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Members of Unidata's two governing committees gathered in Boulder in September 2012 for a joint meeting to share information and ideas between the committees and with Unidata Program Center staff.
The three-day meeting began on Monday, September 17, 2012 with an orientation for new members of the Users and Policy committees. New committee members Michael Baldwin, Robert Fovell, Lynn McMurdie, Sam Ng, Michael Piasecki, and Russ Schumacher heard brief presentations from the UPC staff, and described how they and their institutions use Unidata software, data, and services. (For some background on the new committee members, see Unidata Welcomes New Committee Members.
During the afternoon of September 17, the Users committee met separately for the following reports and discussions:
- Status reports from from UPC staff
- A report on the status of CONDUIT from Scott Jacobs (filling in for Rebecca Cosgrove) of NOAA/NCEP
- A report on the 2012 Users Workshop, along with a status update from the subcommittee who are preparing a meeting report for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Tuesday, September 18th brought members of the Users and Policy committees together for a full day of discussion and presentations, including:
- Unidata Program Center director Mohan Ramamurthy's status report
- A budget report by Unidata program administrator Terry Mitchell
- An update from the National Science Foundation, relayed by Mohan Ramamurthy for Unidata's NSF program officer Bernard Grant, who was unable to attend the meeting.
- A presentation by Unidata's NASA representative Peter Griffith relaying news from the agency and discussing possible use of Unidata technologies in the ABoVE project.
- A presentation by NCEP's Scott Jacobs (filling in for Michelle Mainelli) on the status of the NCEP and NWS transition to AWIPS II.
- A discussion of RAMADDA, focusing on the future direction of Unidata's involvement with the Open Source scientific content management system.
- A discussion with UPC staff of various data access issues, including the possibility of Unidata redistributing data from the GOES-R satellite system when it becomes available, changes to Canadian CMC model output, and the possibility of Unidata making METEOSAT data from Europe available via the IDD.
- A demonstration of Rosetta, a prototype of a data format conversion tool created by UPC staff.
The joint committee membership and UPC staff also thanked outgoing members Gerry Creager, Gary Lackmann, Patrick Market, Jim Steenburg, David Tarboton, and Tom Whittaker, and for their service on the Users and Policy committees. Members of both committees, along with UPC staff, continued the discussions over dinner at the NCAR mesa lab.
Wednesday, September 19th was reserved for discussions of the Policy committee. The committee met separately for the following discussions:
- A continuation of the RAMADDA discussion from the joint meeting
- An update from Mohan Ramamurthy on changes to the structure and leadership of the UCAR Community Programs (of which Unidata is one)
- Brief talks by three departing committee members (Gary Lackmann, Jim Steenburg, and Tom Whittaker) on their tenure with the committee.
The combined meeting was useful to all, and the Unidata Program Center staff thank all of the committee members for traveling to Boulder to share their ideas and input.
