Hello all,
this post is entirely non-technical and I apologize if it should be pretty much out of scope.
As you certainly know, HDFgroup has recently implemented dynamically loaded filters (1). This is a great, very flexible enhancement essential for our scientific use cases. We'd therefore like to further support and promote these and future developments and features (and simply get the most out of it).
To do that in a generic way we proposed two initiatives at the Research Data Alliance RDA (2), one dealing with scientific file formats like HDF5 in general and the other one dealing specifically with the new filter extensions. Activities of the initiatives (in RDA terms Interest and Working groups) could include development of tools and recommendations for filter extensions: encouraging software vendors to adopt new HDF5 features in a more timely manner; identifying and supporting further enhancements; sustainability and interoperability issues and so on, it's an fairly open approach.
An outline of the two initiatives (and contact email) can be found here: http://pan-data.eu/RDA-SFF
If you're interested in either or both of the activities please let us know (any other feedback is also very welcome) and we'll keep you posted about the initiatives and the upcoming events at the RDA 4th plenary (3). So no future posts about this topic here 
Best regards, Frank.
(1) http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/Advanced/DynamicallyLoadedFilters/HDF5DynamicallyLoadedFilters.pdf
(2) https://www.rd-alliance.org/
(3) https://www.rd-alliance.org/rda-fourth-plenary-meeting.html
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Frank Schlünzen
Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron DESY
Notkestr. 85
D-22607 Hamburg
email: frank.schluenzen@desy.de
sites: http://www.desy.de/ http://www.science3d.org http://www.pan-data.eu