ExCom September 2011

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

ESIP Federation Executive Committee, September 8, 2011

Attendees: Chris Lenhardt, Bruce Caron, Karl Benedict, Ken Keiser, Rob Raskin, Chuck Hutchinson, Annette Schloss, Ruth Duerr (Guest), Stefan Falke, Steve Berrick, Erin Robinson, Carol Meyer

The meeting was called to order by President Chris Lenhardt at 2:05 pm EDT.
1. Adoption of Minutes The minutes were amended with some clarifying language. A motion was made to adopt by Chris Lenhardt, with Karl Benedict offering a second. The amended minutes were adopted by acclamation.

2. Data Stewardship Sharing Principles
At the 2011 Winter meeting, the ESIP Assembly asked the ExCom to look at draft principles. Ruth Duerr, primary author of the draft principles was on the call to provide an overview.
Discussion:

  • Ruth Duerr:
  • Some angst about the ESIP Federation getting involved since many member organizations already have own guidelines.
  • Formatting of document made it difficult to read and understand subsidiarity of points.
  • Commercial providers thought this was important for ESIP to do in order to add credibility to its efforts.
  • Principles are not binding, rather, they are guidelines.

Discussion ensued about whether the principles should be called 'guidelines' and requested the Constitution and Bylaws Committee to review the draft. Additional discussion centered on the importance of the ESIP Federation making this statement as a data-centric organization. In addition, it was suggested that the draft be augmented with examples of members as principle exemplars, perhaps using clusters, committees and working groups to make these connections. Further discussion related to preserving the principles in a public place, the ESIP Commons and/or website, so that could be accessible and referenced by others.
Action: ExCom decided that the Data Sharing Guidelines are useful and referred to the Constitution and Bylaws Committee to review guidelines.

3. Report from DC Meetings

  • USDA – met Anne Bartuska, Jill Auburn – working on areas related to sustainability and looking at data standards and interoperability; Also life cycle analysis; Follow-up to encourage winter meeting participation. Potential for collaborations w/ watershed data; Curious about engagements with GEO. Applied areas – forest management; agriculture tied to water and back to NASA applied science. Facilitating connections.
  • NSF – Good meeting with Cliff Jacobs. Knowledge management system is key to EarthCube. ESIP has been mentioned in EarthCube discussions. Cliff suggested that NSF is getting pushback b/c approach to EarthCube is so different than the traditional NSF approach. Recognize key groups that need to be involved. ESIP is potential place to have discussions and coordination. NSF will post white papers soon on what to expect, including the upcoming charrette on Nov. 1-4. The timeline for EarthCube:
November 2011 - EarthCube Charette
Through April 2012 - Assessment of community input
May 2012 - EAGER awards
10 year program, about $100M to evolve infrastructure, probably not swayed by current fiscal situation.

Discussion ensued about whether NSF would be redirecting money from existed funded programs. There also was some discussion that NSF is paying some attention to interagency inputs on this but it's not clear how serious their interest is. NSF also does not have a plan for archiving data resources.

  • NOAA TPIO – Jeff deLaBeaujardiere, Lewis Mcculloch, Matt Austin – NOAA has a new grant that links OPeNDAP and Unidata; DARWG connections; Data Documentation initiative all highlighted. TPIO is looking to ESIP to continue helping with their annual Environmental Data Management meeting and with community input into their efforts.
  • NOAA NESDIS Meeting: Met with Patrica Huff and Nina Jackson. The meeting was a touching base activity, with Chris/Carol looking to have a follow up meeting to brief NESDIS Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff.
  • NASA (Applied Sciences) – Met with Lawrence Friedl and discussed the Evaluation workshop at the upcoming Winter Meeting.
  • USGS meeting – Met Kevin Galliger at the USGS Community for Data Integration meeting and gave him a 1-page background document on ESIP. He was excited to get involved and couldn't see any reason USGS/CDI would not to participate.

4. Update on Partner Recognition
Currently have Martha Maiden and Falkenberg Awards to recognize lifetime and early career achievements.
The Partnership Committee is considering two new awards:

  • President’s award – significant contributions from previous year
  • Organization recognition – best collaboration

Discussion: Could give multiple awards; structure flexible; not a laundry list to diminish work. Group awards may diminish effort.
Action – Annette will update award vision to incorporate comments and present it to the Partnership Committee. The ExCom will be briefed on the final award proposal in October and then open up nominations.

5. General Information:

  • New Partners – Four new ESIP members; All welcomed; engaged. Another class expected for the fall.
  • Moore Foundation – Telecon last week on Data Intensive Science. Great opportunity for ESIP. Expecting a lot from us – kicking around focused ESIP suggestions. Mention ESIP. Moore Project manager put in touch with another science domain that is trying to organize. Could we package the lessons learned – could it be sold?
  • Winter Meeting – Visioneers meeting next week. Talking theme/process for abstracts/speakers

6. Other Business

  • Ken – Submitted RFP for testbed and expecting responses; Putting together configuration board – reps from different areas of ESIP; Bigger than P&S. Don’t know how to move ahead creating that, though, Semantic Web, IT&I, Data Discovery, Stewardship, Info Quality and Administrative representatives all being considered.
  • ESA Meeting – are there opportunities to work more closely with the ecology community? Probably so, as evidenced by DataONE, NEON and NPN recently joining ESIP.

The meeting adjourned at 3:12 EDT.