Unidata Community Services

Status Report: April - September 2010

Linda Miller, Jeff Weber, Doug Dirks

Strategic Focus Areas

The Community Services group's work supports the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:

1. Broadening participation and expanding community services
   
2. Advancing data services
   
3. Developing and deploying useful tools
   
4. Enhancing user support services
   
5. Providing leadership in cyberinfrastructure
   
6. Promoting diversity by expanding opportunities
   

Activities Since the Last Status Report

Monthly E-Letter

Publication of the monthly e-letter continued in this time period.

• The following community sites were featured:
• Florida Institute of Technology (Altimeter Data) - Steve Lazarus
• Iowa State - Bill Gallus
• The data series has continued:
• NDFD Forecast Grids were added to CONDUIT

Community Outreach and Services

Participation in the following meetings

• Vanessa Vincente, Valparaiso University, was a summer visitor as a SOARS protege student. Jeff was her research mentor, and the entire Unidata staff enjoyed her enthusiasm and positive spirit.
• We participated as members of the Office of Federal Coordinator of Meteorology Joint Action Group for Metadata.
• We participated as members of the Office of Federal Coordinator of Meteorology Joint Action Group for Architecture and Data Management.
• We participated as members of the Collaborative Technology Advisory Group to assist in development of strategic plan for interactive collaborative technologies for UCAR.
• We attended the AMS Summer Community Meeting in State College, PA. The meeting took place at Penn State.
• We participated on interview committee for SW Engineer III.
• We coordinated the interview committee for the scientific/technical writer/editor.
• Presented at the Undergraduate Leadership Workshop and served on the panel for the plenary discussion.
• Planned and coordinated Unidata's presence at the UCAR 50th celebration
• Met with the following groups regarding involvement with the Unidata Program Center:
• DINE
• U of Alaska distance education
• Tribal College professors
• OU Meteorology REU students of the Severe Weather Center

Data Access and Distribution

• As indicated in the Data Series section, NDFD Forecast Grids were added to CONDUIT
• Data Stewardship IIPS AMS Session, chaired by Mohan, will be taking place in Seattle at the Annual Meeting

Planned Activities

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

• Coordination with governing committees, i.e., survey analysis and implementation, data and community needs, committee nominations, DeSouza nominations, advocacy for special opportunities.
• Publication of the monthly E-Letter.
• The Seminar Series has waned over the past six months, but will get on track again very soon.
  • June seminar-ISO Metadata Standards and Interoperable Understanding-Ted Habermann
• Data Access and Distribution-we will continue to coordinate with the technical staff regarding data opportunities and changes. The UPC apprises the Users Committee of possible changes or requirements.
  • We continue to track ongoing changes that affect data streams and other important events that impact the Unidata community.
  • We will continue to identify important nws-changes for the email list.
• We will continue to monitor the NAWIPS migration to AWIPS2 at NCEP. We are working with Michelle Mainelli and others for status updates to the Unidata community.

New Activities

• We plan to organize or take part in the following:
• AGU Fall Meeting - December, San Francisco -
• IN02: Enabling and Encouraging Transparency in Science Data (Jeff Weber - Convener)
• U17: Enabling and Encouraging Transparency in Science Data, and for Information Integration. (Jeff Weber - Convener)
• AMS Annual Meeting - January, Seattle - Unidata will have a booth
• We plan to increase the flow of community news updates using passive delivery modes such as RSS feeds, the Unidata Facebook page, and the Unidata Twitter stream.
• Doug Dirks joined the Community Services group as a part-time technical writer and editor in late September. Doug will initially be focusing on the E-Letter and other methods of delivering Unidata news to the community.

Relevant Metrics

Statistics from the Community pages on the Unidata web site.

All Community pages

Most recent six months (April 1 - September 30 2010)

• 17478 unique pageviews
• 2.6% of total unique pageviews to site

Previous six months (October 1, 2009 - March 31, 2010)

• 16600 unique pageviews
• 2.4% of total unique pageviews to site

Top community pages, April 1 - September 30 2010

1. www.unidata.ucar.edu/legal/participation.html
   • 2360 unique pageviews
   • 13.5% of total community unique pageviews
2. www.unidata.ucar.edu/community/communityjobs.html
   • 1052 unique pageviews
   • 6.0% of total community unique pageviews
3. All newsletter pages
   • 4453 unique pageviews
   • 25.5% of total community unique pageviews
   • 3880 visits by 2546 unique visitors
   • (Previous six month period: 2886 visits by 2517 unique visitors)

Prepared September 2010