon this work

The quantity of e-mails is going to be much reduced, we promise, as we do not expect to enter in long discussions (for that we are preparing a new e-consultation at the end of next year). In essence, the AIMS consultative group is more about providing a space where any of you can be kept informed can ask and provide feedback. We will share with you proposals of activities and improvements to services, ideas and doubts. This channel of communication is open also to know what you plan at the same level in your organizations.

The group is today composed of the following members:

• Luz Marina Alvare - International Food Policy Research Institute (USA)
• Elizabeth Ascensio -  Ministerio de Agricultura del Peru (Peru)
• Peter Ballantyne - International Livestock Research Institute (Ethiopia)
• Hugo Besemer - Consultant (The Netherlands)
• Krishan Bheenick - CTA (The Netherlands)
• Jim Cory - Horizon Mapping (USA)
• Philip Edge - Consultant (United Kingdom)
• Urban Ericsson – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden)
• John Fereira - Cornell University (USA)
• Toni Greider - IAALD (USA)
• Sridhar Gutam - Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture (India)
• Peter Hessels - Royal Tropical Institute (The Netherlands)
• Yves Jaques - Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (Italy)
• Gudrun Johannsen  - Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (Italy)
• Richard Kedemi - Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kenya)
• Johannes Keizer - Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (Italy)
• Diane Le Henaff - INRA (France)
• Devika Madalli - Indian Statistical Institute (India)
• Nikos Manouselis - Agro-Know Technologies (Greece)
• Michael Riggs - e-agriculture (Italy)
• Stephen Rudgard - Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (Italy)
• Federico Sancho - IICA (Costa Rica)
• Miguel Saravia - CONDESAN (Peru)
• Gerard Sylvester - Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (Thailand)
• Marcia Zeng - Kent State University (USA)

As part of the group, there is also the AIMS editorial team composed by Sarah Dister, Thembani Malapela, Karna Wegner and myself.

Thanks to all of you and best wishes for 2013!