December 2017
<--Program_Committee_Notes_2017
December - 2017
NOTE: not approved (end of year).
Annual Group Highlights:
President & Vice President
ESIP/Foundation for Earth Science Merger accomplished: ESIP is one membership 501(c)3 organization
ESIP software guidelines formalized
ESIP responded to NSF RFI on Future Needs for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and RFI on connection of international network to network coordination.
Staff
Led successful renewal for NASA and USGS proposals to support ESIP; AWS Credit and stronger partnership with AWS
Established ESIP Lab to house incubator, evaluation and FUNding Friday programs
Supported exploration of internationalization of ESIP in Australia and through other international organizations like RDA and GEO
Continued to support the All Hazard Consortium Collaboration and the Partnership for Resilience Preparedness linking to ‘end users’.
Supported two successful ESIP Meetings in Bethesda, MD and Bloomington, IN, NOAA’s Environmental Data Mgmt meeting, NASA Earth Science Data System Working Groups Meeting, Presented at the USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) meeting
Increase in internal/external communication capabilities and use. 24000+ Slack messages (instead of emails), new video capabilities through WeVideo (check out this ESIP video), growth in the production and use of ESIP YouTube Channel.
ESIP Figshare Archive growth: 120 objects/object sets, with about 3000 views and 1500 downloads.
ESIP experiments with idea farming and crowd-sourcing using IdeaScale enable the ESIP community to generate questions and solutions in response to challenges and needs by sponsors and others. The Pre-print Cluster used IdeaScale to crowdsource the design for the EarthArXiv logo.
PrePrint Service Cluster spawned EarthArchive.org with already 184 objects in it. EarthArXiv About page.
Staff is using WeVideo to do tutorials for members to learn about running and joining Clusters. The first one (first draft) is HERE.
My ESIP Story effort allowed dozens of ESIPers to tell how ESIP has impacted their lives. This resource will allow ESIP to tell its own story to new members and sponsors. Ruth Duerr and Reid Boehm are running an analysis of these narratives with funding from FUNding Friday. Individual stories and compiled videos from these will be forthcoming on ESIP YouTube. Here is an example.
Committees:
Finance
One of the Finance Committee’s core tasks is to allocate funding to ESIP Committees, Working Groups and Clusters to support the business of ESIP. In 2017 this included:
Reviewed and approved annual budget requests for four ESIP Working Groups and Committees.
In response to Special Projects requests to fund invited session speakers at ESIP meetings, we issued a call for travel support requests in advance of the Summer Meeting. The intent is to fund subject matter experts who are not ESIP members and wouldn’t normally attend ESIP. This will be a regular funding opportunity for the Summer Meeting sessions.
Received and reviewed several Special Projects funding requests throughout the year.
Met with Governance Committee to review Policies and Procedures related to review Business and Finance policies. Determined that Finance Committee policy documents related to Committee and WG budgets will be incorporated into ESIP Policies and Procedures
Worked with ESIP staff to provide a common process for ESIP-funded travelers to share the outcomes of their trips with the broader ESIP community. Trips will be documented via web form and posted in ESIP web space.
Partnership
Reviewed and recommended new member applications:
Seven new ESIPs welcomed in July
Three applications recommended for vote in October
Two additional DAACS admitted as members (CD.DIS and OB.DAAC)
Drafted Committee Strategic Plan
Implemented On-boarding, with calls to all new members and emails by staff through HighRise. New orientation videos in draft/planning mode (See: ESIP: Why We Cluster [draft])
Member Survey completed by 27 members, will be analyzed in the winter to help determine how Membership can be better defined and easier for new members to understand.
Partnership notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x0GgJz_yFgiYVQAFZMUQ0dzl2EcTcvgCtzt6CDxF5ho/edit#
Governance
The 2017 Governance Committee consisted of Mike Daniels, Bob Downs, James Frew and Ana Privette. Bruce and Erin guided our activities throughout the year.
The Governance Committee’s primary task was the creation of the new ESIP Policies and Procedures document.
The Committee started with previous versions of the ByLaws and Constitution documents. These were reviewed for consistency vis a vis the ESIP ByLaws to ensure that there were no conflicts.
Four Sections of a new Policies and Procedures document were created and a first draft was presented at the ESIP Summer meeting.
Next, the Committee held telecons on the individual sections of the Policies and Procedures for comment and revision among the most relevant parties of the Board and Program Committee.
The Policies and Procedures were revised based on these discussions and the final version was approved by the ESIP Board in October, 2017.
Next year, these Policies and Procedures will be moved to a location that facilitates easy access and maintenance.
Data Stewardship -
A sub-group within the committee wrote a white paper as a response to the grass-roots "data rescue" events that sprouted up in late 2016 and early 2017. The goal was to provide data facility professionals' perspectives on those activities.
Mayernik, M.S., Downs, R.R., Duerr, R., Hou, C.-Y., Meyers, N., Ritchey, N., Thomer, A., & Yarmey, L. (2017). Stronger together: The case for cross-sector collaboration in identifying and preserving at-risk data. Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.4816474.v1
A paper authored by committee members was published in the Data Science Journal. The paper provided insight into how persistent web identifiers are being used within Earth science data facilities.
Goldstein, J.C., Mayernik, M.S., & Ramapriyan, H.K. (2017). Identifiers for Earth science data sets: Where we have been and where we need to go. Data Science Journal, 16: Article 23. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-023
The Data Management Training Clearinghouse was launched in Oct of 2016, supported initially by the U.S. Geological Survey's Community for Data Integration, in partnership with ESIP, http://dmtclearinghouse.esipfed.org/. In 2017, the Data Management Training Working Group was formalized within ESIP as a collaboration group to continue the development of the Clearinghouse.
The Data Integrity Cluster organized plenary and breakout sessions at the ESIP summer 2017 meeting covering the topic of Science Data Quality. The cluster also promoted the importance of data uncertainty along with its proper definition and usage in Earth science by publishing a paper entitled “Ensuring and Improving Information Quality for Earth Science Data and Products” at D-Lib Magazine, introducing four dimensions of information quality (Ramapriyan et al., 2017, D-Lib Magazine, July issue, https://doi.org/10.1045/july2017-ramapriyan )
Education -
Initiated Coding in the Classroom theme for 2017-2018.
Explore Coding “book club” ongoing after the Out 2 Lunch webinar
Becky Reid, Education committee member and teacher, attended the ESRI Imagery Education Summit & presented about ESIP education & activities.
Margaret Mooney facilitated online classroom visit by CIMMS scientist to discuss his career path to become a computer programmer
Collecting ESIP community information: Survey of ESIP Partner Education Programs & Projects
3 questions
Takes 2 minutes; Don’t be left out!
Coordinated 14 OutToLunch data tool webinars for teachers.
Out2Lunch YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8X9E6I5_i8iSGst95siRtwV0Fy9zJfcd
Facilitated 3 educator workshops
Margaret Mooney presented the ESIP-NESTA session: "Got a Drone? Try this!" at NSTA Milwaukee with 15 people attending.
Luann Dahlman and Shelley Olds co-facilitated a 1.5 day workshop on Drones in STEM at Earth Educators’ Rendezvous meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
20 college faculty, 4 middle- and high school teachers, and 2 education professionals
Margaret Mooney, Shelley Olds, and LuAnn Dalman co-facilitated a 1 day workshop in conjunction with the ESIP Summer Meeting
15 middle and high school teachers + 4 educational professions
Presented talks at AMS and AGU on Drones in STEM project
Margaret Mooney presented, “ESIP Education Drones in STEM Initiative” @ AMS in January 2017
Shelley Olds presented, “Using Recreational Drones to Promote STEM Learning” @ AGU in December 2017
Published Drones in STEM educational activities through UCAR Science Education’s website:
Hands-on activities, activity outlines, and supplemental materials.
Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)
Implemented and developed processes for a CLEAN Leadership Board, including recruiting a diverse group of climate education leaders
Coordinated 7 climate literacy sessions and 1 workshop at AGU
Biweekly webinars on topics from engaging students via SMS to learning across curriculum and incorporation climate education in english and social studies. See archives here.
Helped to convene a Collective Impact Summit to identify how climate education and workforce development can aid in achieving net zero emissions by 2050 by bringing together practitioners in formal and informal education, government officials, and foundations.
IT & I - A very successful year of Tech Dives.
All Tech Dives can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8X9E6I5_i8i070SY0UwMjGrw4UzjCmlc
Nominations
The Nominations Committee was convened in March of this year after Tracey Pilone’s nomination was confirmed by the board. Our activities for the first part of the year, prior to the summer meeting, were fairly limited. We helped review applicants and selected the winner for the Raskin Scholarship in May as our primary spring activity.
Prior to the Summer Meeting in July, we held a kickoff meeting for the board nomination process to take place in the fall, reviewing open positions and helping the committee consider what nominees we needed to proceed into 2018. During the summer meeting we started speaking with possible candidates.
In the Fall we began the nominations process in earnest, with bi-weekly telecons to review progress. We developed a Google Survey that fed into a spreadsheet to capture nominees that was sent to the membership in the weekly Monday emails for input. We also reached out to individual candidates to see if they would be interested in serving, and answered any questions of the nominees. The committee reviewed progress on filling in the positions biweekly and worked together to verify nomination information, gather bios for the wiki page and worked with Bruce to distribute all that information to membership.
We were successful in having at least one nominee for every open seat and voting began December 1st for next year. Prior to close of our activities as a group, we plan to gather a lessons learned document for next year to pass on what we’ve learned.
Semantic Technologies -Collaboration with the Earth Science Data Analytics Cluster: Semantic Technology Committee members have worked with ESDA team members throughout the year to identify opportunities to leverage semantic technologies to support data analytics
SWEET: In March, the SWEET Ontology was released as an open source product;
committee members have worked with ESIP to establish a new site http://sweet.esipfed.org as the official SWEET distribution site
A workflow for community contributions to Semantic Tech Committee documentation, including updates and improvements to SWEET, was developed and is available on github at https://github.com/ESIPFed/stc#how-to-work-with-us-on-github
The SWEET codebase is now available on github at https://github.com/ESIPFed/sweet
Community members have been active in making updates and improvements to SWEET, with 55 commits to date and 4 regular contributors
We expect to start engaging a broader community in improving SWEET , including subject matter experts to vet terms and definitions, when the Earth Science Idol projects has refined and tested the YAMZ workflow for achieving consensus on definitions
