Draft Excom Minutes

Back to Executive Committee Main Page

Draft Minutes for 1112/2009

ExCom November 12, 2009

Present: Tamara Ledley Steve Herrick Karl Benedict Chris Lenhardt Patricia Huff Bruce Caron Peter Fox James Frew Carol Meyer Michael Goodman Brian Rogan Margaret Mooney

1. Adoption of Minutes A motion was made to adopt the minutes. It was seconded and approved.

2. Copyright policy for website Brian presented the draft copyright policy to the committee. There were comments contributed by several members including Check the GNU compatability of the WIKI It might be worth running this by John Wilbanks There needs to be more clarity on contributions to the website.

It is important that people who use our materials have correct attribution.

It would be a good idea to bring this to the floor at the winter meeting. The goal is to leave the December telecon with a document that can be given to the entire membership.

3. ESIP Federation Business • Partnership Election Update We are in the last few days of the voting. This will bring us five new members to the meeting. We are beginning to look at the process of what we do with inactive members. Michael Goodman and the bylaws committee will look into this process. • January Elections (Officers, Committees, Type Reps) We are hoping to run an electronic election before the winter meeting, though it would be difficult to do so for the type reps. Should we have a longer voting period? It is typical that the nominations tend to come in at the last minute so the length of time for nominations isn’t that important. The fourth of December will be the nomination deadline, which will give time for a longer voting period. Everything is set up for nominations to be posted on the Wiki. • Winter Meeting The agenda has really taken shape in the last few weeks. The different tracks are well underway. • GEO Plenary We will have a presence at the GEO Plenary this coming week both in the presentations as well as having a booth. 4. Policy for Committee and Working Groups Budget Reviews The committee adopted a budget policy back in September. Bruce Caron was invited to give a presentation. There were some issues about budget requests for a project that would require a sustained funding beyond the lifetime of a one time event. Rob Raskin spoke to issue that the Products and Services has wanted to do some development work but needs computer support to get started. It is better for the committee to give oversight rather than through FUNding Friday. It would be able to give more reliable quality control. He felt it was consistent with the policy set down by the policy. The products for Products and Services are testbeds and there’s no need for further funding but if a testbed is there it is a platform for other uses.

The funding is specifically to gather feedback over the testbed period.

The testbed would still need some maintenance if it was going to be reused or an extension of the same process but it isn’t required for this project.

The testbed would reside on the federation website.

The ficom issue was that the committee was being funded to do project work and that some of it was long term issue of the work. Is this the right process for this kind of work? There may be a conflict if it isn’t presented to the entire assembly since there may be others interested in the work.

All ESIP members can participate in any conference, but is this sufficient for this type of work?

There were several issues that were raised in the ficom including what are the deliverables? Did they meet the criteria? Who owns it? Who maintains it? Is it a staff responsibility?

There is a clear distinction between FUNding Friday vs. Committee decisions. The main problem is that there should be a cycle through the assembly. That each piece of proposed work be open to a vote of the assembly.

Chris raised that point that there are a lot of policy questions being raised here.

Currently there isn’t specific use assigned to the funds that come from the sponsors. Money comes in for cluster and committee work but not for specific targets. According to Carol we are very much in line with what our funds may be used for in terms of work.

The work of Products and Services has been pretty much homogeneous. At what point do you decide that something is open for a vote of the assembly and what is decided at the committee budgetary request level?

The main sticking point with the ficom is the idea of paying people to do the work rather than on a volunteer basis.

Chris raised the point that it might be worth having some outside advice so that we don’t get into the conflicts we are seeing thus far.

Products and Services will hold off on submitting their budget until the issue is clarified.

The process this year has been transparent and this year the three budget requests were approved. There was adequate time for discussion on the requests.

It isn’t clear whether or not we can move ahead until this larger issue is resolved.

The basic issue is the difference between a fee for enabling and a fee for services.

The question before the committee now is whether or not we can consider the budget requests or should we hold off until we have more clarification. It was felt that we could move forward with some that are clear on their requests.

It was decided that this could not be finalized at this meeting. Either the document needs to be refined and then brought up again at the next telecon or it needs to go before a larger body.

Carol will work with Bruce and Rob to work on the document.

5. Other Bruce Caron was the lone nominee for the Martha Maiden Award. Is the group comfortable moving ahead or should we establish a subcommittee? If the group moves forward, it is a fait acompli.

It was felt it was best to at least do “due dilligence” so it appears above board. A committee needs to make a recommendation but it can come through the executive committee rather than a subcommittee just so we can check any red flags.

It was decided that in the next ten days there would be a decision through the committee after supporting materials are sent out.

This year there was only one nomination, it was felt that there needs to be a way to increase the nomination probably by setting the date much earlier in the year. Carol will update the wiki to allow for rollover nominations.

Meeting was motioned to adjourn by Michael and seconded by Steve. Meeting adjourned at 3:17 PM

Draft Minutes for 10/8/2009

ESIP Federation Executive Committee October 8, 2009

ESIP Federation Executive Committee October 8, 2009

Participants: Karl Benedict, Jim Frew, Michael Goodman, Patricia Huff, Chuck Hutchinson, Chris Lenhardt, Carol Meyer, Margaret Mooney, Rob Raskin, Brian Rogan

Adoption of Minutes

The draft minutes from the September telecon were presented. With no discussion or amendments, Patricia Huff made a motion to approve the minutes. The motion was seconded by Michael Goodman. The minutes were approved by acclamation.

Follow up to discussion on website content - Creative Commons

Brian Rogan provided an overview of the Creative Commons licensing approach, which provides terms for how organizations make content available to others. There are six types of licenses, ranging from less restrictive to more restrictive uses of content. The ESIP Federation will need to decide which type of license is appropriate for the organization.

As a first step, the ESIP Federation needs a policy that outlines what reasonable use of its website content should be. As matter of principle, the Executive Committee concurred that all licensing should allow for content redistribution. Contributed content would allow for the contributor to choose one of the six Creative Commons licenses for that content. The policy would need a preamble that outlines the ESIP Federation’s values related to open sharing of data, information and technology. The Creative Commons license would enable the implementation of the policy. Chris Lenhardt pointed out that it will be important to embed the Creative Commons license in all content so that it flows down to both human- and machine-initiated web page hits.

Carol Meyer or Brian Rogan will draft a policy for consideration at the November Executive Committee meeting.

The Executive Committee would like to see more content migrated from the wiki to the website, especially that which is related to Meetings and Committees.

Winter Meeting Update

The registration for the winter meeting opened in late September and as usual, registrations are trickling in. The program has developed nicely, with many breakout sessions taking shape and the plenary talk invitations extended. Signals have been good – just waiting for formal commitments.

The Water, Air Quality, Decisions and Data Preservation Clusters are planning to hold mutliple breakout sessions during the meeting. There is still one open track. The Climate Literacy Network/ESIP Federation Education Committee is also interested in holding some breakout sessions.

There will be a business meeting during the January gathering. If members of the Executive Committee are interested in running for a position again that would be fine; otherwise we will need assistance to identify new candidates. An optional carbon offset purchase program is being offered with this meeting’s registration. No external partner has been selected though several have been identified. All groups under consideration have been vetted by the Environmental Defense Fund or AMS. Margaret Mooney also talked about TerraPass, a program that offers carbon offsets for air travel. She felt that it was important that we offer this option at this meeting and all future meetings.

It was agreed that this should be a part of the ESIP meeting and would make an important statement about our policy.

Committee/Working Group Budgets

As part of the on-going process to keep the ESIP Federation broader membership informed of recent activities, Committee reports are a means for communicating the on-going activities of the organization. All Committees and Working Groups will need to submit a report for the meeting. Those reports are due by December 15.

Also, Committee and Working Group budget and workplan proposals are needed by October 31 for the Finance and Appropriations Committee to review

Other Business

Metrics Brian and Carol have been working on pulling together monthly metrics. Brian will be working with other ESIP Federation leaders to pull numbers together. All suggestions are welcome for metrics.

Water Cluster The first telecon of the newly reconstituted Water Cluster took place in early October and had 20 participants. The Water Cluster is planning a sizeable presence at the January meeting as it looks at the integration of various technologies and their underlying semantic capabilities.

A motion to adjourn was passed and the meeting finished at 2:56 PM.