Community Services

Status Report: November 2011 - April 2012

Linda Miller, Doug Dirks, Jeff Weber

Strategic Focus Areas

Community Services supports the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:

  1. Broadening participation and expanding community services
    We coordinate with our governing committees to find ways to expand Unidata's community participation. We use our web site, electronic newsletters, and social media to keep community members informed about enhanced data services, software tools, and cyberinfrastructure.
  2. Advancing data services
    We work with government and industry data providers to secure access to data for Unidata community members.
  3. Developing and deploying useful tools
    We promote Unidata tools and software for multi-disciplinary use, with an eye toward finding additional research and educational communities that can benefit from our work.
  4. Enhancing user support services
    We monitor and collaborate with data sources to stay apprised of impending changes and to advocate for the needs of our user community. We provide user workshops, tutorials, and community workshops to help build supportive relationships between community members.
  5. Promoting diversity by expanding opportunities
    We participate in UCAR/NCAR and NSF projects for underrepresnted populations and minority communities (SOARS, AIHEC, outreach to HBCUs). We provide services and tools to facilitate education and research in diverse communities. We work to broaden the Unidata community by participating in student and professional conferences.

Activities Since the Last Status Report

News@Unidata blog

Posts to the News@Unidata blog appear regularly, but not on a specific schedule. Some highlights:

Blog readership has been relatively steady. Reader comments to blog articles remain fairly light.

Community Outreach and Services

  • Organized and collaborated with Becky Cosgrove, NCEP, a CONDUIT survey (yielding 41 respondents) providing important informaton on the needs of the community
  • Participated in the AGU meeting in San Francisco
  • UPC had a table at the AMS Student Conference during the Annual Meeting in New Orleans; UPC had a booth during the remainder of the Annual Meeting - Representatives from NCEP (Michelle Mainelli, David Plummer and Scott Jacobs) joined Michael James and other UPC staff by providing AWIPS II demos and fielding questions. Yuan Ho and others demonstrated IDV
  • Attended the NWS Partners Meeting, 26 January 2012, New Orleans
  • Participate in weekly AWIPS II meetings with NCEP Headquarters and NCEP Centers technical staff discussing progress and technical issues
  • Coordinated with NWS Headquarters on AWIPS II official releases and progress
  • Arranged for a "field trip" to the Denver/Boulder Weather Forecast Office to meet with them about AWIPS II
  • Created an "Actionable Strategic Planning" UPC document for the Community Service group
  • Participating as members of the triennial summer workshop planning committee in organizating and arranging for the "Navigation Earth System Science Data" workshop to be held 8-13 July 2012
  • Collaborating with Chairs of governing committees on planning and implementing the Policy and Users Committee meetings
  • Hosted one seminar: David Hart, NCAR/CISL - NCAR's Data-Centric Super Computing Environment: Yellowstone
  • Making arrangements for the DeSouza Award presentation and seminar during Users Committee meeting
  • Planning, support, and input for Unidata's strategic plan
  • Participating on UCAR's Weather Exhibit Committee
  • Participating in the AMS Committee to Improve Climate Change Communcations (CICCC)
  • Continue to work with the Tribal College Community, met on September 26th with students from University of Central Michigan
  • Accommodated many media requests for interviews regarding, tornado outbreaks, hurricanes, and climate change
  • Perform acts of Wizardry at UCAR's Super Science Saturday

Social Media Outreach Activities

  • We have continued to update the Facebook and Twitter feeds.
  • We are investigating establishing a Google+ presence. Maintaining a G+ presence may not be worth the effort.
  • We are actively planning a YouTube channel for short videos/screencasts. We will coordinate with UPC staff to create short videos to demonstrate key functionality of Unidata software.

Planned Activities

Ongoing Activities

We plan to continue the following activities:

  • NAWIPS migration to AWIPS II, including the overall AWIPS II project
  • Ongoing development of news articles for publication through News@Unidata
  • Continue to support and contribute to governing committees
  • Seminars
  • Outreach
  • Engagement with professional societies
  • Triennial workshop planning and coordination

New Activities

We plan to organize or take part in the following:

  • Booth at AMS 2013 annual meeting
  • Table at AMS 2013 student conference
  • Booth at the National Weather Association meeting in Madison, Wisconsin in October 2012

Relevant Metrics

Statistics from the Community pages on the Unidata web site. Comparisons are made with statistics from the previous six-month period.

All Community pages

Most recent six months

  • 34,936 unique pageviews
    (down from 45,404 in previous period)
  • 4.4% of total unique pageviews to site
    (down from 5.6% in previous period)

 

Top community pages

  1. All blog pages
    News@Unidata blog and developers' blog
    • 20,232 unique pageviews
      (down from 26,543 in previous period)
    • 58% of total community unique pageviews
      (same as previous period)
  2. About Unidata (www.unidata.ucar.edu/about/)
    Information about Unidata
    • 3825 unique pageviews
      (essentially same as 3845 in previous period)
    • 10.9% of total community unique pageviews
      (up from 8.5% in previous period)
  3. Community pages (www.unidata.ucar.edu/community/)
    Information about Unidata community events and governance
    • 3538 unique pageviews
      (down from 3708 in previous period)
    • 10.1% of total community unique pageviews
      (up from 8.2% in previous period)
  4. Events pages (www.unidata.ucar.edu/events/)
    Information about training courses and other events
    • 3090 unique pageviews
      (down from 6518 in previous period)
    • 8.8% of total community unique pageviews
      (down from 14.3% in previous period)

Social media statistics, March 22, 2011

  1. # of Twitter followers: 190 (up from 162 in October 2011)
  2. # of Facebook followers: 157 (up from 114 in October 2011)