NAASC Organizational Meeting: Wednesday July 01, 2009 1-2:30pm ET (1700-1830UT), CV-ER209/TUC-N525/Soc280(SO-conf2)/JAO-Alsacia/JAO-OSF(Science)/NRC:

Meeting Information

• Call date: 2009-07-01 (Wednesday)
• Call time 13:00 ET or 17:00 UT
• Duration: 1.5 hr
• Connection for Video:
  • From NRAO select "Conf Hub IVR"
  • hub ip=192.33.117.12
  • alternative ip for Chile only, if above drops: 192.33.117.17
• Non toll-free number: 434-244-6834
• USA toll-free Number: 866-675-5385
• Outside USA Number: +1 517-444-6916
• Passcode: 8445333#
• Leader: Hibbard

Attendees

• CV: JH, RI, CB, AE, JS
• Soc: BG, SM
• GB:
• Canada: JdF
• Tuc:
• JAO: AP
• Other: AW (France)

Action Items from past meetings (RED=OPEN)

Action Items from this meeting:

Agenda

• Project News (APeck/RHills)
  • Review of CSV Sept 2-3 at OSF. For NAm, Tony R. & Al will attend. May discuss others.
  • Next cadre of Ops astronomers (~4) being recruited. Shortlist being compiled, then interviews.
  • Also recruiting Commissioning Scientists (~4)
  • Testing s/w release 6.1 at OSF. Going well.
  • Status Report
  • ASAC Matters.
    • Next meeting Garching proposed 13-15 Oct
  • AIV Status
  • ALMA Biweekly Calendar

• NAASC News (Hibbard/Lonsdale)
  • Ops s/w review in Chile June 1-3. See main event.
  • PEP process is on-going. Next: finish f2f meetings, provide modified PEP back to employees.
  • We are in the midst of Reporting Madness:
    • Long Range Plan (2011-2015) were due yesterday
    • 2009Q3 Quarterly Report is due July 7
    • FY2010 Program Plan is due July 17
  • Fall will be a VERY BIG hiring push for NAASC - at least 3 astronomers, multiple Data Analysts, EPO support, Archive support.

• NRC News (Schieven)
  • "Observing with ALMA" workshop was June 1-3. 45 outside participants. Very good feedback from participants (very informative questionnaire was distributed). The ALMA Primer is excellent, and is posted online, as are the presentations. Participants wanted more hands-on. Maybe future workshops will interleave tutorials with lectures? Planning on holding similar (but smaller) meeting next year in Halifax
  • NAASC-NRC telecon on June 19. Gerald will travel to NAASC July 12-17 for ALMA review, and to GB Aug 9-11 for SciOpsIPT f2f meeting.

• ANASAC (CLonsdale)
  • Last telecon was held April 17 Agenda

• Main Event: Result of Operations S/W Review, held June 1-2 in Santiago
  • Carol, JohnH & Harvey went to Santiago for Ops S/W Review & SciOpsIPT f2f and meeting June 1-3.
    • Revised s/w testing timeline. See attached pdf
    • Main result: operations identified missing requirements & open issues for each subsystem, collected in spreadsheets & provided to CIPT for CDR7 (last week)
    • Also decided to keep individual working subgroups for various topics to work out open issues. Some new names added - see attached pdf. If you would like to join one of these working groups, email the chair.
    • One of the most important FBTs is the one looking at how phase I user science goals are turned into SB's and information for the Technical Assessment. Harvey is leading that, but everyone in NAm should participate.
  • f2f meeting of SciOpsIPT was June 3 in Santiago (immediately after Ops s/w review). Main results: writing assignments for Implementations Plans (see "Supporting Material" below). Drafts are due before next f2f meeting (Aug 9-11 in Green Bank), final versions will be reviewed during the review of Science Operations Sept 29-30 in Santiago.

• Reports from Working Groups
  • Pipeline ()
    • UT6 is in the planning stages. Scope includes calibration and imaging improvements, possibly small mosaics. Will involve outside users. Testers should be identified by June, with the hope that the test will start early in July
  • CASA (Crystal)
    • Beta Release 2.4.0 was yesterday. This will be the last beta release.
    • Next release (3.0) will be December. This is a VERY IMPORTANT release, as it will be the version used for EVLA early science. Will need LOTS of real-world testing.
    • Casa tutorials were given at the NRC ALMA workshop. ~45 participants. Went very well. Some are going on now in Paris
  • ObsPrep (incl. ObsTool=OT) (Harvey)
    • User Test 6.0: test of Phase I June 1-26. RI & GS participated, but had problems connecting to the archive so didn't get all the way through.
  • Casapy simulator (Remy)
  • ALMA Archive (Carol)
    • Defining 3 hires that will be posted ASAP - applications developer, DBA, Archive Tech.
  • Splatalogue (Tony)
    • Tony is at OSU spectroscopy meeting last week
    • API for splatalogue is due to be released today
    • "From Data Cubes to Science: ancillary data and advanced tools for ALMA" meeting is being planned for Oct 5-7 in Cologn
  • EPO (J. Stoke)
    • Pitch-sheet generated for discovery channel. ALMA people are characters.
    • image/media archive s/w will be demo'd. Could be used for all ALMA
  • Science User Outreach/Webpages (M. Adams/A.Evans)
    • JStoke made changes to naasc.nrao.edu and asked for feedback. Will deploy by mid August.
    • Interviewing for Web Content Manager
  • NAASC Workshops (Aaron)
    • Scope posted with "Additional Supporting Material" from last months agenda
    • 121 pre-registrants (up to 178 by July 6!)
    • N~150 at Omni, Sept 21-25 2009.
    • Webpage and registration are live: http://www.nrao.edu/meetings/galaxies09/. Pre-registration ends Friday, then science program finalized & registration opens ~July 9.
  • Upcoming Science Meetings: (Al)
    • Other Meetings are now listed on the google ALMA Science Meetings calendar
    • Next up: Early ALMA Science workshop on Disks and the Epoch of Planet Formation; 20-21 Jul CfA
  • Upcoming NAASC Science Visitors (see google calendar NAASC Visitors)
    • Michelle Thornley & Jack Gallimore July 2009

Additional Supporting Material

ARC-relevant items for ALMA Science Operations Implementation Plan

• NAm ARC Operations
  • User Portal Tailoring
  • Tutorials/f2f support
  • Helpdesk staffing & maintenance
  • CSV/AoD support
  • SB validation
  • Mirror archives, including maintenance & upgrades
  • data delivery
  • regional pipeline, including maintenance & upgrades
  • ARC web
  • offsite computing support
  • ARC staff training
  • staffing plan
  • incorporating nodes esp. if core support
  • "beyond ARC" functions [optional]
• JAO-ARC Coordination
  • End user documents (development & maintenance)
  • CfP broadcasting
  • s/w testing & timelines
  • helpdesk - triage guidelines, USS guidelines, shared expertise/L3 tickets
  • proposal support/technical assesment
  • joint pipeline activities (reprocessing; heuristics; adopting new versions/calibration procedures)
  • functional assignments/leads
  • communication - exchange programs, joint training (archive, pipeline, UP), SciOpsIPT (including improved s/w), communicating with JAO
  • Science Workshops
  • Advance tool development
  • VO development
  • spectral line catalogues
  • coordinated outreach (including development of training media)