Table of Contents ============================================================================ 1. Call for Proposals for New GEM Focus Groups 2. GEM 2007 Steering Committee Meeting Report ============================================================================ *************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 17, Number 22 September 5, 2007 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Call for Proposals for New GEM Focus Groups ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jimmy Raeder The GEM Steering Committee calls for proposals for new focus groups with a June 2008 start date. Proposals should be prepared according to the GEM bylaws (http://terra.sr.unh.edu/wiki-gem-org/index.php?n=Main.GEMBylaws). Proposals should be sent to J.Raeder@unh.edu no later than October 15. Proposals will be posted on the web, and proposers will have the opportunity to present their proposals at the fall pre-AGU GEM mini workshop, Sunday, December 9. The GEM steering committee will select the new focus groups at its 12/9 meeting. It is expected that ~2 proposals will be selected. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. GEM 2007 Steering Committee Meeting Report ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Clauer Jimmy Raeder Friday: 4:00 - 6:00pm, June 22, 2007 Zermatt Resort, Midway Utah PRESENT: Jimmy Raeder (chair), Yasong Ge (for Chris Russell), Dan Welling (Student Rep), Kile Baker (NSF), Robert Ergun, Vana Jordanova, Bob Clauer, Hideaki Kawano (Japan), Howard Singer (NOAA), Masha Kuznetsova (CCMC), David Sibeck, Jeff Hughes, Mike Liemohn, Michael Wiltberger, Michael Henderson, David Murr, Reiner Friedel, Mark Moldwin (DASI), Frank Toffoletto, Stan Sazykin 1. Future Workshop plans - Frank Toffoletto and Bob Clauer The Fall 2007 AGU mini-workshop will be held as usual in San Francisco on the Sunday (9 Dec) before the Fall AGU meeting (10-14 Dec). Frank Toffoletto will coordinate the logistics for the workshop with assistance from Bob Clauer. The steering committee will meet after the workshop. The next summer workshop will be held jointly with SHINE June 22-27 at the Zermatt resort in Midway, UT. CEDAR will meet the prior week, June 15-21, 2008 at the same place. Bob Clauer will undertake the logistics coordination for this workshop. Umbe Cantu will be coordinating the SHINE workshop so the transition to a new workshop coordinator for GEM should be eased by this. There was some concern about the possible size of the combined workshops and the need for a room that could hold at least 350 people (150 - 160 Shine, 180 - 240 GEM). The Zermatt plenary room can hold 500 auditorium style and 300 with tables. We may need a hybrid arrangement. 2009 summer workshop location: Snowmass is still uncertain. Telluride is too expensive. Bob Clauer will collect information about different places (costs, availability) and circulate it among the steering committee for a December 2007 decision. 2. NSF has strict rules about committees that advise the government, in particular it does not like standing committees. Thus the GEM steering committee should not appear to give advice to Kile Baker at NSF. The GEM steering committee can volunteer information to Kile. However, Kile should not have power to appoint members of the GEM steering committee. Therefore, from now on the steering committee will elect the successor when a member rotates out and the committee chair will appoint the new member. The steering committee chair will be elected by the committee and will be appointed by the outgoing chair. The bylaws have been changed accordingly. 3. The rules outlined above were immediately applied to replace the outgoing committee members Vania Jordanova and Dan Weimer. Maria Spasojevic and Terry Onsger were elected new members. The committee thanks Vania and Dan for their service. (Note added: Maria and Terry have both accepted. - JR) 4. The steering committee expressed its concern that the UCLA web site is out of date. Kile noted that the Communications Coordinator grant will be competed in the near future. 5. Selection process for new focus groups: The present number of groups is rather arbitrary. There was room for more breakout sessions in the workshop this year so perhaps we could support 2 or 3 more groups. Research Area Coordinators should also prompt focus groups to have more sessions. The selection process for new focus groups will be more explicit: Two-page proposals for new focus groups are due in October concurrent with the GEM proposal deadline, for consideration by steering committee. Proposals will be posted on the web and also be sent to the appropriate research area coordinators. A session at the Fall AGU miniworkshop will be reserved where proposals can be presented. The steering committee will then consider proposals at Fall (AGU) steering committee meeting. 6. We need to get from all existing focus groups the following summary information: Group Name, Leaders, Goals, Objectives - in the style of Sorin Zaharia's presentation - in order to have a clear description of what each FG does. Clauer will get Sorin's viewgraph to use as an example and will send a template out based on Sorin's viewgraph. Research area coordinators will be tasked to get this information from their focus groups. Due by the end of August. Kile's Dear Colleague letter for the GEM competition will refer to those descriptions. 7. There should be an instruction sheet for focus group chairs. The SC would like to emphasize workshop style rather than AGU talk style. Leaders could request "Viewpoints" from participants limited to 3 to 5 slides. Research Area Coordinators should help to support this. 8. Discussed summary of focus groups at end of workshop. While many people did not attend, it is important for the steering committee to hear the summaries. The reports were very good this year - mentioned by several committee members. 9. Technical issue regarding using multiple computers for presentations. May want to have two computers connected and use memory sticks or networked shared folders that people can load slides into. 10. Defer discussion of focus group close-outs to later meeting. 11. Participant directory and communications coordinator. It would be good to have a directory. Web site out of date, etc. Perhaps communications coordinator should be competed - solicit others to propose. Proposal is due this year. GEM newsletter, gemstone, web site, 5 or 7 year report, ... If communications goes to someone else must assure the transfer of information from existing site. Worry about listing e-mail addresses creating more opportunities for SPAM. List as .pdf files. 12. Agency Reports: * NSF - Kile Baker: He already gave a report in the Wednesday plenary. He may have about $600K for new GEM proposals next year. * NOAA - Howard Singer: reorganizing SEC to give more focus to models and products to the community. (1) New civil servant position to transition models. Want a scientist to be in this position. (2) GOES successfully in "on-orbit" storage. Will be called up when needed. (3) Jack Hays is new director of weather service (4) somewhat harder to get NRC fellowships to offer now that they are in the weather service, (5) Space Weather Enterprise forum in Washington DC was very successful in advertising Space Weather. (6) Space weather week (now called Space Weather Workshop) next year 4/25 - 5/2. NOAA is getting new sets of customers for space weather from the space weather enterprise and space weather workshop meeting. * CCMC - Masha Kuznetsova: Runs on request have been heavily used - reached 1000th run in December, for example. High resolution simulations have been run to support the cusp focus group -- the results are available to anyone via the WEB interface. CCMC has started to do model modification on request (with the developers permission and assistance. There have been a set of general purpose runs for space science education for George Siscoe and Ray Walker. The next CCMC Workshop will be in November 4-8 at Arecibo Observatory. CCMC stands ready to support GEM as needed. * CEDAR - David Murr, Mark Moldwin: Jeff Thayer is the new chair. 2008 CEDAR will be at Zermatt the week before GEM. CEDAR is working to develop DASI (distributed arrays of small instruments) with a workshop this year. Jan Sojka is the chair of the working group. Moldwin, Donovan and Foster are members. They are promoting the creation of a instrument testbed to facilitate the development of new instruments. * SHINE - Yasong Ge for Chris Russell: SHINE examines the Solar, Heliospheric, and Interplanetary environment. They presently have about 20 working groups and focus on campaign events. WEB site: http/shinegroup.org/. Should form some small committees to come up with joint sessions. This committee will be established via e-mail in coordination with SHINE. Need some student sessions. (note: Katie Garcia from Boston U. replaces Dan Welling as student representative on GEM steering committee.) Shine meeting is annual. Student tutorials are a common feature of GEM and SHINE. * ISAS - Hideaki Kawano: ISAS encourages use of Geotail data and they will help to facilitate access and use of the data via WEB site. * ILWS - Dave Sibeck: Discussed future missions and timelines. Discussed China's plans, Canada ePOP, Cluster having review this year. It would be good to get better GEM participation from Europeans. 10. Student report - Dan Welling Tutorials went well this year - different organization. Sixty some students this year (little fewer than last year). Changes made to tutorials (better web site established by Dan). Schedule has .pdf of the talks given and this is open to everyone. Also wanted to have tutorials of areas followed by a second tutorial focused on key questions to be addressed by GEM. Would like to have a microphone for tutorial speakers. Having students chair the plenary sessions is popular - good idea. Katie Garcia is new student representative for 2008. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |To subscribe GEM Messengers, send an e-mail to | | with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: | | subscribe gem | |To remove yourself from the mailing list, the command is: | | unsubscribe gem | | | |To broadcast a message to the GEM community, please contact Peter Chi at | | | |Please use plain text as the format of your submission. | | | |URL of GEM Home Page: http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gem/Welcome.html | |Workshop Information: http://gem.rice.edu/~gem | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+