ExCom May2014

May Excom Call - 2014-05-13, 3 ET

Participants

Peter Fox, Sara Graves, Bruce Caron, Tyler Stevens, Ken Keiser, Christine White, Emily Law, Curt Tilmes, Bill Teng, Ruth Duerr, Margaret Mooney, Chuck Hutchinson, Erin Robinson

Minutes

Approval of April Minutes
Sara Graves motioned to accept the minutes as presented and Christine White seconded the motion. The minutes were approved by acclamation.
Products and Services - Testbed awards
Christine White reported that there were 6 applications submitted to the Testbed RFP. The Testbed Configuration Board reviewed them and funded three of the proposals at $6500 each. The funded projects include:
- ESIP Ontology Portal
- ToolMatch - RPI/Knowledge Motif
- EarthCube Prototype Catalog - WHOI
President's Report - Peter Fox
Executive Director Search Update - Peter reported that the Foundation for Earth Science Executive Director Search work group has a near final job description draft and the job announcement should be posted in the next week.

Climate Data Initiative Follow-up - Peter heard that the representation of ESIP and the Foundation and the CDI launch was very well-received.
Staff Report - Erin Robinson
- Summer Meeting Updates - Erin reported that the Summer Meeting planning is going well. The agenda, registration and 1-pager are below. We have two confirmed plenary speakers - Yolanda Gil, USC and Dan Katz, NSF. There is a track of sessions related to the theme in grey. We are working with Yolanda Gil on enhancing the meeting as it's related to the theme and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention.
- Website update - Erin reported that Monday the re-themed ESIP websites launched on the esipfed.org/testbed.esipfed.org and commons.esipfed.org. The wiki will be updated in June with the same theme.
Committee Reports
- Strategic Plan - State of Federation Wiki page for comments Emily Law reported on the Strategic Plan.
  - Background In 2004, ESIP's first strategic plan reflected the evolving role that the ESIP Federation sought to play in the ensuing years, reflecting the broadening of the ESIP Federation’s base from its original core to its then 75 partners. In 2009, the 2nd strategic plan recognized that the ESIP Federation was uniquely positioned to respond to the growing need for information to solve the Earth’s pressing environmental problems and the public’s interest in making better use of science information. In 2011, the ESIP Federation leadership did a mid-course review and at that time fleshed out additional priorities for the Federation. We are now at the end of the 2009-2013 planning period and in the position to carry forward some of the activities, but also think about the opportunities that face us and how to grow and evolve ESIP.
  - State of Federation The first step of the 2014 Strategic plan was to review the State of the Federation. Erin prepared a document that aligned the funded work with the 2009 Strategic Plan goals and the 2011 Vision Pillars to highlight major accomplishments and areas that there were gaps.
  - Next Steps We will survey the ESIP assembly (piggy backing on the upcoming partner election) on the current strategic goals and vision pillars to identify if these are suitable to carry forward or if we need to evolve them. Based on their feedback we will use the summer meeting to gather input tactics to reach the goals. The Strategic plan group will then synthesize the results for a draft 2015-2020 plan and evolve that to present for adoption at the 2015 Winter Meeting.
- C&B - Nomination Committee update
  - Bruce reported that the C&B & tiger team drafted the bylaw addition, discussed on the wiki and then had a telecon to finalize the work. The bylaw language only creates the committee, the process will be defined in policy document. The ESIP assembly will vote on this electronically.
- Data Stewardship
  - Ruth reported on the current papers in progress and the data citation work. The group has three papers in progress - (1) editorial submitted to Science that is now going to Nature (2) Dlib paper to alert librarians to activities in other parts of the communities (3) Eos article on provenance context work. Ruth has participated in the Force11 Data Citation Implementation work group. They are not able to link a logo to our citation guidelines.
- Education
  - Erin reported that the Education committee submitted a testbed proposal to connect ESIP data/technologist with k-12 teachers. This wasn't funded, but will be considered through alternate mechanism.
  - Margaret reported that she is planning an education session at the Summer Meeting. It will be a 90 min session where all former teacher workshop participants are invited. It will feature presentations from NASA, NOAA and CIMSS
- Finance - Funding criteria
  - Bill reported that the Finance Committee decided to create an alternate funding mechanism instead of reworking the definition of clusters. The special projects was modeled after the Testbed RFP. The group will finalize this month and bring it back for a vote in June.
- Partnership - Welcome Packet & Draft Criteria for Membership
  - Tyler reported that we have 6 new member applications up for review and reminded the group to review. Over the past month the committee has worked on a welcome packet and drafted a set of criteria for membership.
- IT & I
  - Erin reported that the May Rant/Rave was from Doug Fils at Consortium for Ocean Leadership on their use of schema.org. The IT&I committee is also planning a technical showcase of testbed projects and USGS CDI projects during the workshop day of the summer meeting.
- Type Rep Reports
  - Sara Graves reported that she has been working on the connection between Type I data facilities and the Council for Data Facilities.
  - Nothing to report from Ken Keiser or Margaret Mooney, the Type II and Type III reps.
Other Business
- Winter Meeting Theme and opportunity
  - Erin reported that the Winter Meeting dates are set - Jan 6-8, 2015 at the Renaissance Dupont Circle. In recent conversations and activities, it seems like a theme around agriculture and climate may be strategic. The group did not identify any immediate red flags. Visioneers will convene in June to discuss this potential theme.

The meeting adjourned at 4:08.

Actions

Action: Christine will send the group the testbed project spreadsheet.
Action: Ruth will draw up a resolution for discussion and then adoption by assembly.
Action: Erin will include this in the next Monday Update for 30 days of review/comment from ESIP.