Draft Excom Minutes

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

Attendees

  • Denise Hills, Chair, Nomination Committee
  • Ken Keiser, Chair, C&B
  • Ethan Davis, Chair, IT&I
  • Christine White, Chair, Products and Services
  • Erin Robinson, Staff
  • Annie Burgess, Staff
  • Rebecca Fowler, Staff
  • Emily Law, Vice President
  • Justin Goldstein, Chair, Data Stewardship
  • Bill Teng, Chair, FiCom
  • Tyler Stevens, Partnership
  • Ted Habermann, Type III Rep
  • Steven Richard, Type II Rep
  • Danie Kinkade, Type I Rep
  • Peter Fox, President

Executive Committee Business

  1. Approval of October Minutes
    • Christine White motioned to approve Minutes and Justin Goldstein seconded. The minutes were approved by acclamation.
  2. President's Report - Peter Fox reported on two items: (1) With Erin Robinson and Rebecca Fowler, he is at GEO representing ESIP. The meeting is just getting started and he (2) He participated in NOAA's DARWG meeting the first week of November. There is a strong expression of interest from NOAA in the ESIP testbed relative to the assessment of technology readiness. NOAA is impressed with ESIP’s approach.
    • We have new student fellows for 2016 and we are actively looking for ways to acknowledge our current students fellows. Get in touch with Annie Burgess about ideas for acknowledgement or if you have questions about the process of selecting fellows.
  3. ESIP/FES Relationship -
    FES, in consultation with their lawyer, concluded the conditions leading to the leadership split of the ESIP Federation and Foundation was a mistake. The FES lawyer assumed that ESIP leadership was paid. Because no one is paid for ESIP leadership, there is no conflict of interest between FES and ESIP. This realization changes the options for the relationship between FES and ESIP. Peter Fox will be reviewing this opinion with ESIP legal council and will report back to ExCom on the results. The group discussed this new information and potential consequences like alternative leadership structures and implications to the nomination proccess for 2016. A question was raised about the cost of legal review and where those funds come from. We do not expect this will be a large cost. These funds come from FES indirect funds.
    • Action: Peter will work to keep ExCom and when appropriate the broader ESIP community apprised with a wiki page.
  4. ESIP Budget Introduction -
    The FY16 budget line items were discussed with particular disucssion on how ESIP Meeting registration revenue is divided.
    • Action: Erin will clean up the spreadsheet so it can go out for membership comment.
  5. Staff Reports
    Executive Director - Erin Robinson reported that she and Rebecca are at GEO this week. ESIP has booth and is looking forward to establishing a productive relationship with GEO. Erin updated the group on All-Hub Regional Big Data Hub meeting in D.C. the first week of November. There is a new NSF solicitation for Big Data Spokes that may be of interest to ESIP community. It will focus on regionally-specific, thematic areas.
    ESIP Community Director - Annie Burgess reported that the Technology Evaluation is on track and reports are due Nov. 17. As part of the Tech Evaluation work, she spent the day at JPL meeting with the AIST PIs. The Evaluation work will be presented at AGU and there will be a session at the ESIP Winter Meeting. She participated in the IEEE Big Data in Geosciences workshop and represented ESIP on a panel. Finally, Annie reported on the 2016 Student Fellow status. Details will be shared with community at large in the next week.
    Communication Director - Rebecca Fowler is working on press release for new student fellows. She is planning to do an AGU media advisory for the first time that will highlight ESIP participation in AGU (Ignite, awards, booth). Rebecca reported on the status of Ignite@AGU. There will be 12 Ignite speakers. Rebecca ran her first Ignite event at the IEEE Oceans meeting to support IOOS. Finally, she will be working on communication activities around the ESIP winter meeting.
  6. Meeting Updates
    • Winter Meeting - There was a great response to the call for sessions. The staff is working on a draft agenda and will share by mid-November. NOAA is having its Environmental Data Management workshop preceding the ESIP Winter Meeting, January 4-5, 2016. ESIP members are invited to its closing plenary.
    • Summer Meeting locations: There are two options for the 2016 ESIP Summer Meeting (1) University of New Hampshire (2) Friday Center, Chapel Hill. The group discussed pros and cons of each location and will send Erin strong preferences if there are any.
  7. Committee Reports
    • FiCom: We have a draft announcement for request for budget. We need to clarify with Erin policy for labor. Within the committee itself we need to work on budget for travel for invited speakers.
    • Partnership: Received a new member application for AGU. Will quickly review that this week and get out soon for 30-day review period. Also working on new text for ESIP member join page and membership experience gap analysis.
    • Data Stewardship: David Moroni from JPL gave a presentation on the data infrastructure at PO.DAAC on last telecon. Nancy Hobelheinrich and Jay Carlson have submitted a statement of interest in response to the USGS Community for Data Integration RFP. Discussion of holding a recap on the RDA plenary. Sara Ramdeen attended a talk on the French Minister on Technology talking about the differences between French and US law related to data. Mendeley is allowing identifiers. More details on DS wiki.
    • IT&I: No November IT&I Rant and Rave.
    • Nominations: We have a comprehensive ballot in place subject to any changes that may come. Thanks to all for stepping up. Denise will write up a how-to for whomever does this next.
    • Products and Services: We have another testbed call out with Deadline December 1. TCB will review and notify. P&S has gotten ideas together for Winter Meeting. Funding Friday folks have been submitting sessions to the Winter Meeting.
  8. Type Reports
    • Type I: Getting data repository people together using a common poster template together. Showing connectedness of repos within ESIP.
    • Type 2: Nothing to report.
    • Type 3: Nothing to report.
  9. Other Business
    • Ken Keiser walked through: C&B Discussion Points
      • Lots of positive feedback on this document, with the most conversation revolving around improving the continuity of the officers.
    • Action: Ken will go back into the document and synthesize comments to