Draft Excom Minutes
Attendees
- Denise Hills, Chair, Nomination Committee
- Ken Keiser, Chair, C&B
- Ethan Davis, Chair, IT&I
- Christine White, Chair, Products and Services
- Erin Robinson, Staff
- Annie Burgess, Staff
- Rebecca Fowler, Staff
- Emily Law, Vice President
- Justin Goldstein, Chair, Data Stewardship
- Bill Teng, Chair, FiCom
- Tyler Stevens, Partnership
- Ted Habermann, Type III Rep
- Steven Richard, Type II Rep
- Danie Kinkade, Type I Rep
- Peter Fox, President
Approval of October Minutes
- Approval of October Minutes
- Christine motioned to approve Minutes and Justin seconded. The minutes were approved by acclamation.
President's Report
- Peter F., Erin R. and Rebecca F. are in attendance at GEO.
- Strong expression of interest from NOAA in the ESIP testbed relative to the assessment of technology readiness. NOAA is impressed with ESIP’s approach.
- We have new student fellows for 2016 and we are actively looking for ways to acknowledge our current students fellows. Get in touch with Annie about ideas for acknowledgement or if you have questions about the process of selecting fellows.
ESIP/FES Relationship
Peter F. received a message from the president of the FES board and after discussions with the FES attorney and Erin R., they concluded the conditions leading to the split of the Federation and Foundation were a mistake. There as in fact no conflict of interest between FES and ESIP, which changes the options for the relationship between FES and ESIP. There are many consequences of this. Peter F.’s two action items after these conversations are:
- Bring this issues to the ESIP ExCom
- Talk to the ESIP legal council for a second opinion and seek guidance.
Peter will report back to ExCom with a possible list of actions.
Questions/Comments
- (JG) Is the legal council for ESIP on retainer?
- (PF) The Federation does NOT retain legal council. When FES/ESIP MOU was discussed, we did seek legal council.
- (BT) What was the original basis for the conflict of interest? What has changed?
- (ER) The original reason for going to the lawyer was because ESIP was interested in forming relationships with other organizations. The Lawyer presumed there was a conflict of interest where people were getting paid AND sitting on the board. The lawyer said it is illegal to be paid salary and sit on the board. The conflict of interest dissolved when the lawyer realized the people sitting on the board were NOT getting paid. Also, we couldn’t have our contract managers at NASA and NOAA sitting on the board.
- (PF) Compensation of travel for ExCom does NOT count for compensation.
- (JG) How much, if any, is the mistake on the attorney’s part going to cost us?
- (PF) It will be a few thousand dollars – there is a line item in the budget for attorney. Unlikely to be that much. The foundation has to budget for legal council as well.
- (ER) The dual leadership has been incredibly expensive.
- (PF) Possible implications. First, FES and ESIP would merge back together. What would the foundation board look like? One option would be a very small board, meaning President, VP and Type Reps (for example). That would mean the elected leadership would have different responsibilities. Peter many need to contact Denise and inform them of what they are signing up for. Secondary consequence, ESIP assembly will need to vote for organizational change.
- (CW) Besides the expense of the two separate entities, where there benefits of the two orgs.
- (ER) All board members but one were ESIP people. We’d like some part of the board to be out looking, financial capabilities, business capabilities as the board is responsible for hiring/firing.
- (DH) Difficult to identify leadership candidates that were non-feds.
- (ER) Our council will identify where exactly federal employees can participate.
(PF) Next step will go beyond ExCom to the entire membership. We will put up a wiki page and solicit comments.
ESIP Budget Introduction
Questions/Comments
- (BT) Needed clarity on the 5 rolled-up items that are part of the $801K total.
- (JG) What is the RFID? Is that the opt-in/opt-out thing?
- (ER) That is funding from the Sloan Foundation, which covers development, staff time, meeting app, equipment, i.e. the money is for the full project.
- (JG) What about rent and office supply?
- (ER) Staff works remotely so we do not cover.
- (JG) How do we pay the 7K in unallowable expense for drink tickets
- (PF) We receive revenue that become discretionary funds.
- (ER) 7K is drink tickets for 2 meetings and is paid for by registration funds, which are discretionary.
- (ED) Are the organization cost and the ESIP total supposed to add up to the grand total?
- (ER) There are other unrelated projects that are being wrapped up.
- (ED) Is there a mission difference between FES and ESIP?
- (PF) They are slightly different now, but would end the same if a merger takes place.
(PF) The spreadsheet will be cleaned up and it will go out for membership comment. This is an ExCom duty to approve the budget.
Staff Reports
Erin Robinson
- Erin and Rebecca are at GEO this week.
- Beginning of a relationship with GEO.
- Erin was at the regional hub meeting where ESIP was mentioned as a spoke.
- Has been spending a lot of time on the ESIP/Foundation relationship.
Annie Burgess
- Technology evaluation final reports are due November 17 - everyone has stated they will be on time.
- Announced the “Frontiers in Earth Sciences Big Data” theme at IEEE Big Data in Geosciences workshop.
- Meet with AIST PIs at JPL.
- Will present on ESIP Tech Evaluation at AGU.
Rebecca Fowler
- Working on press release for new student fellows.
- We’ll do an AGU media advisory for the first time that will highlight ESIP participation in AGU (Ignite, awards, booth).
- 12 Ignite speakers and more submissions that ever.
- Ignite event at the Oceans meeting went really well.
- Working on communication activities around the ESIP winter meeting.
Meeting Updates
- Annie B. is working on the at-a-glance
- We will need to consolidate sessions
- NOAA is having its environmental data management meeting preceding the ESIP Winter Meeting and ESIP members are invited to its closing plenary
- Summer Meeting locations:
- University of New Hampshire: There is a train from the airport. 77 rooms near the University.
- Friday Center, Chapel Hill: We have worked with Chamber of Commerce to shuttle folks from Franklin Street to the Friday center.
Questions/Comments
- (CW) Staying near the center is important to socializing after/before. So, leaning towards NC.
- (ER) All other things are equal, i.e. wireless, central breakout.
- (JG) Are there any budgetary constraints.
- (ER) They are both federal per diem room rates.
Committee Reports
- FiCom (Bill): We have a draft announcement for request for budget. We need to clarify with Erin policy for labor. Within the committee itself we need to work on budget for travel for invited speakers.
- Partnership (Tyler): Received a new member application for AGU. Will quickly review that this week and get out soon for 30-day review period. Also working on new text for ESIP member join page and membership experience gap analysis.
- Stewardship (Justin): David Moroni from JPL gave a presentation on the data infrastructure at PO.DAAC on last telecon. Nancy Hobelheinrich and Jay Carlson have submitted a statement of interest in response to the USGS Community for Data Integration RFP. Discussion of holding a recap on the RDA plenary. Sara Ramdeen attended a talk on the French Minister on Technology talking about the differences between French and US law related to data. Mendeley is allowing identifiers. More details on DS wiki.
- Ethan (IT&I): No November IT&I Rant and Rave.
- Nominations (Denise): We have a comprehensive ballot in place subject to any changes that may come. Thanks to all for stepping up. Denise will write up a how-to for whomever does this next.
- Products and Services (Christine): We have another testbed call out with Deadline December 1. TCB will review and notify. P&S has gotten ideas together for Winter Meeting. Funding Friday folks have been submitting sessions to the Winter Meeting.
- Type I (Danie): Getting data repository people together using a common poster template together. Showing connectedness of repos within ESIP.
- Type 2 (Steven): Nothing to report.
- Type 3 (Ted): Nothing to report.
Other Business
- Ken walked through: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TEhDx3yNH9paeFB_gwV5L3xdUGuzXb_my9rNinJQD1g/edit
- All positive feedback on the document.
- The topic that incited the most conversation was relative to improving the continuity of the officers.
- Trying to make some decisions on where this type of information needs to go, i.e. not going into C&B.
- Recommendation would be that if we decide to go with a 3-year term approach, we need to get some high-level information on what the roles of the president/past-president roles would be.
Peter F. suggested going back into the document and synthesizing comments. Federation bylaws would be translated into the Foundation bylaws. We might have to get this discussion completed quickly because of the potential merge.