Data Management Training/meeting notes 20160602

Agenda for June 2nd 2016 All Call Meeting:

• Shawn Smith presentation & group discussion
• Updates:

• DMT Clearinghouse project
• RDAP 2016 report from Shelley Knuth, if present
• Role-based topics for additional data management training resources

• Anybody have anything else to report?
• DataONE?
• USGS DMT or Community for Data Integration activities?
• RDA working groups?
• UC Santa Barbara librarian group looking at data management training?

• Discussion of how / whether to identify / develop core knowledge for data management training professionals & relationship with training for data curators / data scientists
• Anything else?

Attendees:

• Shawn Smith, Tamar Norkin, John Faundeen, JC Nelson, Shelley Stall, Amber Budden, Nancy Hoebelheinrich (NH), Sophie Hou.

Apologies:

• Ruth Duerr, Bob Downs, Matt Mayernik, Shelley Knuth

Action Items:

1. Start a Google document to brainstorm on the different ideas we could have for the data manager/curator/steward workshop (also a potential topic that we could discuss during ESIP Summer Meeting).
2. Follow-up regarding the feasibility of ESIP sponsoring and/or helping to organize a workshop or meeting to start the process of establishing knowledge & skill sets for data professionals (NH with Erin)
3. Follow-up regarding a breakout at DataONE’s upcoming DUG meeting on the Clearinghouse (NH)

For the next meeting: July 7th 9 am Pacific, 10 am Mountain, 11 am Central, 12 noon Eastern

• UC Santa Barbara librarian group looking at data management training?

• http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Data_Management_Training_Syllabus

• Discuss approaches to be taken at the DataONE DUG & the ESIP Summer meeting
• Discussion of how / whether to identify / develop core knowledge for data management training professionals & relationship with training for data curators / data scientists

Notes:

• Shawn Smith presentation & group discussion

• Report title: “Oceanographic Instrumentation Technician” (link to report: media:SSmith KnowledgeSkillGuidelines.pdf)
• The report provides the knowledge and skill guidelines for an Oceanographic Instrumentation Technician.
• The process for identifying the knowledge and skill needed was:

• Determine an occupation of interest for the development.
• Identify 8-10 experts from the occupation (mixture of people who perform the jobs actually as well those who manage the personnel; basically a cross section of individuals who have experience and can contribute to the occupation/job that is looking to be defined).

• Brainstorm with these experts during a workshop to describe the following:

• Job description

• Including applicable job titles, salary ranges

• Primary job functions
• Task areas (associated with each of the primary job function identified)
• Characteristics of the personnel
• Technical/Tool knowledge/skill
• Education Background/relevant courses
• Professional associations/conferences/opportunities

• Compile a draft of the knowledge/skill guideline.
• Disseminate the guideline to a broader community to solicit feedback/comments in the form of a survey (which received roughly 100 - 200 responses).
• Revamp based on feedback.
• Publish and make openly available. See link next to "Report title" bullet above.

• The workshop with the experts was facilitated by 3 people for one two day workshop; travel & expenses was paid for the participants, but not their time (should verify with Diedre Sullivan from the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center, if desired).
• If ESIP is interested in developing a guideline for data scientist/manager, Shawn recommends that we talk with Deidre Sullivan (http://www.marinetech.org/deidre-sullivan/) for more information about the process & logistics.
• In order to put together the panel for the workshop, Shawn and the facilitators looked for representatives from the major communities who were involved with the oceanographic instrumentation technicians (including potential employers and academic fields), and included ocean technicians with different job responsibilities as well as managers / supervisors and researchers.
• Based on Shawn’s experience, it was helpful to have people involved in the developing/performing the occupation who came from a cross-section of the industry including those from both coastal and ocean observation sectors.
• If we are interested in doing something similar, i.e., to develop knowledge / skills for the data “management” professional, Shawn recommends that we first establish the job categories for the professionals of concern, i.e., data managers / curators/ scientists / stewards. This could be done in a meeting or workshop or even a shared document and would be most helpful if we collaborate with other organizations, such as AGU, DataONE, USGS and other federal agencies. Once the job categories are established, it’s conceivable that knowledge & skill sets focused on either distinct job categories, or the intersection of what is common among the job categories could be developed. Perhaps the latter could be done at another workshop at ESIP Winter 2017?
• Might also be useful to establish a generic category for the nexus; perhaps data “stewardship” professional as that term seems to encompass a broader range, a longer term perspective, and could be tied to data lifecycles fairly readily.
• All agreed that having a workshop to come up with the focused category of the occupation we are interested in exploring and the type of cross section of experts that we should involve would be a good first step in organizing and structuring the actual workshop.
• Example of data science/analysis jobs shared by Shelley:

• http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-data-science-industry-who-does-what-infographic
• http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blog/show?id=6448529%3ABlogPost%3A407076
• http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/data-scientist-core-skills
• http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/what-roles-do-you-need-in-your-data-science-team

• Updates:

• DMT Clearinghouse project

• The project group is meeting almost once a week (everything Thursday at 9am is reserved for the meeting unless specified otherwise).
• Currently, the focus is on developing the metadata that will be used to organize the content.
• July 5th, 11th, 14th, and 15th are dates that have been given by USGS for us to sign up to provide a summer progress report (the presentation is expected to last about 30 minutes).

• RDAP 2016 report from Shelley Knuth, if present

• Nancy provided the update for Shelley instead.

• Shelley received many questions because people thought there were already Clearinghouses in place. As a result, people would be interested in learning more about us

• Anybody have anything else to report?

• DataONE?

• Sophie’s Project with DataONE: https://www.dataone.org/2016_interns

• Blog site to follow Sophie’s progress: https://notebooks.dataone.org/education-evaluation/

• Amber reported that DataONE had received many requests for ways to evaluate data management training resources, so rather than focus on a survey customized to the DataONE DMT resources, they decided to focus on creating a customizable set of tools for evaluation that could be used by the data community.
• The program committee for DataONE’s upcoming User Group meeting just prior to Summer ESIP would welcome a breakout session on the DMT Clearinghouse. The breakout sessions usually involve a short (20 minute) presentation followed by group discussion and information gathering. As an example, assuming that the Clearinghouse were ready for demo, getting feedback on the usability of the site and form would be quite appropriate especially since DataONE’s UX person will be attending as well. NH to follow up with Amber.