P&S Monthly Dec 4, 2009
Products and Services telecon December 4, 2009
Present: Rob Raskin (JPL), Brian Rogan (Foundation for Earth Science), Yuechen Chi, Tyler Stevens (GCMD), Phil Yang (GMU), Daniel Ziskin (NGDC), Bob Downs (CIESIN), Wenwen Li (GMU), Hannes Huayi Wu (GMU)
1. Future Testbed Plans A general update of the Testbed was given by Yuechen. The testbed has been established looking like a regular ESIP site. using the full ESIP member database. This will establish the foundation to a wider use of the website. We are presently waiting on the Preservation Cluster to finish the product. The Plan is to include a demo at the ESIP meeting at the poster session to show how this works. Everything appears on target for this demo to happen.
Phil Yang discussed how the datatype and data service ontology testbed works. This part of the testbed includes the abilities to run SPARQL queries and register data sets. The URL for the development site was sent to the group email. Worked with the water cluster, Paul Houser and Bill Sonntag to gather water ontologies for a water portal.
A common poster will be created to show the four capabilities of the testbed to go along with demos.
2. 2010 budget request An issue was raised by a member of the Finance Committee about Committee money being spent on labor. The issue was discussed at the Executive Committee meeting. The conclusion was that the Federation really needs a new Committee or Working Group focusing on infrastructure oversight. A new Administrative Committee will be proposed to provide oversight and guidance to the Finance Committee on infrastructure matters. In the interim, a temporary Working Group will be established for this purpose, perhaps including the Federation VP and the for Type Reps. We will submit a new budget following the Winter Meeting, once we show the outputs and value of the testbed work already funded. The overall draft budget was fine but was just missing the results from the 2009 allocation. There is still time to make further adjustments to the budget request between now and early January.
3. Plans for winter meeting There was a general discussion of the Winter Meeting plans. We will create a single testbed poster describing the testbed. Yuechen and Phil will provide demos in front of this poster. Daniel Ziskin will add some materials to add to the poster relevant to potential future activities (the Skills Bank project). The Water and Environmental Decision Making breakouts also are having their own demo sessions. Phil will include descriptions of testbed-related work in both of these sessions. At the Summer Meeting, we plan to have a more concentrated demo session on tools for Products and Services.
4. Better alignment of Federation products with GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas The original focus of Products and Services in the early days of the Federation was more about marketing. The Front Office has since taken on many of these responsibilities. But there is still a need to market Federation offerings in niche areas, such as the GEOSS Societal Benefit areas. Tyler Stevens discussed the role of GCMD in this area. There has been some mapping of Earth Science keywords to some of the Societal Benefit keywords. These mappings are used in a few portals found on the GCMD website, but the map is not public as yet. There was consensus that if the Committee had access to this mapping, they could be a help in this area. The entire GCMD Science keyword list is being expanded and will be available during the mid-2010 timeframe. Service keywords are not part of this revision but will be expanded separately. How can we promote ourselves within the context of GEOSS Societal Benefit areas? This is more of a long term topic. It was felt that a future telecon(s) should be devoted to this question, and perhaps key members of the GEOSS communities should be invited to participate.