Draft Excom Minutes

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)
Revision as of 20:45, February 16, 2014 by Carolbmeyer (talk | contribs)

Participants: Peter Fox, Sara Graves, Bruce Caron, Tyler Stevens, Ken Keiser, Margaret Mooney, Christine White, Denise Hills (proxy for Ruth Duerr, Data Stewardship), Carol Meyer, Erin Robinson

  1. Introductory Remarks (Peter Fox)
    Peter welcomed the group and thanked everyone for their leadership within ESIP this year. He has already started conversations with Carol, Erin and Emily Law about ESIP work in 2014 particularly as the Federation and Foundation work to develop separate identities moving forward. This separation will have some implications that ExCom will review in the coming year.
  2. Approval of November Minutes
    No one but Carol and Erin were at the Nov. ExCom meeting. Carol noted that the agenda was largely informational and besides adopting minutes, no formal actions were taken in November. The group decided to accept minutes as formality. Sara motioned to accept the minutes and Christine seconded the motion. The minutes were approved by acclamation.
  3. Staff Report (Carol Meyer)
    Carol reported that with the help of the ESIP Visioneers we have a set of suggested themes. The group discussed the themes and settled on: "Linking it Together: Sustainable Software Advancing Science Data and Services". Erin will put out the call for sessions after this meeting. The deadline for the call for sessions is April 13. Erin also mentioned that there are session ideas on the meeting planning page as well as additional details on the venue.
    • GEO
    Carol reported that last year GEO had approached ESIP to upgrade the GEO membership from Observer to Participating Organization. Last month during the GEO plenary, the new status was approved and ESIP is now a Participating Organization. The expectation that comes with this new status is that ESIP will be an active participant in GEO and GEOSS activities. Currently, a few clusters are considering contributing to the Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-7) that is to be announced in the next month.
    Erin reported that she and Carol have pulled together a folder with key resources that may help the ESIP collaboration area leaders. The folder includes a list of all key representatives, links to calendars, ESIP sites and social media, a template 'strategy plan' for 2014 that many groups have already worked on and best practices for webex and running meetings. The group suggested a few other items to add - attendee directory from past meetings, completed collaboration strategy documents
  4. Committee Reports (All)
    • Partnership - Tyler reported that the named a new Type III Rep, Gary Randolph from GLOBE. The committee has received a few new member applications and will meet next month to review them. Finally, Tyler has worked with Carol and Erin on ways to engage current members and ideas for new member welcome packet.
    • Constitution & Bylaws - Bruce reported that the group met earlier this month to review past business and the committee is open to suggested changes, provided that the suggestions come from 3 members. The group plans to look at how to clean-up long-term, inactive membership. The group would also like to move from a floating target % of active members to a numeric quorum. Peter brought up the idea of forming a new nomination committee, so that as the Federation grows and there are contested positions, a process is in place to feed the leadership of the organization. Denise Hills noted that a nomination committee might have the unintended impact of limiting competition.
    • Data Stewardship - Denise reported that the committee is working on several activities including use cases, the Data Study, Collection Structure and some overlap with the PROV-ES work. The group has two papers that are in final stages of preparation and about to go out for review. The Information Quality Cluster will be spinning up in the next few weeks after recent inactivity.
    • Education - Margaret reported that the group has a new telecon time and hasn't yet met. The group will work with NESTA on a closer partnership this year. Margaret also reported that the ESIP Teacher workshop still has not been funded. She is considering moving this to a virtual event and reaching back to the former teacher workshop participants.
    • IT & I - Carol reported for Matt Austin that the group kicked off the year with Rich Signell giving the Rant/Rave on iPython Notebooks. Erin is working with Matt to identify future speakers for the series.
    • Products & Services - Christine reported that the group is meeting next week. She has reactivated the Testbed configuration board and together they have a 2014 Request for Testbed Proposals. This will be discussed at their first P&S meeting. Finally, the P&S Committee will look at FUNding Friday rules/criteria and will update them.
    • Cross-ESIP coordination (Peter Fox) - Peter asked each of the chairs to think about the roles and responsibilities that co-chairs may take in the group this year. He suggested that one role may be to link across ESIP collaboration areas. Sara asked about the role that type reps might play and if there was any analysis on the type of activities. Erin took that as an action and will work with the type reps to answer some of those questions.
    • Replacing Finance & Appropriations Chair
      • Chuck Hutchinson served as both the Finance Committee chair for ESIP and the Treasurer of the Foundation. When the Foundation bylaws were updated he could no longer serve on both. Since that time, Chuck has resigned as FiCom Chair so that he can continue his Development work on the Board. Chuck worked with Carol and Peter to identify a replacement for ESIP and Bill Teng has stepped forward. There was no discussion from group on Bill. Sara moved to approve Bill as the chair of FiCom. Denise provided a second. Bill was approved by acclamation.
    • Partnership and Finance Committee Members Needed (Gary Randolph, GLOBE has stepped forward for Partnership; Reagan Moore, DICE has stepped forward for Ficom)
      • There were two other committee seats that needed to be filled after the ESIP Winter Meeting. Christine motioned to accept Gary Randolph for Type III rep to Partnership and Reagan Moore as Type III Rep to Finance. Tyler seconded. Both were approved by acclamation.
  5. Other Business
    • Sara asked if there are minutes from the ESIP Assembly Meeting. Carol will provide to the group.
    • Strategic Plan - Peter reported that ESIP is currently due to update its strategic plan. Emily Law will lead this effort.
    • WDS Expression of Interest - The group took an action for Erin to review the implications of WDS membership and report back to the group next month. Those familiar with WDS will support Erin.
    • Finding a New Time to Meet - Doodle Poll - The current meeting time isn't available for Vice President Emily Law. Carol requested that the group respond to the doodle poll by COB, February 20, so that we a new time can be set.

The meeting adjourned at 2:09.