Taxonomic Database Working Group (TDWG) held its annual conference in Fremantle, WA, 19-26 October 2008. This was the largest TDWG meeting ever, with around 180 participants from all continents, including 60 from across Australia.

Over the five days of the main conference a large number of presentations were given on many aspects of biodiversity informatics. The programme from the conference is available online at http://www.tdwg.org/conference2008/program/ and includes links to the presentations, many of them with audio captured on the day. Abstracts for all presentations are included in the Proceedings of TDWG 2008 (also available as a PDF).

The Wednesday morning sessions were dedicated to an exploration of Australian biodiversity informatics and of the services under development as part of the Atlas of Living Australia.

On Wednesday afternoon participants joined workshops to explore user requirements for the Atlas and to consider approaches to addressing them. The results of these workshops will be incorporated into the Atlas user needs analysis report which will be issued shortly.