Draft Excom Minutes

Excom Notes – March 11, 2010

Present:

Carol Meyer
James Frew
Brian Rogan
Karl Benedict
Marilyn Kaminski
Chris Lenhardt
Margaret Mooney
Steve Kempler
Annette Schloss
Rob Raskin

Adoption of Minutes

Meeting called to order by President Frew at 2:06 PM. Marilyn Kaminski moved to adopt the meeting, seconded by Chris Lenhardt. Approved by acclimation.

ESIP Federation Contributions to GEO's Decision Support Project, Steve Kempler

Based on a discussion with Lawrence Friedl, Steve Kempler gave an overview of projects Lawrence is involved with as part of GEO

Lawrence is looking for advisors for GEO projects from the ESIP community. It is possible that there is funding for these if there is a match between the proposers and funding agencies.

This might be something that federation members might be interested in participating.

Carol felt that since many people hadn’t read through these proposals, that it might be worth creating an inventory of needed skills. If the work was done up front more people might become interested. Because of time constraints it isn’t clear many people would read through all of these proposals.

If this could be clarified, it would help the process which has deadlines.

The federation is supportive of this effort but it doesn’t seem clear what we are being asked to do for this effort.

There are ways that we might be able to work on this through some our existing groups.

The deadline for these proposals are May 1st.

It may be that we could use the skills inventory from our current database. The database is not complete and may not be ready for a couple of months.

It would be advisable to get more information from the proposers while the database is being populated.

Several clusters can work on this skills that can be forwarded on to Lawrence which can be a start for the database. There are several proposals that have been submitted by ESIP partners. ESIP definitely has a presence.

It is important to support this project while helping ourselves. We should try and populate as many of these proposals as possible.

Carol will follow up with Lawrence and invite him to the Products and Services telecon.

There was general agreement to continue the process and engage the federation into the GEO program.

Constitution and Bylaws Committee Update

The Constitution and Bylaws and Partnership committees have caucused and agreed that the C and B group will put together a proposal to remove the bylaw in which 100% agreement was needed. Without this, we can move forward and pare down the membership list to a active group.

It needs to be framed so it isn’t threatening to current membership. The Simpson provision would be removed first and then determine what other changes would be needed to remove partners from the rolls.

There have been a number of partners identified who are no long active due to grants no longer being funded or lost interest on their part. The federation has changed from it earlier roles and that one goal is to truly define what is a partner.

This needs to be ready for discussion at the summer meeting so that partners are aware of the changes.

It should be brought up at the business meeting so that there is time for discussion. There will be a document put together before the summer meeting that will be suitable for discussion. It will be in the form of bullets and suggestions but not a proposal.

There are a lot of issues and that it may open up a lot of other issues such as partnership types. There are a lot of changes that are currently percolating.

It might be worthwhile discussing it with John Townsend who was instrumental at foudning the original principles.

Summer Meeting Update

There have been a number of tracks put together, water, education, Products and Services, Data and, Energy and Climate.

There have been several invitations put out including one to Tom Karl. There have been no responses as of yet.

Creative Commons Policy Update

Brian gave a quick review of the work on the Copyright Policy. He has done some edits to it and it is ready to go for final review.

The executive committee is declared done. Put out the policy for review to the membership for 30 days. After this time period, it will be adopted by partnership.

Update on Education Budget NOAA is doing a one day climate stewards workshop on Tuesday, July 20. The budget will devote more monies towards teacher support but is still dollar neutral.

President Frew moved to adopt, Karl Benedict seconded. It passed by acclimation.

Other Business

There was no other business.

Margaret Mooney moved to adjourn, Karl Benedict seconded.  Meeting was adjourned at 2:57 PM