Moody Proposal for '97 Summer Workshop

  I was charged with the task of summarizing a comment/ recommendation for 
  the committee regarding the nature of a Symposium in 1997. Melanie has included 
  a reference to this in her list of comments regarding Unidata 2003. But I would 
  like to take this a bit further, and hopefully generate more discussion, if 
  not, indeed, a resolution. It is my understanding that in the past, the User's 
  Commit- tee has sponsored Unidata supported workshops. This to me implies a 
  hands-on, or technical/educational focus, to make users aware of Unidata functionality 
  (i.e., data and software resources). Now that most of the major Universi- ties, 
  and many smaller institutions are Unidata IDD partic- ipants, I think we can 
  move beyond a workshop to an Applications oriented symposium, or conference. 
  Proba- bly influenced by my personal bias, I would like to see a conference 
  which focussed on the research applications facilitated by the existence of 
  Unidata (obviously, as the Unidata Users Group, we want the overarching premise 
  of the meeting to still be the resources that Unidata makes available to the 
  Atmospheric Sciences community). To keep the symposium more general, we could 
  choose to make the program have two related foci...one emphasizing research 
  applications of real-time atmospheric data flow- ing on the IDD, and the other 
  emphasizing educational applications of real-time atmospheric data. With regard 
  to educational applications, we might want to narrow the focus toward quantitative 
  efforts which emphasize eluci- dating atmospheric processes, as opposed to just 
  a focus on data presentation or display... again, the focus stays on usage. 
  I think we should consider this question of pro- gram focus carefully. It is 
  possible, given the other Uni- data activities which support educational applications 
  (e.g. the small-grant proposals), that we should keep the focus entirely on 
  research applications. I can imagine that a well-publicized science symposium 
  could generate considerable community interest. Further- more, if we could work 
  with a University which has a well-designed electronic auditorium, then we could 
  really demonstrate the capabilities of all the data/software/tech- nology/and 
  community-support aspects which combine to make the Unidata project a productive 
  endeavor. We have all seen a lot of "sharing" of "how to" techniques for data 
  display, etc. among the community users. This sympo- sium would be a much broader, 
  scientifically focussed "how to" for describing research applications, and there 
  could be a broad subject range, from... how to use the RUC model output along 
  with satellite derived precipita- ble water estimates to improve short-range 
  predictions of precipitation amount (just to make something up!!)...to.... how 
  to model the real-time exchange of natural strato- spheric ozone into the troposphere 
  (to take an example from my own work). Again, I think we would want the focus 
  to be applications of real-time data via the IDD and Unidata/Community software 
  to address scientific ques- tions. This would very likely demonstrate in a natural 
  way the kinds of interdisciplinary research which is already being addressed 
  within our community of users (and might help with the envisioning of an expanded 
  User's Commu- nity). While we would all share in the exchange of scien- tific 
  knowledge, I believe that a meeting of this nature would have the added effect 
  of fostering a wealth of new ideas on how to combine and apply datasets which 
  we all have access to in real-time, in other words, there would be some emphasis 
  on creative technique. This kind of distribution of ideas and results should 
  carry the status of publication with it. I envision a symposium that would be 
  entirely electronic (although please note, I don't mean virtual... people would 
  still travel to a meeting location, and meet face to face...if symposium funding 
  were an issue, I suppose we could even consider a "virtual symposium", though 
  I do not advocate this approach for this meeting). We would advertise the meeting 
  to encour- age (require?) presenters to develop all their data, anima- tions, 
  etc. so that they could be presented with a computer display (the unidata overhead 
  projection system is nice, but back-lit projection systems look much better, 
  with a much higher resolution "crisp" display). In addition to oral presentations 
  (which would of course be limited in number and dependent on the length of the 
  symposium), we could have an electronic poster session, where a fixed number 
  of workstations could be made available to view poster presentations. It would 
  be important to organize a peer-review panel to screen abstracts and to review 
  final presentations for "publication". Finally, I think that the publication 
  of these results (which is essential if you really want people to show the best 
  of their work) should be done in a fully electronic format. I think we should 
  encourage the inclusion of image loops, movies of model results, etc., and then 
  one incentive will be to take full advantage of the technology, knowing that 
  the results will be displayed in the media in which they were conceived. Of 
  course, this is not presently the case, research results are still typically 
  transferred to slides or overheads for presentation and to printed form for 
  publica- tion. One outcome of the symposium might even be the "proof of concept" 
  of a FULLY electronic journal (as opposed to the on-line electronic supplements 
  of tradi- tional print journals, which are currently the practice of organizations 
  like the AGU. I include here an item from the "AGU Special Alert", sent out 
  with subscription renewal requests: "New this year! Authors are expanding the 
  amount of research data made available to subscribers through increased use 
  of peer-reviewed electronic supplements. AGU distributes electronic supplemental 
  data sets so that other scientists can access and use them. The supplements 
  are listed by AGU paper number on the AGU anonymous FTP site at: kosmos.agu.org 
  in the apend directory". It is my understanding that the main value of this, 
  at present, is to shake loose data...government organizations which have collected 
  data, but never published anything from it, can effectively publish the data 
  itself!) I hope we can continue to emphasize the advantages to the community 
  that would result from a fully electronic jour- nal, one that circumvents the 
  need for a printed copy, with a format that in fact precludes a printed copy 
  (e.g., anima- tions, etc.). In summary, let me throw out a very drafty resolution: 
  **** The Unidata User's Committee encourages Unidata spon- sorship of a summer 
  1997 symposium to address Applica- tions of IDD Resources and Unidata/Community 
  Software in Atmospheric Research. (This symposium will be held in association 
  with......some host University or perhaps NCAR?.....some additional society 
  sponsor, like the AMS?). Jennie Lynne Moody Research Assistant Professor Department 
  of Environmental Sciences Ph: (804) 924-0592 University of Virginia moody@virginia.edu 
  Clark Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903 FAX: (804) 982-2300 Atmospheric Modeling 
  and Operational Meteorology