[Wf-cg] Notes from meeting of groups with NSF, and URGENT action on AGU session

[Yolanda Gil]

All,

I attended a call with NSF for the leads of all 6 EarthCube groups.   
This was the first telecon with representation of all groups and of  
NSF, there will be one every two weeks.  If someone is interested in  
representing our group at the next call (May 3 at 10am), please let me  
know.

My notes from the call are below.  Urgent item is to propose an AGU  
session, proposals are due tomorrow evening (http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/session-proposal-guideline/ 
).  Would someone familiar with AGU be willing to lead this?  I don't  
think this is a lot of work, pretty much a one paragraph description  
of the session.  Please let me know ASAP!

Let me know if you have any questions on any of the topics below.  We  
can also discuss on Monday.

Yolanda



Yolanda Gil, USC/ISI
+1-310-448-8794



=============================================

NOTES FROM TELECON WITH NSF AND ALL 6 EARTHCUBE GROUPS
April 19, 2012


PARTICPANTS
- Introduction of people at NSF now involved in EarthCube: Barbara  
Ransom (GEO), Jennifer Schopf (GEO/OCI), Almadena Chtchelkanova  
(CISE), Irene Lombardo (OCI).

- Participants from each of the groups: lee.allison at azgs.az.gov, pitlab at vt.edu 
, gil at isi.edu, rramachandran at itsc.uah.edu, tanum at ci.uchicago.edu, baru at sdsc.edu


COORDINATION ACROSS GROUPS

- We should be actively engaging other groups that participated in our  
EoIs, as well as other EoIs that were submitted.  - Each group is  
encouraged to have liaisons with other groups.  NSF wants a technical  
liaison for each group.  NSF will attach an NSF liaison to every group.

- Need to coordinate the surveys from all the groups.  NSF will  
circulate the survey that was done in the November charrette.  There  
is a social science group that is working on community surveys.   
Groups that have specific questions that they want to ask, they can do  
their own surveys and exercise their contact networks (eg the  
semantics group EoIs each had 8-10 participants).  To reach out to the  
long tail, NSF is going to have smaller workshops for specific  
disciplines: what do they need in their discipline, what do they need  
from other disciplines, etc.  These survey activities will be reported  
at the June meeting.

- NSF is planning a weekly newsletter, where each group can send  
blurbs of what has happened that week and what is happening the  
following week.


ORGANIZING GROUP ACTIVITIES

- Each group should post their events on the EarthCube site.  It  
should be possible to post recurring events (eg weekly calls).  Notes/ 
summaries of the events should be sent to the group mailing list and  
posted in the group site.

- To support group events, NSF has contracted Andy Burnett of  
knowinnovation.com (andy.burnett at knowinnovation.com) who can  
facilitate discussions.  Erin Robinson of ESIP can support virtual  
meetings (erinrobinson at esipfed.org) as well.  The Governance group is  
setting up a site to post all the meeting recordings together across  
EarthCube.  For any other issues regarding support the NSF contact is jschopf at nsf.gov 
.

- Any documents stored outside of the EarthCube site should have  
pointers to them from the EarthCube site.  Google docs and dropbox are  
ok to use, as long as the EarthCube site has a pointer to them.  The  
approach that the Workflow group is following is a good one, where  
they will post on EarthCube the major events and activities that are  
"tabs" on the Google site.

- For F2F meetings, Erin Robinson can support Webex and can help set  
up a camera to show the presenters. Make sure the hotel room has a  
phone to support appropriate audio.


COMMUNITY OUTREACH

- NSF talks about "the EarthCube community", which could mean  
infrastructure people, end users, those involved directly in  
EarthCube, etc.  NSF means all of those, with a very strong emphasis  
on end users.  A general concern is engaging end users in the current  
EarthCube activities.  Right now, it is hard for end users to  
participate, they come to the web site and they do not get much out of  
it.  At the November charrette, the participants were 75% end users,  
20%, 5% NGOs and government people. It is high priority to keep them  
involved.  NSF has spent millions building infrastructure for them,  
and then end users do not come.  The Workflow group suggested redoing  
the front page of the EarthCube site to give a high level overview of  
what is happening and advertise the June meeting.  NSF wants us to do  
whatever we can to involve end users, from our EoIs and other  
connections.

- The Governance group is proposing a "union" session about EarthCube  
(but AGU does not allow mentioning EarthCube explicitly).  It would be  
useful if each group submitted a session proposal.  These are due  
Friday evening (tomorrow!), see details at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/session-proposal-guideline/ 
.  See Lee Allison's message below on behalf of the Governance group.


ROADMAPS

- NSF would like a draft of the roadmap 5 days prior to the June  
meeting.  For any of the 10 items requested by NSF that a group cannot  
fully address, the group should specify the process to be followed to  
fill those out.  At the end of the June meeting, NSF wants to have a  
collection of documents that describe reasonably robust roadmaps for  
EarthCube that reflect the community's vision.  Based on the roadmaps,  
there will be a competition for a coalition of partners to implement  
that roadmap as a Working Group.

- The concept awards have also been asked to create roadmaps.

- At NSF, EarthCube is important not just for GEO but also for other  
directorates (OCI, CISE). If the roadmaps are successful, they can  
serve as a model across NSF for other projects similar to this.



=============================================

From: "Lee Allison" <lee.allison at azgs.az.gov>
Date: April 19, 2012 11:08:00 AM PDT
To: "'Schopf, Jennifer'" <jschopf at nsf.gov>, <pitlab at vt.edu>, <gil at isi.edu 
 >, <rramachandran at itsc.uah.edu>, <tanum at ci.uchicago.edu>, <baru at sdsc.edu 
 >
Cc: "'NSF Earth Cube'" <earthcube at nsf.gov>, "'Chtchelkanova, Almadena  
Y.'" <achtchel at nsf.gov>
Subject: Resend of suggestion to submit EarthCube technical sessions  
to AGU - due Friday midnight EDT


Colleagues, with the endorsement of the AGU Earth & Space Science  
Informatics Executive Committee, we are submitting a proposal to AGU  
for a Union session at the Fall Meeting that would include the work  
each of you is doing in your EarthCube work group or concept team  
(attached).   If accepted, we anticipate having a speaker from each of  
your teams providing an overview of your project, so that  
collectively, we present an complete review of the EarthCube  
initiative.   AGU does not allow ‘branding’ of Union sessions, so it  
cannot reference EarthCube specifically, but we think we readily  
described what’s going on without naming it explicitly.

We’d like to propose that each of the EarthCube groups also submit a  
separate technical session proposal that would provide a more in depth  
and comprehensive review of the topics you are addressing.  These  
complimentary sessions collectively could create an unprecedented  
integrated program in informatics at the meeting.

Proposals are due April 20. Guidelines, session viewer, and session  
proposal site can be found on the AGU Fall Meeting session proposal  
Web site - http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/session-proposal-guideline/

Lee Allison
Chair/PI, EarthCube Governance Roadmap Steering Committee

M. Lee Allison
State Geologist & Director
Arizona Geological Survey
416 W. Congress St., #100
Tucson, AZ 85701
+1.520.209.4121
lee.allison at azgs.az.gov
www.azgs.az.gov
arizonageology.blogspot.com