Draft Excom Minutes

Attendees

• Denise Hills, Nomination Committee
• Ken Keiser, Chair, C&B
• Tyler Stevens, Chair, Partnership
• Ethan Davis, Chair, IT&I
• Christine White, Chair, Products and Services
• Erin Robinson, Staff
• Annie Burgess, Staff
• Emily Law, Vice President
• Justin Goldstein, Chair, Data Stewardship
• Bill Teng, FiCom
• Margaret Mooney, Education
• Ted Habermann, Type III Rep

Executive Committee Business

1. Approval of June Minutes

   Christine motioned to approve Minutes as amended and Denise seconded. The minutes were approved by acclamation.

2. Federation Staff Reports
   • Erin thanked all for their work on the Summer Meeting.
   • FES established a finance committee. Our audit came back mostly positive with some recommendations. The finance committee has meet and are in the process of starting the FY16 budget for ESIP.
   • NASA award was extended through 2017 – great news!
   • Annie is working with the Open Science Framework for performing the independent TRL evaluations for NASA AIST. Annie will give monthly reports to P&S on Testbed progress.
3. Summer Meeting 2015
   • Emily L. extends thank you to staff for a job well done.
   • 295 registered attendees, 5 cancelations, 22 remote, 12 students, 17 teachers. 60% members.
   • Summer Meeting recap going to EOS and NASA newsletter.
   • Summer Meeting Survey results:

   • 120 returns of survey
   • Bi-modal distribution on opinion of Asilomar related to network connectivity, spread out nature of rooms, and hotel room quality.
   • People liked poster sessions, but wanted them to be longer.
   • State of the Federation seemed rushed.
   • Remote participation wasn’t well executed. ESIP staff have discussed how to improve this.
   • 60% felt like they only new 20% of people at a meeting.
   • Many people asked for networking opportunities. We are thinking about how can we provide unstructured downtime at the meeting.

4. Strategic Plan Update
   • Denise recommended a Strategic Plan WebEx to allow community comment before putting it to a vote.
   • Erin R. said suggested the Strategic Plan WebEx should be open to ESIP-at-large, i.e. anyone interested to ESIP’s strategic plan. Voting will be limited to voting reps from Member Organizations.
5. Committee Reports
   • FiCom (B. Teng): FiCom is working to formalize a budget process. FiCom meet over lunch at the Summer Meeting to discuss budget schedules and the budget for travel support for invited speakers. They hope to have budget schedules ready before next fiscal year.
   • C&B (K. Keiser): There is a pending request from the Semantic Web Group to form a Standing Committee - this should be an agenda item for the next ExCom meeting.
   • Partnership (T. Stevens): All partnership applications were approved. We haven’t received any new applications.
   • Data Stewardship (J. Goldstein): Since the Summer Meeting, various members of DS have worked to develop a strategic document that details how the committee sees its role as both a body and as a unit of ESIP. Various DS members are active in the GEO effort to create GEOSS Data Management Principles Draft Implementation Guidelines. Other DS members will be involved in developing ESIP's response to these plans. A few committee members are meeting to scope a future paper on best practices for the use of identifiers for non-dataset entities.
   • Education Committee (M. Mooney standing in for L. Dahlman): The 1-day workshop went well at the Summer Meeting. There were 16 attendees, of those polled 60% said the workshop was very good, 30% said excellent. The main topic of next Education telecons will be how the Education Committee can blend with the ESIP Strategic Plan.
   • IT&I (E. Davis): It&I has a Rant and Rave talk coming up this Thursday
   • P&S (C. White): ESIP Summer Meeting had a lot of Testbed and P&S activities. Funding Friday was a great success – great time the night before making posters. People liked the post-dinner happy-hour style poster making. Christine noted that P&S wants to make being part of the Testbed fun and social. Next P&S call next Tuesday. Annie will give an update on her side of the Testbed.
   • Nominations (D. Hills): Talk to Denise soon about whether or not you would like to continue being the chair of your committee. Everyone should think about nominating your colleagues for awards and elected positions. Deadline for awards is coming up on Oct. 31st.
   • Type Rep III (T. Habbermann): Nothing to report.
6. Other Business
   • Erin notified everyone that the Winter Meeting will move to the Wardman Park Marriott on Jan. 6-8, 2016. She also noted that ESIP is looking at other East Coast locations to host summer meetings. Current ideas: Asheville, Annapolis, U. of Alabama, Huntsville, U. of New Hampshire. Also looking for west-coast locations.
   • Erin asked the group if we should have a committee to review sessions that are submitted for the Summer Meeting? E. Law suggested we let people schedule their presentation as they submit. People can self-determine which time/theme their presentation go. Justin suggested there could be some guidance on how presentations are characterized.
7. Emily Law adjourned meeting.