Members Attending |
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Tom Whittaker, Univ of Wisc-Madison-Space Science & Engineering Center, Chair |
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| UPC Staff Attending | |
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Action Items from 11-12 March 2010 meeting
Meeting Agenda 11-12 March 2010
Meeting Action Items from 15 October 2009
Administrative Items:
PolComm Report- Mohan Ramamurthy and Tom Whittaker
The Policy Committee and Users Committee meetings were combined, and held in conjunction with Unidata's 25 anniversary event. The meeting was shortened (8 a.m.-1:45 p.m. on 15 October 2009). The main topic of the meeting was the transition from GEMPAK to AWIPS-II, but there was also time to discuss the idea of holding some future meetings at nearby Federal labs or universities. End-to-End Data Services were also discussed.
Director’s report - Mohan
Highlights of Mohan's report included:
Discussion:
A community survey will be conducted by the Users Committee. It is an agenda item during this meeting. We look forward to collecting additional information about the community we serve. There are over 500 machines at 25 sites running LDM6. There was a suggestion awhile back that a matrix of GEMPAK and IDV should be created where users would identify the capabilities of GEMPAK versus IDV. The IDV community has provided some of the information, but we would like to collect more information on the capabilities of GEMPAK that the IDV does not have. A question of the Unidata snapshot (green, yellow, red indicators) was raised. It was not included in Mohan's presentation this time, but the current status is considered all green, except for staffing and finances, which are yellow. Unidata could use more resources.
Status Reports
Following is a synthesis of comments made during the discussion of the status reports:
The information on the availability for AWIPS-II being March 15, 2010 needs to be updated. Unidata should get an update from JC Duh or Don Berchoff, Office of Science and Technology to place on the web site. The current note is dated Aug 18, 2009.
Action 1: Linda will contact JC Duh or Don Berchoff and the UPC will update the information to make it current on the UPC web site.
The metrics collection currently uses the goal areas from the 2013 proposal.
Current numbers:
Unidata's community is very diverse.
Site Contacts
Site contacts were made by some of the UserComm members. The information will be sent to the UPC for collation and use by UserComm members and pertinent staff members. Some of the comments generated discussion of responsible contacts at each institution. As noted in the past, the original list came from the technical side (those responsible for the LDM/IDD, etc). They may not necessarily be the users of the products. It is important to get the appropriate contact, the one that is actually using the Unidata products to accurately measure the impacts.
Other comments made concerned turnover of support people and those responsible for keeping things going, i.e., sysadmin types and programmers who have the knowhow at the universities. The point was made that sending new people for training should be a high priority at each site, otherwise, it just leads to frustration. If the UPC is not contacted about turnover of staff, there is no way of knowing that people have left. Another remark was made that "legacy staff" needs training too.
Snippets of other comments:
Action 2: Linda should contact WSI about the progress of Global Lightning Network
RAMADDA-Jeff McWhirter and Jeff Weber
A RAMADDA demo was given by Jeff McWhirter and Jeff Weber. As advances are made, UserComm will continue to have periodic demos to show new capabilities. There are currently seven public server sites using RAMADDA, and others who are evaluating the technology for possible use internally or externally.
DeSouza Award Presentation to Gilbert Sebenste
Next was the big event, the presentation of the DeSouza Award to Gilbert Sebenste, Northern Illinois University. Mohan Ramamurthy provided an overview of the Award, and Tom Whittaker presented the award to Gilbert. The presentation was followed by a web cast presentation by Gilbert, who did a great job of providing an overview of his Unidata connections and community efforts over 17 years. See Gilbert's slides and presentation for further information.
BAMS article on 2009 Unidata Users Workshop
Brian Etherton gave an overview of the BAMS workshop article status. The article has been accepted for publication, probably in the May edition of BAMS. Brian gave a presentation at AMS in Atlanta on the workshop.
Mohan mentioned that the NSF reviewers asked for follow up to see if the participants had incorporated what they learned from the workshop. Brian, et al, will consider conducting a short focused survey.
CONDUIT-Becky Cosgrove, NCEP
Becky provided a presentation on CONDUIT status. She pointed out that the NCEP Central Operations (NCO) process for changes takes about two weeks. We all agreed that we would try to use the CONDUIT email list more often to inform the subscribers of new information and changes. It's also useful to try to prod them to provide the types of data sets they want to see in CONDUIT. Other discussion included:
Action 3: Becky will provide a descriptive list of FTP data availability and other data that might be considered for CONDUIT.
Action 4: Survey the CONDUIT email list and provide input to UserComm for further discussion on specifics.
Survey - Linda Miller, Mohan Ramamurthy, Jen Oxelson
The Users Committee is tasked with developing a Unidata community survey. A white paper on the Survey Process was created and highlights were discussed. It was agreed that the survey would be kept short with ~20 questions of multiple choice, yes and no, and one or two open ended questions. The main goal is to gather information from the community for planning, and to communicate to the community the main goals of Unidata. The input collected will be used for guidance for future endeavors, presentations to NSF, future funding agencies, and input to metrics.
No decision was made on hosting of the survey, but a sub-committee was created to work on the survey development. It was agreed that the subcommittee would send the survey to the entire committee when it is in final draft form. The subcommittee will be comprised of:
Mohan will provide input and guidance as needed. The goal is to have the survey completed by the next UserComm meeting in October 2010.
GEMPAK/NAWIPS Migration to AWIPS-II Michelle Mainelli
Michelle presented the status of development of AWIPS-II along with an update on GEMPAK. Migration of NAWIPS to AWIPS-II environment is underway. The goal is to have the NCEP Centers fully integrated with the same system used throughout NWS. There are 18.5 members with 250 years of total software design and development experience working toward the migration of the GEMPAK/NAWIPS to AWIPS-II. The migration will include everything that has been available in NMAP, NSHARP, NWX and NTRANS, along with GEMPAK legacy command line interface and data decoders.
GEMPAK 6.0 is scheduled for release in April/May timeframe. NOTE: GEMPAK will continue to be supported until a full replacement is ready. Please see the slides for examples of AWIPS-II, hardware configuration, the schedule and other additional information.
Discussion:
Email List of Site Reps-Jennifer Oxelson
Jen provided a huge volume of data and information for the committee to plow through. She provided many parameters to allow the committee to choose which ones work best for them. There are 19,000 entries of which 566 are U.S. and .edu in the reference database covering the last three years. When contacting community members, the committee members should try to elicit things that would be helpful to Unidata, e.g., concrete examples, enhancement of tools, web site changes, etc. The site contacts and information have been uploaded to the UserComm's area in GoogleDocs, but may be transferred to RAMADDA in the future.
Action 5: The UserComm members will identify a number of people to contact and provide a report at the October 2010 meeting.
Student Representative Experience - Sean Arms
Sean gave an entertaining talk about his early experience as the first student rep to the Unidata Users Committee. He wasn't sure what to expect, nor was Unidata. Sean took a leadership position as one of three chairs for the Unidata Users Committee summer workshop. Approximately 100 people attended the workshop. Sean was very comfortable working with the Users Committee and Unidata staff, and he appreciated having access to UCAR/NCAR staff too. He provided a tip to Stefan Cecelski, the new student rep. He suggested that spreading the word through AMS chapters, conferences and workshops might lead to more students learning about Unidata. Sean said it is amazing the number of students who use Unidata products, but don't realize they are Unidata products. Sean helped to convinced Unidata that Facebook and Twitter were important outreach methods.
Discussion:
No one person can do it all. Perhaps reaching out to students through the department heads would work. The idea of getting actively involved in the AMS Student Conference was discussed.
Thanks to Sean for his outstanding service. Congratulations to him, and best of luck from the UPC and the Unidata Users Committee!
Action 6: Stefan will check with AMS about how we might get involved next year. Stefan can coordinate with Linda and the community group on this activity. This could be a good venue for interacting with students. There are probably several opportunities for participation.
Blue Sky Session: Tom Whittaker
This session is meant to provide input to the Unidata technical staff on future ideas and dreams from the committee members. Here's a list:
Action 7: Continue the blue sky session for the next meeting
Action 8: The committee members should send UPC a note about their use of GIS data
Wrap up comments:
Action 9: Michelle will check on AWIPS-II plan to see if two machines are necessary for case study and forecasting use
12:00 Noon - Adjourn
Linda Miller
Community Services - Unidata
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
303 497-8646 fax: 303 497-8690