The 11th Annual International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE 11) will take place 24-27 September, 2019, in Florence, Italy. The conference will include a scientific program with technical paper sessions, invited talks, joint sessions with sister organizations, panels, an exhibition, and social events. The theme of the 2019 event is “Digital Earth in a Transformed Society,” celebrating and investigating the virtual representation of our planet as a multidisciplinary collaborative effort that engages different sciences (e.g. Earth, Space, Information, and Human sciences) to monitor and forecast natural and human phenomena.

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members serve three-year terms, meeting twice each year to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the Unidata Program and advise staff on issues facing the university community. Appointments reflect the range of large and small colleges and universities with undergraduate and graduate emphases where Unidata systems are in use.

The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members!

Unidata Users and Strategic Advisory Committees

Unidata is governed by its community. Our governing committees facilitate consensus-building for future directions of the Unidata Program and establish standards of involvement for the community. Direct involvement in the Program by the academic community helps Unidata stay on top of trends in education and research; for example, recent initiatives on Python and cloud-based computing have benefitted tremendously from committee advice and involvement.

The Unidata Program Center is seeking new people to serve on Unidata's Strategic Advisory and Users Committees. This is your chance to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community. As Sepideh Yalda, the current Chair of the Unidata Strategic Advisory Committee notes, “Unidata has and continues to serve a critical role in providing data and services to the earth and related sciences community. The opportunity to serve as a member on Unidata governance committees provides you with the ability to contribute and help guide the future developments in data sharing and the associated services in support of research and education in atmospheric sciences.”

Reminder: The deadline for submitting proposals for this year's Community Equipment Awards is March 16, 2018.

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2018 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2018, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Do you know someone in the Unidata community who has been actively involved and helpful to you and other Unidata members? Perhaps this is someone who volunteers to assist others, contributes software, or makes suggestions that are generally useful for the community.

The Unidata Users Committee invites you to submit nominations for the Russell L. DeSouza Award for Outstanding Community Service by 23 March 2018. This Community Service Award honors individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences. Honorees personify Unidata's ideal of a community that shares ideas, data, and software through computing and networking technologies.

Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2018 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2018, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Past recipients of Unidata equipment awards have used the grants to procure equipment for data sharing, to create interactive data visualization laboratories, and to encourage the use of Unidata software packages in research and education.

New and returning committee members

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to welcome new members to the program's governing committees. Committee members normally serve three-year terms; terms are finishing up for three members of the Users committee and two members of the Strategic Advisory committee. New members and those finishing their terms will overlap for one meeting: a Joint meeting of the Users Committee and the Strategic Advisory Committee to be held October 16-18 at the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, CO.

The UPC staff looks forward to working with our new committee members, and to having all the current members of both committees at the Program Center this fall.

You may have noticed that Unidata Program Center developer Ryan May spends a bit of his time evangelizing the use of the Python language in the atmospheric sciences. This week he appears over on Johnny Lin's PyAOS (Python for the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences) blog, weighing in on the future of AOS Python.

Ryan's post, titled “What's needed for the Future of AOS Python? Get Involved!,” lays out the case for widespread community involvement in AOS Python projects.

The National Science Foundation EarthCube initiative is a community-driven project aimed at creating an integrated environment for the sharing of geoscience data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. All members of the geoscience community are invited to participate in the 2017 EarthCube All Hands Meeting (AHM), to be held June 7-9, 2017 in Seattle, Washington.