This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting, was held January 22-26 in Seattle, Washington. We were happy to see many of the Unidata community members participating in the meeting at our booth in the exhibit hall, and to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

Some past student representatives

The Unidata Users Committee is seeking nominations for a Graduate Student representative to join the group of nine university faculty members currently serving on this committee. Nominees should be Graduate Students who use Unidata software, hold a strong interest in the Unidata program, and have an interest in learning how a community-based program like Unidata is governed. Nominations may be made by any community member, and self-nominations are acceptable. This position will be for a two-year term beginning with the fall 2017 Users Committee meeting.

In addition to bringing a valuable student perspective to Unidata committee discussions, Graduate Student representatives make numerous professional contacts at Unidata and in the university community at large, and gain insights stemming from participation in Unidata program governance. The Unidata Users committee meets twice a year in Boulder, CO; the Unidata Program Center pays all travel and lodging expenses for the student representative's travel to committee meetings.

Russ DeSouza with students

Do you know someone in the Unidata community who has been actively involved and helpful to you and other Unidata members? Perhaps this is someone who volunteers to assist others, contributes software, or makes suggestions that are generally useful for the community.

The Unidata Users Committee invites you to submit nominations for the Russell L. DeSouza Award for Outstanding Community Service. This Community Service Award honors individuals whose energy, expertise, and active involvement enable the Unidata Program to better serve the geosciences. Honorees personify Unidata's ideal of a community that shares ideas, data, and software through computing and networking technologies.

Version 4.6.4 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.

The National Science Foundation EarthCube initiative is a community-driven project aimed at creating an integrated environment for the sharing of geoscience data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner. Proposals for grants supporting two types of EarthCube activities are due by March 14, 2017.