Unidata Users Committee Meeting Summary

7-8 October 2004
Boulder, Colorado

Meeting Agenda

Meeting Summary/Action Items/Resolutions

Members UPC Staff:
   
Jim Steenburgh, Univ of Utah, Chair Steve Chiswell
Elen Cutrim, Western Michigan Univ Ethan Davis
Charles Graves, St. Louis Univ Ben Domenico
Anton Kruger, Univ of Iowa Emily Doremire
Gary Lackman, North Carolina State Univ Steve Emmerson
Mark Laufersweiler, Univ of Oklahoma Joanne Graham
Michael Morgan, Univ of Wisc-Madison Jo Hansen
Donna Tucker, Univ of Kansas Jeff McWhirter
Michael Voss, San Jose State Univ Linda Miller
Tom Whittaker, SSEC-Univ of Wisconsin-Madison Don Muray
  Jennifer Oxelson
  Sandra Petrie
  Mohan Ramamurthy
  Russ Rew
  Jeff Weber
Guest: Jack Fellows, present for part of first day Ann Wilson
  Tom Yoksas
   

Administrative:

Review of Action Items:

Policy Committee Report - Jim Steenburgh

Director's Report - Mohan Ramamurthy

PDF Version , PowerPoint Slide Show

Status Reports

Discussion:

Regional Workshop-Elen Cutrim, Don Murray, Tom Whittaker

Discussion:

Elen Cutrim and Mike Voss both offered to host the next Regional Workshop. They will do some research on likely participation and apprise the committee. Should d consider having two organizers (both within proximity) to organize the workshop

ACTION: Elen and Mike will survey interests in their region for a workshop and provide an email recommendation to the Users Committee who will select the site for the next Regional Workshop.

Jack Fellows announced that planning is underway for an instrumentation workshop for faculty. This workshop is in response to a request by the UCAR academic community.

Executive Session-DeSouza Award - selection and coordination to present at AMS Annual Meeting-Internet Apps, Web Portals and Cyberinfrastructure Meeting-8:15 a.m.-Wed, 1/12/04

The committee concluded there are merits to having a 30-minute Executive Session during each Users Committee meeting. This will become a scheduled item of the Users Committee meeting.

LEAD Brown Bag Lunch-Mohan Ramamurthy (post slides)-end users to interact with the weather through a Web based interface through LEAD portal. LEAD is creating a toolkit through a framework created by the LEAD collaborators. The goal of LEAD is to create integrated scalable framework that allows analysis tools, forecast models and data repositories to be used as dynamically adaptive on-demand systems.

Discussion: Question of Grid-is it practical to run at one's PC (when comparing to power company). Grid services are web services running in a Grid framework.

Floater -Tom Yoksas
There were very few responses from the community regarding continuation of floaters. The satellite floater can eventually be discontinued, but radar floater could be replaced by the addition of automatic floater. See: http://motherlode.ucar.edu/unidata/images/nids/gdradr.html

Discussion:

ACTION: The UPC can terminate the level III radar floater at any time. The satellite floater can also be deleted once the current users are notified of alternative options. The Users Committee also requests that the UPC implement a Level II floater based on Unidata automated selection scheme. A newsletter article will be developed about turning off all floaters by the next meeting.

Equipment Awards - Joanne Graham

The process was discussed. Do we need to screen more or just treat it as a
competitive process and if a proposal does not cover all criteria, the panel eva
luates accordingly.

NOAAPort DVB-S Broadcast - Mike Voss, Tom Yoksas, Steve Chiswell

Unidata will continue to monitor progress on DVB-S broadcast and keep the Users
Committee apprised.

IDV Task Force - Tom Whittaker

Phone Survey Responses - All

The Users Committee shared the responses received from the phone survey they have been conducting on behalf of the UPC. The responses will be placed into a chart for review by the committee at the next meeting. There are some actions that will be taken by the UPC to assist with some misconceptions and problems that were discussed during the phone conversations. These responses are very helpful for the UPC. They go far to determine the pulse of the community and provide important feedback for the UPC endeavors.

Action: Users Committee members will call two constituent sites prior to the next meeting.

Summer Workshop Planning - Mark Laufersweiler and Michael Morgan

Mark and Michael shared their experiences as co-chairs from the last summer workshop.

Discussion:

ACTION: The Users Committee has identified modeling in the atmospheric and related sciences as a possible topic for the next summer workshop. At the upcoming April meeting, the title will be finalized, chairs selected, and preliminary list of presenters and topics compiled. Users Committee members should start the process of identifying possible speakers/topics prior to the April meeting.

Case Study Transition -Ben Domenico and Jeff Weber

Technology used to augment documentation-(Sample Data Interactive Publication: Interactive -access data on remote servers-create a THREDDS catalog - list of events during a phenomenon.

Discussion:

Discussion of future Survey - All

After extended discussion about a future survey, the Users Committee proposed the following

Resolution:
The Users Committee supports the recommendation of the Unidata 2008 review panel that the Policy Committee, in collaboration with the Users Committee, develop an evaluation strategy for the Unidata Program and solicit the assistance of an independent external group in this effort.

COMET Survey-Doug West

Doug West provided a COMET survey with the theme of improving services to universities. Doug distributed the survey to the Users Committee for completion. COMET plans to check and eventually distribute the survey to the community.

Miscellaneous:

The 2005 DLESE Data Services Workshop will be held April 18-20 at the Beaver Run Resort & Conference Center in Breckenridge CO. The theme is Earth Systems Studies of the Water Cycle and Human Impacts.

Policy Committee Representative
It is important for a Policy Committee representative to participate at Users Committee meetings.

ACTION: A designated alternate should attend if regular committee representatives cannot attend.

The meeting adjourned at 11:40 a.m.

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