- Michael Sager - Accu Weather
- Mark Kramer - MES Meteorological Evaluation Services
- William Bradley - Weather Factor
- Peter Larsen - NCAR (Economist)
- Mike Mogil - How the Weather Works
- Gary McWilliams - NPOESS
Slides from the breakout groups can be found at: Break-out slides
I was in the "weather group"
Posters
To learn more about the posters visit:
PDF file with info about posters
Final Thoughts
There seemed to be a large contingent of managers, not that this is a bad thing, but for a "Data Users Workshop"
it seemed as if more users should be there. There was a majority of older people attending...again, not a bad
thing, but it would seem beneficial to have some young blood there for creative ideas. For example, many of the
attendees thought having a "better URL structure" would help solve the data query and mining issue (So last
century). When I mentioned the notion of "cataloging" the data and having meta-data and tags to aid in
subsetting, formatting, and query, it was if I was speaking a different language, but it took hold and many were
seeing the light by the end of the workshop. Also, a large showing of private mets, and not many from the
university sector (maybe funding was holding them back), but they represent the lions share of research so I
would have hoped for a better showing. NCDC is aware of the daunting task they face, and most of the folks there
are on board with our path for data discovery and mining ( THREDDS, CDM, OPeNDAP ) Oddly, format continues to pop
up, I maintain that format should not be an issue, that is the task of middleware....Store in native, and allow
middleware to parse and re-format to one of many possible outputs....that also was not an easy concept for most
to buy in to...other than the good people at NCDC. I was able to visit the ERCWC
one of the 3 top tier level II radar relay sites and was impressed with their operations, I was also allowed
into the machine room of NCDC and view their LDM ingest systems..all very nice. I was able to foster a good
relationship with Simon Evans (ESRI) and Michael Sager (Accu-Weather), and had a chance to speak with Rob Raskin
and other familiar faces..Steve Ansari (NCDC) and I had lunch one day, we are on the same page :) He likes our
work, we like his...netCDF export for level II data should be active now or next week.
Asheville is a great community, and NCDC has a nice facility with talented people, I encourage our continued
rapport with them in a mutually fruitful way.
Sunset from Mt. Mitchell
Report by Jeff Weber
jweber@ucar.edu
