2016 Annual Business Meeting

Time: January 7, 2016, 8am-10:30pm Place: Wardman Park Marriott, Washington, DC

Agenda

Call to Order
ESIP/FES Update (Peter Fox, President)
2016 Elections (Ken Keiser, C&B Chair)
- 2016 ESIP Leadership
- New ESIP members
- Semantic Technology Committee Proposal
- Approve the 2016-2020 ESIP Strategic Plan Executive Summary
- Ballot (bit.ly/1PPP4jI)
Type Caucus - Type Representative Elections and Type Positions on Administrative Committees (Constitution & Bylaws, Finance & Appropriations and Partnership)
Committee Reports
Other Business
- 2016 Summer ESIP - Chapel Hill, NC July 19-22, 2016
- File:Peter Thank you.pdf
Adjourn

Minutes

Call to Order
Peter Fox calls the 2016 ESIP Assembly to order at 8:15 am.
ESIP/FES Update (Peter Fox, President)
Two years ago there was a law change for non-profits that indicated that individuals on ExCom could not sit on the board of the Foundation, which prompted a change in the nature of the relationship between the Foundation and the Federation. In the last two years, a lot of effort has gone into separating FES and ESIP. However, recently it has been brought to light that the original reason for splitting (a perceived conflict of interest) was not necessary. Board leadership, ExCom and ESIP staff have discussed the issue. The conclusion is that the FES/ESIP relationship will return to the dynamic that existed 2 years ago where the FES is the financial and legal entity and ESIP the community.

Legal council has been in direct contact with our sponsors to determine how this impacts federal employees sitting on the FES board. The original conflict of interest had to do with financial compensation for acting on the board. The minimal compensation for attending meetings is not an issue. We do not think that everyone elected to a leadership position would be elected to the FES board, i.e. committee chairs will not necessarily be on the FES board. It is possible to set up recusing for particular board activities.
This will impact who can serve on the FES board. However, there is nothing to be done on this issue at today’s meeting. However past actions on this topic are:
- Board members for the 2016 FES board are not up for election at this meeting.
- The FES board meet and approved the addition of the ESIP President, VP and chair of the finance committee as part of the FES board.
2016 Elections (Ken Keiser, C&B Chair)
An electronic vote was conducted for the 2016 ESIP leadership positions with the following results:
- Emily Law - President
- Christine White - Vice President
- Ken Keiser - Constitution and Bylaws
- Bil Teng - Finance and Appropriations
- Justine Goldstein - Data Stewardship
- LuAnn Dahlman - Education
- Ethan Davis - IT&I
- Danie Kinkade - Partnership
- Soren Scott - Products and Services
An electronic vote was conducted for the acceptance of the following new member organizations:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU) - ESIP-II
- National Agricultural Library (NAL) - ESIP-I
- Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) - ESIP-I
- Northwest Knowledge Network (NKN) - ESIP-III
- Data Semantics Laboratory at Wright State University - ESIP-II
An electronic vote was conducted for the Semantic Technology Committee Proposal:
- Proposal Accepted
An electronic vote was conducted for the approval of the 2016-2020 ESIP Strategic Plan Executive Summary:
- Executive Summary Accepted
New leadership will take affect after this meeting.
The logic behind transitioning the Semantic Web cluster to a committee related to the idea that many ESIP clusters, external agencies and academics are interested in these technologies. If the Semantic Committee is going to interact with all of these entities, it would be better to do this as a committee. For example, the NST EarhCube initiative does not want to reinvent the wheel related to semantic technologies. They are interested in collaborating with ESIP to bring their expertise. RDA is also interested in collaboration around semantic technologies.
- Action Item: Create a clear visualization of Clusters, Working Groups and Committees within ESIP.
Type Caucus - Type Representative Elections and Type Positions on Administrative Committees
Type I
- Bob Arko - Type I Rep
- Brian Wee - C&B
- Rebecca Koskela - Finance
- Scott Hausman - Partnership
Type II
- Sky Bristol, USGS – Type II
- Denise Hills, GSA - C&B
- Helen Connover, UA Huntsville - Finance
- Ann Wilson, LASP - Partnership
Type III
- Ted Habermann - Type III Rep
- LiPing Di - C&B
- Regan Moore - Finance
- Lindsay Powers - Partnership
Committee Reports
C&B (Ken Keiser):
Constitution and Bylaws have been moved to Github. C&B vetted the Semantic Technologies proposal. C&B will be considering a supplemental document to clarify some processes within ESIP.

Finance (Bill Teng):
FiCom has worked to provide a system to give funding to collaboration areas that do not have standing budgets. FiCom also worked on the longer term ESIP budget. There is an ongoing discussion about travel support for invited speakers, with a formalization of the process before FY17.

Partnership (Tyler Stevens):
12 new member applications in 2015. Drafted a new ESIP Partnership strategic plan. Defined a process for inactive members. Revised text for the ESIP Member join page. Looking at new members for the future.

Data Stewardship (Justin Goldstein):
USGS has requested a full proposal from Data Stewardship for the data management clearinghouse. Other collaborations include AMS Data Citation Recommendations, iSamples program. Five articles in scholarly journals. Very active with Data Stewardship Maturing Matrix and applying the Matrix to various data types. Asked to weigh in and provide a leadership roll in the GEO Data Management Guidelines. Several members worked on developing the core guidelines which was truly international in scope.

Education (Erin Robinson for LuAnn Dahlman):
Teacher workshop at this summer meeting. Collaboration with the Drones Cluster on using drones in classrooms.

IT&I (Ethan Davis):
They have hosted several Rants and Raves. Ethan invites participation in the cluster.

Nominations (Denise Hills):
Many thanks to everyone that stepped forward to be nominated. Nominations committee had to struggle a bit in the process of who could serve in what roll. Denise will submit a report to the ESIP President about lessons learned over the past 2 years.

Products and Services (Christine White):
Very active year in Products and Services. There has been a re-thinking of the way awards were given out through the Testbed. New undertaking of the AIST evaluations in the ESIP Testbed. The FUNding Friday event moving to a happy-hour format has been really successful. Formalizing processes for Testbed activities.

Type I (Danie Kinkaid):
Danie put together a poster at the Summer Meeting which the other types adopted.

Type II (N/A):
Highlights will be in the State of the Federation

Type III (Ted Habermann):
There have been a few attempts to determine how ESIP types can be more active in ESIP.
Other Business
2016 Summer ESIP - Chapel Hill, NC July 19-22, 2016

Steve Diggs will chair Visioneers.

Plenary speaker ideas welcome.

Incoming President Emily Law gave a very big thank you to outgoing president Peter Fox - an exemplar in the ESIP Community!
Meeting adjourned at 10:22 am.