Difference between revisions of "Draft Excom Minutes"

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ESIP Federation Executive Committee, September 9, 2010

Attendees

Chris Lenhardt
Karl Benedict
Rob Raskin
Steve Berrick
Michael Goodman
Annette Schloss
Peter Fox
Carol Meyer
Brian Rogan

The meeting was called to order by Vice President Lenhardt at 2:06 pm.

Adoption of Minutes A point of order was offered by Chris Lenhardt to note the last meeting (in Knoxville) was not an official meeting. Instead, it was a working meeting for which no minutes were taken. The May minutes were considered, with Karl Benedict offering a motion to adopt the minutes (seconded by Chris Lenhardt). Without further discussion, the minutes were approved by acclamation.

Summer Meeting Debrief Carol Meyer led a discussion about the summer meeting, including a summary of evaluation results presented by Brian Rogan. The ensuing discussion raised some questions about additional data to capture from the survey results including:

Can the organizations represented by new attendees be identified? (i.e. are these new organizations or new people?)
In the future, can we capture posters as pdf submissions? (so that data from the posters can be mined for metrics, institutional memory, collaborations)
Can the registration system include a question about first time attendee status? (so that we can gauge interest in an ESIP 101 session)

The ESIP 101 session was lightly attended. Jim Frew gave the overview presentation. A number of questions were asked during the session. There was a general sense that this session should be offered at future ESIP Federation meetings, perhaps on the first day of future meetings.

Winter Meeting Update Planning for the Winter 2011 is just underway, with the Visioneers having met only one time. The Visioneers are leaning toward a theme that builds off of our tagline, Making Data Matter. The overall vision for the meeting is to provide a framework for evaluating the value of data. This topic is thought to be very relevant for the community, with the ESIP Federation potentially providing training as a service to the community. NASA, NOAA and NSF are known to be interested in this topic. There was a discussion of evaluation as a theme with several important points being made:

There has been an ongoing conversation with the director of George Washington University’s Evaluators Institute. There is great interest in engaging this group in the hope that they will help our community improve the evaluations done for projects. There is interest in having a framework for earth science program evaluation (or a set of frameworks). Additional conversations have led to a discussion about an intensive evaluation workshop at a future ESIP Federation meeting. The ESIP There is also a winter institute and anyone who might be interested should contact Carol.
Chris Lenhardt mentioned that people might have a hard time seeing Evaluation as a worthwhile topic but there many PIs and others who would find a value.
Michael Goodman discussed what the DAACs do for evaluation. Carol mentioned that ESIP doesn’t have as well defined a base as the DAACs and it probably would present some challenges to try and replicate it within the context of the ESIP Federation.
There was consensus that what we are really looking for are impact metrics or “customer service” metrics; how well do we serve our larger constituency and what is the return on investment?

The Visioneers are still developing the theme. The meeting page and registration system are under development, with an expectation that registration will open in mid- to late-October. The next visioneers call is September 20, with bi-weekly meetings expected through October.

Preview of the Summer Meeting Carol and Karl Benedict recently spent time to scout out the 2011 summer meeting venue. Surprisingly, the University of New Mexico doesn’t have nearby hotel lodging. The university facilities are very attractive but the lack of nearby housing is a shortcoming. Unexpectedly, space was available in Santa Fe, NM and two local hotels offered the federal per diem rate for the duration of the meeting. The traditional meeting dates were changed to accommodate the move to Santa Fe and will be the week of July 11th. It was pointed out that this meeting will be the same week as ESRI’s annual users’ conference. The consensus was that there would not be too much overlap between the two meetings.

Funding Updates

The ESIP Federation has been awarded another small EPA grant to support the 2010 summer meeting
The NOAA grant is making its way through the grants process. In the process, it was inadvertently designated as a grant rather than a cooperative agreement., thus creating some delays because of how the proposal was written. This has been cleared up and we don’t expect any further red flags to be raised.
Year three of the NASA cooperative agreement is in place.

Outreach The ESIP Federation attended IGARSS this year and had an exhibit. There is one new partnership application that came out of the meeting. In the course of staffing the booth, Carol had a conversation with Hans-Peter Plag, who works closely with the GEO Science and Technology Committee (STC). He noted that he and others had been trolling the Federation’s wiki (especially the work of the Data Preservation and Stewardship Cluster). The information gleaned included a report that the STC was utilizing information related to data citation as a starting point for its own discussions. Hans-Peter asked that the ESIP Federation send a representative to the next STC meeting to inform that GEO committee of the on-going work being done by members and the ESIP Federation community. Mark Parsons agreed to represent the ESIP Federation at the meeting on data citation and data quality issues.
Chris and Carol met with Brian Wee, the outreach person of NEON. NEON is expected to submit an application to join the ESIP Federation. Also, Brian is open to helping the ESIP Federation get in the door at both NSF and USGS. Carol and Karl Benedict met with the PI of the NSF DataOne project. DataOne also is expected to submit and application for membership.
Chris and Carol briefed the NOAA Environmental Data Management Committee, an internal NOAA Committee that is tasked with developing common practices for data management within the agency. All of NOAA’s line offices are represented on the Committee. NOAA seems to be eager to work with the ESIP Federation and use us as a resource for helping the agency meet its internal data management goals.
There is a national geoinformatics community trying to form and there will be an organizing meeting later in the month. Carol and Jim Frew will represent the ESIP Federation at the meeting.

New Activities There are a several new clusters being formed or considered:

An Information and Data Quality Cluster led by Greg Leptoukh and a Data and Visualization Cluster led by Kevin Ward have been created.
There also has been a discussion about the formation of a new Provenance Cluster. The hold up is related to whether this new cluster would be independent or remain part of the Data Preservation and Stewardship Cluster. The consensus seems to be that it be the latter.
The Education Committee is looking to propose formation of a Climate Education Working Group at its next telecon, September 16th.

Strategic Plan and Metrics Discussion Carol described the results from the July metrics discussion at the summer meeting and inquired if the notes adequately captured the essence of the discussion and if the discussion results are leading us down the correct path. The general sense of the discussion was that there is a lot of currency in the ESIP Federation, which is not being fully promoted or captured. Much discussion centered on how we promote what we do and how we capture knowledge generated in the ESIP Federation context. Next Steps:

Data and information mining from existing sources:

poster abstracts and the posters themselves
minutes for the different activities of the ESIP Federation
meeting surveys
interviews with people who participate in the ESIP Federation

Formalize how committees report on their activities and what they should be concerned about. There should be some guidance from the groups so that what is returned is useful.
Create an ESIP Federation elevator speech and communications plan.

new website to be launched
wiki clean up

Develop Winter meeting theme focused on evaluation.

Chris mentioned that much of this has a marketing or PR feel to it. How can this content be repackaged to put the best face of the organization forward? In addition to having the evaluation folks coming in, it might be useful to have a PR firm come in and help put together a way to help solicit this information on a regular basis. Federation staff will be the ones to massage the content and put it in the form needed.
Steve asked if there were processes to distilling content on the wiki to put in the main website. This would include the work of the groups, papers being worked on. Some point it would be nice to have a process to vetting that material to make it public. Carol mentioned that as part of the website redevelopment, guidance is to be drawn up to help determine what the relationship between the content on the wiki and the website should be.
Chris suggested that we are at a good point to get a definitive date after the winter meeting to move forward. We need to determine what we will do next. We are currently at a good point to go into a holding pattern and then really focus on the winter meeting so that we get what we really want out of it in terms of speakers and sessions.
We want to put together a meeting that is responsive to what we really want. We need to be sure we refine what we are looking to accomplish. Carol urged the members of the Executive Committee to be involved in the Visioneers telecons.
Other Business The Partnership Committee held a forum at the summer meeting to understand the community’s interest in changing ESIP types (or eliminating them). The consensus from the discussion was to keep the ESIP types but to refine their definitions. The Partnership Committee will develop a proposal for consideration at the January meeting.

Peter Fox made a motion to end the meeting (seconded by Steve Berrick). The meeting adjourned at 3:10 PM

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 [[Executive_Committee |Back to Executive Committee Main Page]]
-'''ESIP Federation Executive Committee Telecon – May 13, 2010'''
-'''Present:'''
+'''ESIP Federation Executive Committee, September 9, 2010'''
-*Carol Meyer
-*James Frew
+'''Attendees'''
-*Brian Rogan
 *Chris Lenhardt
 *Karl Benedict
-*Marilyn Kaminski
 *Rob Raskin
 *Steve Berrick
-*Chuck Hutchinson
 *Michael Goodman
-*Patricia Huff
+*Annette Schloss
+*Peter Fox
+*Carol Meyer
+*Brian Rogan
-The meeting was called to order at 2:05 PM
+The meeting was called to order by Vice President Lenhardt at 2:06 pm.
 '''Adoption of Minutes'''
+A point of order was offered by Chris Lenhardt to note the last meeting (in Knoxville) was not an official meeting.  Instead, it was a working meeting for which no minutes were taken.  The May minutes were considered, with Karl Benedict offering a motion to adopt the minutes (seconded by Chris Lenhardt). Without further discussion, the minutes were approved by acclamation. <br>
-Karl Benedict moved to adopt the minutes as drafted and Chuck Hutchinson seconded the motion. The minutes were approved by unanimous consent.
-'''ESIP Federation Summer Meeting Update'''
-The summer meeting has come together nicely with two of three plenary speakers confirmed.  The technical workshops have filled up with only three open slots remaining.  There are a total of 17 workshops offered at this point.  On the breakout session front, some groups have outlined a full list of sessions while others have not got a full agenda at this point.  However, there have been some good conversations. We are expecting to have an Executive Committee meeting on Monday night.  Carol will send a follow up email to see if the meeting can occur at 7 PM.
-The registration has been slow, following the typically pattern for ESIP Federation meetings.  People are beginning to think about registering and we expect the usual flurry as the early registration deadline approaches. Carol expressed her appreciation of the work Chris Lenhardt and Bruce Wilson in preparing for the meeting.  They have secured partial sponsorship for the poster session/reception.  This has been supplemented by Northrup-Grumman. Chris thanked Carol and mentioned that they are, at this point, just tying up loose ends and that the plans are moving smoothly at this point.
-An ESIP 101 session will be offered at the summer meeting for new ESIP Federation community members. The session will be developed in conjunction with the Partnership Committee.
-The University of New Mexico (Karl Benedict) will be hosting the 2011 summer meeting in Albuquerque.
-'''Committee Budget Requests for FY 2011'''
-This year, the Finance and Appropriations Committee is trying to be ahead of the curve on reviewing proposed committee and working group budgets.  The template for requests for FY 2011 has been put in place.  We would like to have a request in hand by June 30th in order to expedite the process.  The early deadline would allow for budgets to be considered during the summer meeting.
-'''Final Srategic Plan Review & Metrics Task Force'''
-A review of the strategic plan is needed, particularly as it relates to metrics.  Carol gave a review and mentioned that it was important to look at progress that has been made to date and evaluate how we are doing as an organization.
-As a first step, it will be important to see what we have done to meet the goals/objectives set forth in the strategic plan.  In addition, there is a great need (both organizationally and in the community) to be able to express how funded activities benefit sponsors.
-Carol proposed the creation a subcommittee comprised of Executive Committee members but also open to others who were interested looking at the process.  Chris Lenhardt mentioned that the idea behind the strategic plan's metrics was to push some of it out to the working groups, committees and clusters and have them collect the metrics that could be collated into a report. There was consensus that the full Executive Committee would tackle the strategic plan metrics at the outset, with input from various bodies within the ESIP Federation.
-Karl talked about how the groups could get an idea of how many folks attended the track and what was discussed.  These metrics would be useful as a gauge to participation.  Rob added that it might be to tie the four strategic goals to the committee reports that are submitted following the meeting. In addition, it was suggested that the budget template be refined to reflect the relationship between the proposed budget and the strategic plan alignment.
-It is important to get this information collected by the July meeting.  It could function as a midyear report.  Carol took the action to request a mid-year report from all committee, working group and cluster chairs regarding their year-to-date progress on their activities as they relate to the strategic plan.
-Impact metrics or informal “nuggets” have been accumulated by word of mouth and then staff follows up by requesting more information.  Chris asked if there were a quick and easy way to collect information.  Brian agreed to work on a simple template form to collect this information from partners. Carol suggested that the form could be simply asking the questions of Who, What, When. Where, How, Why.
-Jim Frew suggested that the committee needs to take it upon itself to see if we are getting the proper information once any responses have been collected. Once we learn anecdotal information, we need to question further about the specifics of the metrics.
-'''Other Business'''
-Carol had a couple of updates:
-# We have been asked by EPA to submit a proposal for full review for summer meeting support
-# We have submitted a report to NOAA for continued funding.
-# Michael Goodman has been busy with travel but has a simple draft outlining potential governance changes.  Carol will follow through with sending it out to the other committee members.
-Michael Goodman made a motion to adjourn, with Chuck Hutchinson seconding the motion. The meeting adjourned at 2:37 PM.
-'''ESIP Federation Executive Committee Minutes – March 11, 2010'''
-Participants: Karl Benedict, James Frew, Marilyn Kaminski, Chris Lenhardt, Margaret Mooney, Rob Raskin, Annette Schloss, Steve Kempler (guest), Carol Meyer, Brian Rogan
-'''Adoption of Minutes'''
-The meeting was called to order by President Frew at 2:06 PM.   Marilyn Kaminski moved to adopt the minutes from February, seconded by Chris Lenhardt.  The minutes were approved by acclamation.
-'''ESIP Federation Contributions to GEO's Decision Support Project, Steve Kempler'''
-Steve Kempler gave an overview of the Decision Support projects that Lawrence Friedl is involved with in GEO.  GEO is looking for advisors for projects from within the ESIP Federation community.  It is possible that there could be funding for these efforts, if the GEO team is successful in finding a match between the proposers and funding agencies. The deadline for submitting full proposals is May 1.
-Carol felt that since many people hadn’t read through these proposals, that it might be worth creating an inventory of needed skills.  If this work was done up front, more people might become interested.   Because of time constraints, it isn’t clear many people would read through all of these proposals.  One suggestion was to ask the proposers for specific skills needed when full proposals are submitted in May.
-The Executive Committee is supportive of this effort but a path forward is not clearly defined.  One approach might be to work on this through some our existing groups. (e.g. Water, Air Quality, Decisions)
-Another approach might be to utilize the nascent ESIP Federation skills database.  The database structure and interface is in place - additional fields (beyond IT skills) will be added to reflect the broad range of skills within the ESIP Federation and those being sought for the GEO proposals. Several clusters can work on identifying the expertise topics.
-It was noted that several ESIP Federation partners were involved with the GEO proposals and others had stepped forward earlier to volunteer their help. It was also noted that it is important to support this project.  We should try and populate as many of these proposals as possible.
-Carol will follow up with Lawrence and Steve and ask one to join the Products and Services telecon scheduled for next week.  There was general agreement to continue the process and engage the ESIP Federation into this worthwhile program.
-'''Constitution and Bylaws Committee Update'''
-The Constitution and Bylaws and Partnership Committees have caucused and agreed that the Constitution and Bylaws Committee will put together a proposal to make changes to the ESIP Federation's governance documents that are impacting its ability to self-govern.  One Bylaw provision has been flagged initially to be studied by the Committees and others likely will emerge from their review.
-The "Simpson provision" would be removed first and then determine what other changes would be needed to remove partners from the rolls.
-There have been a number of partners identified who are no long active due to grants no longer being funded or lost interest on their part.  The ESIP Federation has changed from it earlier roles and that one goal is to truly define what is a partner. This proposal needs to be ready for discussion at the summer meeting so that partners are aware of the changes. The changes need to be framed so they are not threatening to current membership.   A discussion document will be pulled together for the summer meeting.
-The Executive Committee noted that this discussion could raise a number of other related issues.  It will be important to consult with the early ESIP Federation leaders to ensure that support for the changes can be in place.
+'''Summer Meeting Debrief'''
+Carol Meyer led a discussion about the summer meeting, including a summary of evaluation results presented by Brian Rogan.   The ensuing discussion raised some questions about additional data to capture from the survey results including:
+*Can the organizations represented by new attendees be identified?  (i.e. are these new organizations or new people?)
+*In the future, can we capture posters as pdf submissions? (so that data from the posters can be mined for metrics, institutional memory, collaborations)
+*Can the registration system include a question about first time attendee status?  (so that we can gauge interest in an ESIP 101 session) <br>
+The ESIP 101 session was lightly attended.  Jim Frew gave the overview presentation.  A number of questions were asked during the session. There was a general sense that this session should be offered at future ESIP Federation meetings, perhaps on the first day of future meetings. <br>
-'''Summer Meeting Update'''
+'''Winter Meeting Update'''
+Planning for the Winter 2011 is just underway, with the Visioneers having met only one time.  The Visioneers are leaning toward a theme that builds off of our tagline, Making Data Matter.  The overall vision for the meeting is to provide a framework for evaluating the value of data. This topic is thought to be very relevant for the community, with the ESIP Federation potentially providing training as a service to the community.  NASA, NOAA and NSF are known to be interested in this topic.  There was a discussion of evaluation as a theme with several important points being made:
-There have been a number of tracks put together including: Water, Teacher Education, Decisions, Data Preservation and, Energy. Air Quality is likely to have a presence too.
+*There has been an ongoing conversation with the director of George Washington University’s Evaluators Institute.  There is great interest in engaging this group in the hope that they will help our community improve the evaluations done for projects. There is interest in having a framework for earth science program evaluation (or a set of frameworks).  Additional conversations have led to a discussion about an intensive evaluation workshop at a future ESIP Federation meeting. The ESIP There is also a winter institute and anyone who might be interested should contact Carol.
+*Chris Lenhardt mentioned that people might have a hard time seeing Evaluation as a worthwhile topic but there many PIs and others who would find a value.
+*Michael Goodman discussed what the DAACs do for evaluation.  Carol mentioned that ESIP doesn’t have as well defined a base as the DAACs and it probably would present some challenges to try and replicate it within the context of the ESIP Federation.
+*There was consensus that what we are really looking for are impact metrics or “customer service” metrics; how well do we serve our larger constituency and what is the return on investment? <br>
+The Visioneers are still developing the theme.  The meeting page and registration system are under development, with an expectation that registration will open in mid- to late-October.
+The next visioneers call is September 20, with bi-weekly meetings expected through October.
-There have been plenary speaker invitations issued, including one to Tom Karl.  There have been no responses as of yet.
+'''Preview of the Summer Meeting'''
+Carol and Karl Benedict recently spent time to scout out the 2011 summer meeting venue.  Surprisingly, the University of New Mexico doesn’t have nearby hotel lodging. The university facilities are very attractive but the lack of nearby housing is a shortcoming.  Unexpectedly, space was available in Santa Fe, NM and two local hotels offered the federal per diem rate for the duration of the meeting.  The traditional meeting dates were changed to accommodate the move to Santa Fe and will be the week of July 11th.  It was pointed out that this meeting will be the same week as ESRI’s annual users’ conference.  The consensus was that there would not be too much overlap between the two meetings.<br>
-'''Creative Commons Policy Update'''
+'''Funding Updates'''
+*The ESIP Federation has been awarded another small EPA grant to support the 2010 summer meeting
+*The NOAA grant is making its way through the grants process.  In the process, it was inadvertently designated as a grant rather than a cooperative agreement., thus creating some delays because of how the proposal was written.  This has been cleared up and we don’t expect any further red flags to be raised.
+*Year three of the NASA cooperative agreement is in place. <br>
-Brian gave a quick review of the work on the Copyright Policy.   He made some edits to it and it is ready to go for final review.
+'''Outreach'''
-The Executive Committee is declared done with its review period.  The next step is to put out the policy for review to the  membership for 30 days.
+The ESIP Federation attended IGARSS this year and had an exhibit.  There is one new partnership application that came out of the meeting. In the course of staffing the booth, Carol had a conversation with Hans-Peter Plag, who works closely with the GEO Science and Technology Committee (STC).  He noted that he and others had been trolling the Federation’s wiki (especially the work of the Data Preservation and Stewardship Cluster).  The information gleaned included a report that the STC was utilizing information related to data citation as a starting point for its own discussions.  Hans-Peter asked that the ESIP Federation send a representative to the next STC meeting to inform that GEO committee of the on-going work being done by members and the ESIP Federation community.  Mark Parsons agreed to represent the ESIP Federation at the meeting on data citation and data quality issues. <br>
+Chris and Carol met with Brian Wee, the outreach person of NEON.  NEON is expected to submit an application to join the ESIP Federation.  Also, Brian is open to helping the ESIP Federation get in the door at both NSF and USGS.
+Carol and Karl Benedict met with the PI of the NSF DataOne project.  DataOne also is expected to submit and application for membership. <br>
+Chris and Carol briefed the NOAA Environmental Data Management Committee, an internal NOAA Committee that is tasked with developing common practices for data management within the agency.  All of NOAA’s line offices are represented on the Committee.  NOAA seems to be eager to work with the ESIP Federation and use us as a resource for helping the agency meet its internal data management goals.<br>
+There is a national geoinformatics community trying to form and there will be an organizing meeting later in the month.  Carol and Jim Frew will represent the ESIP Federation at the meeting.<br>
-'''Update on Education Budget'''
+'''New Activities'''
+There are a several new clusters being formed or considered:
+*An Information and Data Quality Cluster led by Greg Leptoukh and a Data and Visualization Cluster led by Kevin Ward have been created.
+*There also has been a discussion about the formation of a new Provenance Cluster. The hold up is related to whether this new cluster would be independent or remain part of the Data Preservation and Stewardship Cluster.  The consensus seems to be that it be the latter.
+*The Education Committee is looking to propose formation of a Climate Education Working Group at its next telecon, September 16th. <br>
-NOAA is doing a one day  Climate Stewards Workshop on Tuesday, July 20.    The budget will devote more monies towards teacher support but is dollar neutral from the original proposal.  President Frew moved to adopt the revised Education Committee budge, Karl Benedict seconded.  The revised budget was approved by acclamation.
+'''Strategic Plan and Metrics Discussion'''
+Carol described the results from the July metrics discussion at the summer meeting and inquired if the notes adequately captured the essence of the discussion and if the discussion results are leading us down the correct path. The general sense of the discussion was that there is a lot of currency in the ESIP Federation, which is not being fully promoted or captured. Much discussion centered on how we promote what we do and how we capture knowledge generated in the ESIP Federation context.
+Next Steps:
+*Data and information mining from existing sources:
+:*poster abstracts and the posters themselves
+:*minutes for the different activities of the ESIP Federation
+:*meeting surveys
+:*interviews with people who participate in the ESIP Federation
+*Formalize how committees report on their activities and what they should be concerned about.  There should be some guidance from the groups so that what is returned is useful.
+*Create an ESIP Federation elevator speech and communications plan.
+:*new website to be launched
+:*wiki clean up
+*Develop Winter meeting theme focused on evaluation. <br>
+Chris mentioned that much of this has a marketing or PR feel to it.  How can this content be repackaged to put the best face of the organization forward?  In addition to having the evaluation folks coming in, it might be useful to have a PR firm come in and help put together a way to help solicit this information on a regular basis.  Federation staff will be the ones to massage the content and put it in the form needed. <br>
+Steve asked if there were processes to distilling content on the wiki to put in the main website. This would include the work of the groups, papers being worked on.  Some point it would be nice to have a process to vetting that material to make it public. Carol mentioned that as part of the website redevelopment, guidance is to be drawn up to help determine what the relationship between the content on the wiki and the website should be. <br>
+Chris suggested that we are at a good point to get a definitive date after the winter meeting to move forward.  We need to determine what we will do next.   We are currently at a good point to go into a holding pattern and then really focus on the winter meeting so that we get what we really want out of it in terms of speakers and sessions.  <br>
+We want to put together a meeting that is responsive to what we really want.  We need to be sure we refine what we are looking to accomplish.  Carol urged the members of the Executive Committee to be involved in the Visioneers telecons. <br>
 '''Other Business'''
+The Partnership Committee held a forum at the summer meeting to understand the community’s interest in changing ESIP types (or eliminating them).  The consensus from the discussion was to keep the ESIP types but to refine their definitions.  The Partnership Committee will develop a proposal for consideration at the January meeting.   <br>
-With no other business, Margaret Mooney moved to adjourn, Karl Benedict seconded.  The meeting adjourned at 2:57 PM.
+Peter Fox made a motion to end the meeting (seconded by Steve Berrick). The meeting adjourned at 3:10 PM