As a community-governed program, Unidata depends on guidance and feedback from educators, researchers, and students in the atmospheric and related sciences. The 2020 Unidata Community Survey seeks your feedback the range of data analysis and visualization software packages maintained and supported by Unidata staff. Your comments and ideas will help Unidata's governing committees and staff plan our future development activities more effectively; your participation is much appreciated.

The survey gives you a chance to describe and comment on your use of Unidata's various data analysis and visualization software packages. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how we're doing and what we can do better.

The National Science Foundation has recently funded a project to conceptualize a Geospatial Software Institute (GSI) as a long-term hub of excellence in software infrastructure that can serve diverse research and education communities. To achieve the goal and associated aims, the project will design a community organization called the Geospatial Innovation Consortium for High-Performance Software and Discovery to mobilize and serve pertinent communities and stakeholders in a sustainable way. In connection with this initiative, broad community input is being sought to help design the GSI. An online survey is available and responses are requested no later than January 25, 2018.

Unidata Software Training Workshops provide training on software packages created or supported by Unidata, and provide background information and context to help attendees make more effective use of the software in their own scientific workflows. While the workshops are designed primarily to benefit the academic community, representatives from government agencies and commercial entities are also invited to participate.

Traditionally, Unidata Program Center staff have provided training workshops each year. In recent years, attendance at workshops in Boulder has declined, raising the question of whether this is the best way to serve our community.

The Open Commons Consortium (OCC) NOAA Data Alliance Working Group is seeking feedback to help prioritize which datasets will provide maximum impact for the scientific community. They are collecting suggestions in an “Environmental Data Wish List” via a short online survey.

You can read more about their request for input on the OCC Blog, or head directly over to the survey.

Earlier this year, the Unidata Users Committee asked members of the Unidata community to participate in a survey regarding their use of scientific software packages, software training, and community services, and to favor us with their insights into possible future directions for the program. You can read an overview of the survey results in 2016 Community Survey Results.

While Unidata's governing committees and the Unidata Program Center staff will continue to analyze the survey comments in the process of crafting Unidata's next Strategic Plan, individual Program Center development groups are also using the survey as input into their own development plans. This series of articles provides responses from different development groups to comments or concerns raised by the survey. Under review in this article: Python activities at Unidata.