Unidata

Unidata's newsletter has been around for a good long time. Beginning with a two page document whose introductory article announced Unidata's beginnings, the newsletter has evolved from a quarterly paper format that was mailed to member sites, to an e-letter format that is published monthly. A portion of that original newsletter has unfortunately been lost, but a nice description of the Unidata Program Center--then known as the Project Office, and an introduction to its first director, David Fulker, remain.

Like all newsletters, the Unidata newsletter was born from a need to keep the community informed, to introduce software development, and on a somewhat personal and personnel note to mark the comings and goings of UPC staff. The birth of netCDF and the IDD, the rising prominence of the Internet, and an early description of the CRAFT project were all featured in early issues.

In a recent, and potentially daunting adventure, e-letter production manager, Emily Doremire, standardized all newsletters into a similar format and organized them on the newsletter index page for easy browsing.

RSS is in the newsletter's future. Its availability as a delivery mechanism will be announced later this summer. For a brief description of RSS, see our related highlight below.

While the technology and media for delivering the newsletter has evolved over the years, one thing is certain, any communication tool that has endured since the beginning of Unidata in 1984 will likely be around for a while longer in some format or the other.

NSF sponsors international collaboration by supporting travel and a reception at the 2006 AGU Joint Assembly. Larger view with attendees.

Working collaboratively with Unidata community member, Elen Cutrim (Western Michigan University) Unidata Program Center staff organized a special session for the spring AGU Joint Assembly that was held in Baltimore, Maryland during the last full week of May. The session, part of the Earth and Space Sciences Informatics Focus Group, was dedicated to fostering international collaborations to help build a stronger and broader space and Earth science cyberinfrastructure community and comprised two oral (IN34A , IN41A , and two poster sessions (IN43B and IN43C). Organizers encouraged papers in a diversity of areas that included biogeophysical, meteorological, ecological, remote sensing, and related intelligent and adaptive systems for data collection, processing, and knowledge discovery and classroom dissemination.

A press conference on Wednesday the 24th of May, held in conjunction with the ESSI session, entitled "Sharing Information about Distant Skies," featured Unidata's director, Mohan Ramamurthy, Pedro Dias, Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, and Vilma Castro, Professor at the University of Costa Rica. In remarks and a presentation, Mohan described the IDD, its ability to distribute unprecedented data volumes, its growing use in international communities, and its ability to facilitate community building. See: remarks, presentation

by Emily Doremire, Unidata Program Center

Here at the Unidata Program Center, we have a rather unusual reminder of our connection with the greater Unidata Community. Pennants--over 70 of them! If you've ever had the chance to visit our offices for a training workshop, served on our governing committees, or watched the webcasts of our monthly seminars you may have seen them adorning the walls of our conference room.

It all started on a whim at some of our first software training workshops in the late 80s when we asked attendees to bring along pennants from their institutions. As the first pennants started filtering in, it created something of a competition with universities and colleges anxious to be represented. We now have 73 pennants as well as a few t-shirts and hats. That sounds like a lot, but it represents just a fraction of our community.

You may be surprised at some of the pennants we've collected over the years. One of our earliest pennants is from Russ DeSouza of Millersville College (now Millersville University). DeSouza exemplified the Unidata community spirit and in 1999 Unidata awarded the first annual DeSouza award to others who share this outstanding participation our community. We even have one pennant from Penn Manor High School that was sent in by teachers who attended our 2004 training workshop session on IDV. We're especially pleased by a recent international addition from some of our newest community members from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, marking our collaboration in building the IDD-Brasil and IDD-Caribe. Our most recent addition after a long dry spell is from the University of Utah. Is your institution represented? We'd be delighted to add your pennant to the collection.

Unidata is a diverse community of educators, researchers, students, and countless other professionals at over 160 institutions vested in the common goals of sharing data, data access tools, and analysis and visualization software. So the next time you're in our conference room, take a look around at our pennants. It's a reminder to us of where we've been, where we're going, and who we serve.

2006 Unidata Users Workshop Final preparations for the 2006 Unidata summer workshop, "Expanding the Use of Models as Educational Tools in the Atmospheric & Related Sciences" are currently underway. This exciting workshop will feature a broad spectrum of presentations and laboratory sessions designed to facilitate the use of computational technology in all aspects of geoscience education. The participant list includes faculty members from 33 different institutions, as well as several Ph.D. candidates. Thus, we are optimistic that the workshop will achieve a far-reaching positive impact. See the workshop homepage for more details.