| Members: | UPC Staff: |
| Rich Clark, Acting Chairperson | Sally Bates |
| Steve Koch, North Carolina State Univ | John Caron |
| Michael Morgan, Univ of Wisc-Madison | Steve Chiswell |
| Larry Riddle, Scripps, UCSD | Ben Domenico |
| Tony Rockwood, Metro State College | Steve Emmerson |
| Clint Rowe, Univ of Nebraska-Lincoln | Dave Fulker |
| Jim Steenburgh, Univ of Utah | Joanne Graham |
| Doug Yarger, Iowa State Univ | Jo Hansen |
| Robb Kambic | Linda Miller |
| Don Murray | |
| Ex-Officio Members: | Russ Rew |
| Dave Dempsey, San Francisco State | Jeff Weber |
| Charlie Murphy, PolComm, Kean Univ | Stu Wier |
| Tom Whittaker, Univ of Wis-Madison, ATAC | Anne Wilson |
| Mike Wright | |
| Tom Yoksas | |
| Ethan Davis | |
| Donna West | |
| Visitors: | |
| Greg Byrd, COMET | |
| Mary Marlino, PAGE |
The next Users Committee meeting will be a one-day meeting on June 16th in preparation of the summer workshop. David Dempsey agreed to attend the Users Committee Meeting and serve on the Summer Workshop Program Committee.
The next regular meeting is proposed for 9-10 November, 2000.
The agenda was accepted and action items completed with detailed reports of some action items interspersed during the meeting, at appropriate times.
Charlie Murphy provided a short summary of the Unidata Policy Committee meeting which took place on September 13-14, 1999. Items mentioned included:
ACTION 1: Unidata should analyze access to WATADS (from NOAA/NSSL) and other display software options to be used with NEXRAD Level II data.
ACTION 2: A sub-committee (Tom Yoksas, lead) was created to draft a community survey on satellite data needs. The committee will distribute the draft to the Users Committee prior to final distribution to the community at large. (See "Satellite Data Discussion-response to Action 2" below)
After the results are gathered from the community, the information will be incorporated into the summer workshop.
Per the resolution for access to GVAR satellite data, action has been taken and some archive data is available at this time from the University of Wisconsin-Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC).
ACTION 3: A letter of appreciation will be drafted for the Users Committee to send to Dr. Robert Fox, SSEC, for making the data access available to the university community. (Miller will draft the letter)
In response to Action 1, Rew provided an overview of concrete goals of the MetApps Project. There is a discrepancy between user-centered development versus duplicating what existing applications do. The MetApps prototypes are intended to satisfy use cases rather than just duplicate the functionality of existing applications.
Murphy followed up with announcing a new member of the MetApps; Chris Herbster from Embry-Riddle. A need still exists for new members who have time to spend on MetApps. Much discussion is taking place at Unidata MetApps Discussion Area (UMADA). This spring, a teleconference may be set up with the MetApps Task Force to explore visionary ideas and objectives. The MetApps will take an active role in the summer workshop to solicit reaction from the community. It is important to get a balanced input. If student input is used, a faculty member should oversee the student's participation. It was suggested that a special workshop be considered for the community concerning MetApps, as the applications become more mature.
ACTION 4: One-half day of the next meeting (November, 2000) will be devoted to MetApps.
Russ Rew responded to Action Item 4. Continued development and maintenance of GEMPAK will be provided by Unidata for the Unidata community. Unidata will maintain GARP and NMAP until all capabilities are available in NMAP.
A question about IDL working with DODS was raised and discussed.
ACTION 5: Dave Fulker will discuss the IDL issue with Peter Cornillon, DODS PI, and report back to the Users Committee.
Anne Wilson reported on research being done using INN (InterNet News), a popular, open source implementation of NNTP, Network News Transport Protocol, for data transmission. This is still being investigated and looks promising. INN uses a data flooding model that provides some degree of automatic routing.
Russ Rew reported that significant performance enhancements for the LDM product queue are nearing completion.
The entire committee participated in discussions of speakers for the summer workshop. Several speakers were identified:
Themes and workshop approaches were discussed, resulting in this this organization. This provides a draft for the Workshop Planning Committee to use in fine tuning the additional arrangements necessary.
Logistics were summarized by Joanne Graham and further coordination with the Workshop Planning Committee will continue.
While the Workshop Planning Committee met, the sub-committee for the satellite survey convened to create a draft for a community survey to be conducted prior to the summer workshop. The idea is to have results collected and to provide the survey results to the summer workshop participants.
Tom Yoksas led the discussion with Charlie Murphy, Clint Rowe, Michael Morgan, Steve Koch, Jim Steenburgh and Linda Miller participating. It was agreed that CIMSS products will be added to the Unidata-McIDAS data stream without the need of a community survey because the impact of adding them was negligible. Following is a rough draft of considerations:
Yoksas will draft the survey and distribute to the Users Committee for comments, prior to community wide distribution.
Michael Morgan is willing to make Difax maps available via FTP or LDM/IDD from Wisconsin.
ACTION 6: Ben Domenico will follow up with Michael Morgan to coordinate the Difax task.
ACTION 7: Ben Domenico will spearhead the "Best of the Web" sites for the summer workshop.