ExCom Feb2013

ESIP Federation Executive Committee, February 14, 2013

Participants: Carol Meyer, Curt Tilmes, Erin Robinson, Annette Schloss, John Scialdone, Emily Law, Chris Mattman, Roberta Johnson, Brian Wee, Matt Austin, Steve Berrick

Meeting called to order at 2:04 by Annette Schloss

1. Welcome and Introductions - Welcome to new members, Brian, Emily, Roberta and Chris
2. Approval of November minutes -Brian made a motion to adopt the minutes as drafted. The motion was seconded by Chris Mattman. Without discussion, the minutes were approved by acclamation.
   
3. ESIP Meetings
   • Winter Recap (Meeting Survey Results) - Carol recapped the Winter Meeting. The attendance was above our expectations given the budget restrictions. The program was well-received, again, receiving feedback that there are too many things that people want to attend but cannot fit them all into their schedule. Carol thanked everyone who helped plan the sessions, noting that the meetings are a product of the community. Feedback was good on both days' plenary sessions. The theme on the Climate Assessment was well-timed, meeting just a few days before the report's release. The second day interagency panel was an impromptu catalyst for an OSTP interagency project on EarthData, more details will come in March.
   • Summer Planning (Planning Page) - The call for sessions will go out at the beginning of March. The meeting will be in Chapel Hill, NC at the University of North Carolina. We have arranged to spend an afternoon at the NC Museum of Natural Science on Day 2 of the meeting, giving the ESIP Federation a chance to do outreach using the museum's assets. There is an immersive theater and a 3-story theater (Daily Planet) that are open for our use. With the meeting theme focusing on natural disasters, the museum represents an outstanding opportunity to showcase member projects that support this important theme. The rest of the meeting will be at the university's continuing education facilities. There will also be a teacher workshop at this meeting led by Margaret Mooney. John Scialdone inquired about engaging the NC State Meteorologist, state climatologist. Carol has connections and will follow-up on that. Emily suggested reaching out to Geospatial Cluster.
4. Committee Round Robin
   • Chris Mattmann - Products & Services Vision - help ESIP facilitate member projects and their use of computing and storage resources; bring forth collaborations with external open source foundations including Apache; and to make best use of Earth science information products and services within that scope, and with modern big data technologies.
   • Matt Austin - Reminder that there is an Information Technology & Interoperability call at 3pm w/David Maidment, UT-Austin
   • Roberta Johnson - Education Committee call is next week. A number of big issues around education that ESIP can help with - (1) next generation science standards coming out shortly and unclear how they will be implemented in K-12 classrooms. (2) NESTA - ESIP can leverage the connection and network of teachers that are members of NESTA to learn about what ESIP has to offer. Looking at Summer conference - NESTA teachers will be engaged.
   • John Scialdone - Partnership has 4 applications in for the next class. Will wait until end of March before bringing them forward.
   • Brian Wee - On task force to evaluate nation's environmental observation systems wants to carry the conversation with OSTP societal benefit areas (SBAs) and GEOSS SBAs - what extent has he extended analysis to encompass data centers that make those observation available? Matt - NESDIS has done analysis on behalf of OSTP in the PALMA tool created by MITRE. Would also like to extend to information systems - are accessible through services and standards?
5. Raskin Scholarship Launch - The Foundation for Earth Science received a gift from Rob's family to support a current graduate student in computer, earth or informatics science. It goes back to Rob's mentoring of students throughout his life. A small team came up with the award - the student winner will give a talk at a future ESIP meeting. We will go out in the spring for nominations and we will award in Jan. 2014.
6. Other Business
   • John - The task on international/domestic partnership is complete.

Chris Mattman made a motion to adjourn the meeting with a second by Roberta Johnson. The meeting adjourned at 2:46.

ESIP Federation Executive Committee, March 14, 2013

Participants: Curt Tilmes, Erin Robinson, Emily Law, Chris Mattman, Margaret Mooney, Chuck Hutchinson, Karl Benedict, Stefan Falke

1. Governance steering docs for ESIP Commons have been added to the Commons.
2. Summer Meeting
   1. Discussions with Frank Lindsay have led to development of a workshop proposal on disasters data, services products that are needed
   2. Call for sessions and museum presentations are out
   3. Survey went out to last two years of summer meetings to identify impact of budget sequestration (will include survey in monday update too)
   4. Teacher workshop is still a go
3. Committee reports
   1. P&S - new opportunity with Microsoft Azure Science Platform. Chris, Erin worked to reduce AWS cloud budget. Have moved projects to microinstances or turned off. Will work on better project documentation of testbed projects.
   2. Partnership - 4 applications awaiting review.