Draft Excom Minutes

March Minutes

Attendees

Emily Law, President
Christine White, Vice President
Denise Hills, Chair, Nomination Committee
Ken Keiser, Chair, C&B
Ethan Davis, Chair, IT&I
Soren Scott, Chair, Products and Services
Justin Goldstein, Chair, Data Stewardship
Bill Teng, Chair, Chair, FiCom
LuAnn Dahlman, Chair, Education
Danie Kinkade, Chair, Partnership
Kathy Fontaine, RDA, GEO
Leslie Hsu, USGS
Erin Robinson, Staff
Annie Burgess, Staff
Rebecca Fowler, Staff

Minutes

February and March Draft Minutes will be approved at the April Excom Meeting.
GEO Update
- Kathy Fontaine
SciDataCon Session Coordination - Build on Big Data and Earth Sciences theme?
President's Report
- Highlight
  - Significance: The Education Committee is focusing on using recreational drones for STEM learning. Two webinars on drones for educators are planned on March 22 and April 26. The goal of the first one is to inspire participants by sharing some of the great things drones are being used for. The second is on gathering and organizing data by drones.
  - Significance: The All Hazards Consortium and StormCenter Communications, Inc. have launched the GeoCollaborate™ Disaster Lifecycle Testbed activity within the Multi-State Fleet Response Working Group (FRWG). The FRWG will be testing data access and sharing of critical data layers in a collaborative environment to improve situational awareness and decision making. The testbed activity was introduced to the East Coast Corridor Coalition (EC3) Executive Steering Committee and was well received.
  - GEO partnership: The nomination of Kathy Fontaine to be a member on the GEO Programme Board representing ESIP has been accepted. Congratulations, Kathy! She will be participating in the Program Board Work Plan Symposium to be held in Geneva in May, GEO-XIII Plenary to be held in St. Petersburg in November, as well as other periodic telecom meetings.
- Actions
  - Contact Christine and me if you have any significant events, acknowledgement/recognition you would like to be highlighted in the President’s report.
  - Reminder: ExCom to review and add ideas to 2016 work list on the ExCom Work plan. We’d like your inputs/feedback as well as help to prioritize this year’s work. This will assist in identifying opportunities to get involved.
Staff Report
- Highlights
  - GoToMeeting Migration - ESIP is transitioning from WebEx to GoToMeeting to host all of our community telecons. ESIP staff will make every effort to make this a seamless transition, including notifying collaboration area chair person(s) of when their area is switching over, updating the collaboration area wikis with new GoTo telecon links, providing instruction on how to start and run a meeting and offering a training practice call. We will also make ourselves available to anyone responsible for starting and running the telecons if they would like to practice ahead of time.
  - NSF Spoke proposal in collaboration with Univ. of Wyoming, Univ of Washington and NCAR submitted Feb. 25.
  - NOAA proposal is in last rounds of development and will be submitted next week. Thanks to those who have contributed updates.
  - Supported ESIP Collaboration areas in planning for 2016
  - OGC Updates - Annie Burgess attended the OGC Testbed-12 kick-off, specifically looking for ways to connect the ESIP Testbed activities or improve the Testbed. Erin is at OGC this week to support the Open Climate Data Repository activity started by Steve Adler at the Winter Meeting.
- Actions:
  - If you have other ideas of NOAA-specific accomplishments or activities for the next three years, email Erin.
  - Plenary speaker suggestions for the ESIP Summer meeting should be added here
  - Rebecca led development of a Meeting Sponsorship prospectus. Please share this with partners who may be interested in sponsoring.
Committee Reports
- C&B - met on Feb 19
  - Updating bylaws document per Winter Meeting Assembly approval
  - Preparing for participation with Federation-Foundation re-integration efforts - more to come
  - Discussed "Standing Rules" (now "Policies and Procedures") document to help groups define details beyond bylaws - template/example available for review
  - Revisiting officer terms + with respect to Fed-Found integration efforts - more to come
- Finance
  - Status of FY16 proposed budgets: (1) approved supplemental travel budget from Data Stewardship Comm (for Force-11) and (2) responded to Semantic Technologies Comm - requested some changes and more information; specifically, an initial $ amount was approved for "AWS Computer Resources" to facilitate the analysis of requirements, options, and costs; goal of "AWS Computer Resources" is to enable a dedicated, long-term resource available ESIP-wide.
  - Ficom discussing with C&B on "standing rules" document.
- Partnership
  - New Committee met for the first time Feb 29, to meet-n-greet, and discuss with Erin goals and objective of the committee, perhaps expanding the traditional Partnership role. This first meeting was primarily to explore this idea of expanding the scope and identify some near term activities to check off the list (e.g., polishing the New Member Packet, reviewing ESIP 1-pager and previous Partnership Strategic Plans). Next steps are to draft the SP, complete the New Member Packet, review of new member applications, and brainstorm for summer meeting engagement.
- Data Stewardship
  - We are looking forward to hearing about last week's RDA plenary during our March meeting. We also continued framing our paper pertaining to the use of identifiers for non-datasets.
- Education
  - We expect to begin advertising our two Webinars and the Educator workshop this week. You can view developing outlines for each session in this slide deck.
- IT&I
- Nominations
- Products & Services
  - We are beginning an activity to develop ESIP software evaluation guidelines, potentially through a P&S working group. We are also exploring using rotating co-chairs for the committee (reminder: looking for interested volunteers from other clusters). Discussing the larger tech evaluation needs (reuse, readiness levels, metrics) with other committees/clusters and potential sessions for Chapel Hill.
- Semantic Technology
  - We received budget feedback from FiComm and are proceeding with exploration of compute resources. This is being done in conjunction with Products and Services and the Cloud Computing Cluster to reuse existing information and best practices. We have initiated a discussion on ontology governance and software reuse in conjunction with other ESIP groups. Discussion will continue and we plan to have a session on these topics at the summer meeting. We are beginning a comparison of ontology portals and features. Look for a survey to be conducted ESIP-wide to better understand what the community needs in an ontology repository.
Type Rep Reports
- Type I (Arko)
- Type II Characterizing ESIP Member Contributions
- Type III
Other Business
- Any other business?

February Minutes

Attendees

Emily Law, President
Christine White, Vice President
Denise Hills, Chair, Nomination Committee
Ethan Davis, Chair, IT&I
Soren Scott, Chair, Products and Services
Justin Goldstein, Chair, Data Stewardship
Bill Teng, Chair, Chair, FiCom
LuAnn Dahlman, Chair, Education
Bob Arko, Type I Rep
Ted Habermann, Type III Rep
Erin Robinson, Staff
Annie Burgess, Staff
Rebecca Fowler, Staff

Minutes

December Minutes were approved electronically by acclamation.
- Bill Teng motioned to approve the December minutes. Emily Law seconded.
President's Report
- Highlight
  - Funding opportunity: USGS is interested in standing up a couple of prototypes to demonstrate a PROV registry and an Annotation catalog. The products of these prototypes could potentially become community resources for ESIP. Sky Bristol, Steve Aulenbach, Erin, Annie, Christine and Emily held an initial telecom to discuss how ESIP can facilitate and support this effort. The conversation included how testbed framework can facilitate the prototypes, evaluation of the deliverables, and communication of such distributed architecture and products. USGS is currently crafting a project outline that will allow us to formulate a detailed plan to support their needs. Products and services committee will be involved. No action for ESIP at this time.
  - Meeting: Christine and Emily met at JPL last week and discussed ESIP 2016 work plan. The short distance between us affords regular tag up opportunities to work together closely.
- Actions
  - Committee chairs, working group and cluster chairs/co-chairs (may be Type reps as well?) to update work plan to align with ESIP direction in order to achieve ESIP goals laid out in the strategic plan approved by the assembly during 2016 winter meeting.
  - Excom to submit written report to ExCom wiki shortly after receiving monthly call notification, and read the reports prior to the call in an effort to allow more time for discussion.
  - ExCom to review and add ideas to 2016 work list on the ExCom wiki. We’d like your inputs/feedback as well as help to prioritize this year’s work. This will also assist in identifying opportunities to get involved.
Staff Report
- Highlight
  - NOAA Proposal draft will be shared early next week.
  - Legal update - The conflict of interest law has been changed as of 2013. Federal employees can serve on boards. Waiting for explicit confirmation from NASA and NOAA.
  - Rebecca Fowler is leading a refresh of esipfed.org, adding meetings.esipfed.org and will be working to organize content
  - Annie Burgess reported that evaluation processes are evolving for the Testbed.
  - ESIP is part of a team working to establish a data science internship network.
  - Member highlights from our new ESIP members will be posted on the blog over the next few weeks.
  - Call for sessions for the 2016 Summer Meeting will go out this week.
  - The new website will include a meetings.esipfed.org.
  - Staff has been working to define roles/tasks for clarity. Also created staff email - staff@esipfed.org, for when you are unsure who to contact.
- Actions
  - Website refresh - If you are interested in providing feedback, let Rebecca know.
  - Looking for member highlights and AGU data blog contributors
Committee Reports
- C&B -
  - No activities since winter meeting
  - Will be holding telecon with new C&B members (soon) to discuss (1) updating bylaws with approved changes, (2) draft of a "Standing Rules" document to address ESIP best practices and procedures that are not appropriate for bylaws (will discuss with FICom as noted below), (3) Revisiting officer term lengths discussed last year but put on hold for federation-foundation discussions, (4) prepare for discussion on changes to federation-foundation relationship as necessary
- Finance
  - Status of FY16 proposed budgets: (1) 3 approved (Drupal WG, Data Stewardship Comm, Education Comm); (2) 1 to be submitted (Semantic Technologies Comm); and (3) supplemental travel budget from DS Comm (being reviewed).
  - Request to be sent to those groups who received funding for FY15 for reports on results. This item is on Ficom's list of processes to be (a bit) more formalized.
  - Ficom to follow up with Ken K. re: C&B initiative on compiling ~best practices (or SOPs) for all committees (+other groups?) in some esip wiki space. Aligns very nicely with Ficom's formalization efforts.
- Partnership
  - Partnership is planning to move to monthly meetings. First meeting agenda topic is to strategize/prioritize short-term actions for the committee. Suggested ideas include: Welcome package and/or new member/welcome telecon; review/modify Conduct Code; coordinating with landscape mapping effort; and summer meeting engagement ideas with members.
- Data Stewardship
  - We are developing an outline and aims and scope for a paper concerning the use of identifiers for non-dataset entities, focusing on software.
- Education
  - This brief slide deck outlines the committee's plans to encourage the use of recreational drones for STEM. Planning is underway for two Webinars and a summer workshop for educators.
- IT&I
  - Ethan and Erin will be discussing IT&I plans after ExComm Telecon
  - Follow up on my call-to-action at ESIP Winter Mtg
  - Request for ExComm input (including ideas for Rant/Rave topics)
- Nominations
  - The 2015 NomCom is working on a suggestions/lessons learned document available here: Nomination Committee/Suggestions
- Products & Services
  - Discussing ESIP's potential participation in OGC Testbed 12 and 13.
  - Continuing efforts to expand the tech evaluation process through the P&S testbed with support from interested ESIP members across clusters/committees.
  - Two governance questions to raise: a) (related to Semantic Tech committee discussions) Is there a need or desire to define the RFP and review board processes for all committees, through an ESIP-wide standing rules document? and b) regardless of decision regarding A, can we resolve the outstanding issues around privacy items such as the submitted proposals?
- Semantic Technology
  - Used discussions in January to think about the structure of the committee. Several liaisons to internal and external groups were identified. Had initial discussions with Testbed and Products and Services to leverage expertise. Budget was drafted and sent to Ficom. Identified a few high priority topics to pursue in coming months. Deploying a core set of ESIP Semantic Technologies such as Ontology Repository and Linked Data efforts. One key topic that has emerged is how to govern ESIP semantic resources. Will be discussed at February telecon. Continue discussions with EarthCube Semantics Working group and beginning connections with RDA and OGC.
Type Rep Reports
- Type I - Suggested goals for 2016: 1. Work to align existing online directories (ESIP, COPDESS, CDF, re3data, etc); and 2. Recruit more NSF-supported facilities .
- Type II - Interest in dynamically characterizing ESIP Member Contributions.
- Type III - No Type report.
Other Business
- 2016 Work Plan (Initial tasks)
  - Actions
    - Collect 2016 work plans from collaboration areas.
    - Determine top work items for the year.
- Summer Meeting Updates - Visioneers met last week. Call for sessions will open on Feb.16. (Notes, Slack channel for planning. There is a strong interest in science communication, plenary speakers from diverse disciplines and touching on the story-telling aspects of big data.
- International Data Week
  - RDA, CODATA and the World Data System are coming together in Denver for a joint meeting this fall - RDA and SciDataCon will be the week of September 11th. ESIP has been asked to think about its contribution to International Data Week. Call for sessions has been extended to March 7th.
  - Actions
    - Create a google doc to share ideas for International Data Week.
- Discuss Earth Science Data Analytics cluster's Proposed Definition and Goals of Earth Science Data Analytics
  - ESDA observed that there is not a formal definition for Earth science data analytics. ESDA would like to have an ESIP endorsement of their proposed definition. The first step towards ESIP endorsement is discussion by Excom and, if there are no changes, put the definition as a standing document in front of the Assembly.
  - Actions
    - Excom members should use the discussion section of the Proposed Definition and Goals of Earth Science Data Analytics page to provide comment.