Unidata is governed by its community. Our governing committees facilitate consensus building for future directions for the Unidata Program and establish standards of involvement for the community.
This fall, we are seeking new people to serve on Unidata's Policy and Users Committees. This is your chance to make a difference on behalf of the Unidata community. As Steven Businger, the current Chair of the Unidata Policy Committee states, "Over time, these two governing committees have provided important guidance in setting goals, accomplishing objectives, and helping to set future directions for the program."
Sean Arms joined the Unidata Program Center software development staff on May 23rd, 2011. Sean comes to Unidata from the University of Oklahoma, where he completed his Bachelor's, Master's, and most recently Doctoral degrees in Meteorology.
Sean is a familiar face to the rest of the Program Center staff; in addition to attending numerous Unidata workshops over the years, he served as the first student representative to the Unidata Users committee. "I got involved after Unidata's 2006 Triennial workshop," Sean says. "I was so impressed when I learned that the National Science Foundation was funding this community-driven, service oriented organization; I wanted to get involved however I could." Sean talked with members of the Users committee at that meeting, pointing out that many students were using Unidata software and data streams and asking why there was no student representation on the committee. "That's when I learned that suggesting can be the same as volunteering," he says.
Community Driven: Sure, Unidata has Policy and Users committees, so they must care about what the community thinks, right? Right?!? I mean, I was there – I felt like they cared what the Users Committee thought while we were there, in town, in person.
According to Michelle Mainelli, NCEP Central Operations (NCO) Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli, Raytheon Technical Services has integrated the NCEP National Center Perspective into the AWIPS II Baseline release. Version OB11.5 of the software was officially released in May 2011.
"The OB11.5 version has been delivered and installed on NCEP's AWIPS II Test Bed for testing, and we expect to receive another update, OB11.6, by mid-June," says Mainelli. "NCO has dedicated significant time in testing and evaluating an automated flow of non-Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) data into AWIPS II. Unfortunately, the current solution does not meet the timeliness requirements for gridded model data. NCO and the NWS/Office of Science and Technology have agreed to pursue a more direct connect approach to accessing data on the AWIPS II systems. We hope the new approach will help alleviate the data delivery timeliness issues we are currently experiencing."
