USG Meeting, February 2 2012

2PM EDT CV 230 
IP: 192.33.117.16
Telephone hub:  434 972 7268

Current USG Focus Items

  • Batch 3 and batch 5 SBs
  • Cycle 1 documents
  • Simulations and science examples

MINUTES

*Attendence: Carol, David H, Tony, Rachel, Remy, Nuria, Dongchan, Kimberly, Adam, Lyndele, Jim, Heidi, Gerald, James, Doug

*Regrets: John (Chile), Scott

News and overview

  • Cycle0 report and rough Cycle1 timeline posted to SP

Coordination with other groups and activities

USG task reports & new business

  • HIA
    • Gerald and Jim have converged on SV data sets to use for Primer science examples.
    • The timeline for the Primer was discussed - relax it a bit to reflect the extension to the Cycle1 timeline, or get it done asap? Consensus it to get it finished.
    • Continuing with meeting planning in Toronto - about 20 registered in person and 10 remotely. Rachel will be attending.
    • Band 3 team is in process of shipping last band 3 receivers. Celebration on Monday at HIA, Feb 20 (Scott S and Mark McKinnon will be in attendance). Congrats to HIA!
  • Taiwan and EA Liaison (Aaron)
  • Documentation (Jim, Jonathan)
    • Jonathan and Jim have talked about getting the mm school back in gear. An outline of document will be divided into a list of articles; people will be asked to contribute an article in their area of expertise.
    • Discussion on best format: latex, plone, .... Plone will be the basis to retain flexibility. David can be consulted for options and pros/cons.
  • Science Web (Aaron)
    • Fred wants a working model demo by end of Feb of the new look; new unveiling of streamlined NRAO webpage in March. Meeting at 10:00am Friday, Feb 3rd to look at first draft of new look.
    • There's little implication for the NAASC pages; the integration of the Portal with the local pages is under review.
    • We'll have a demo of the new pages at a USG meeting in a couple of weeks or so.

  • Helpdesk (Tony)
  • PI Support & Visitors (Scott)
    • SB generation is on-hold at the moment while JAO transitions to R8.1. We have to await notification from DSO before P2G members can resume SB generation using R8.1
  • Development of outreach materials (Carol)
  • Workshops, Schools, Meetings (Tony, Adam) -
    • Final Science schedule completed for Jets 2012 - 4 full days.
    • Jonathan talked with Phil Appleton at IPAC/Herschel Science Center about their experience with webinars using WebX.
      • There are two modes: pay as you go for events or have an account. Phil warned us that charges can mount quickly; HSC has an account for ~$50/month.
      • Action Item: David will review pricing structures for our needs
      • HSC has held tutorials where remote users monitor via Webex, which is similar to how we did it for the recent data porcessing workshop at NAASC. However they use a dedicated machine for the presentations and then pass control over to a moderator using a different machine for the Q&A session. This eliminates the problem Jonathjon had for our webinar where it was hard to juggle screens when the presentation and the Q&A was handled by the same machine.
      • Webex could be used to host "office hours": a user connects with a NAASC scientist at a pre-arranged time and shares screens and audio. The NAASC scientist could 'take control' of caller's screen and work through issues. These appointments would be set up through the HelpDesk so that we can track them. NAASC staff would share the task of hosting an office hour; presumably it would often be the Contact Scientist.
      • The webinars can be recorded and we would get seprate video and audio tapes. HSC hasn't done that yet.
    • Summer School: Adam is organizing NAASC involvement. He and Amy will do the tutorials using Antennae & TWHya. All NAASC postdocs are welcome and encouraged to attend the school, to teach and/or take the lectures.

Main items

  • Tutorials (Carol). What tutorials / CDEs do we want to do for Cycle1?
    • Tony reported that OSO is considering an NRAO-wide CDE in mid-June, which works well for Claire and Karen. Carol pointed out that this is too late from NAASC's perspective since we will be giving our staff science time from June 15 to work on their ALMA proposals. Moreover there's the summer school in early June, followed by the AAS.
    • General discussion on pros and cons of CDEs and how to plan them. Consensus:
      • It is not necessary to do a large number of CDEs like we did for Cycle0
      • We have about 2 hours of material now, well polished, which can be presented easily by a single person. It may be effective for science staff to give short talks and demos when they attend meetings or visit institutions. Discussion on pors and cons of this: best if we can plan well ahead and avoid asking organizers to tack on time late in the conference planning timeline. Noted that the HIA tutorial day after the science meeting was a successful model.
      • We could also invite interest in mini-CDEs - send one person out to a University for a 2-hour intro and to work with people individually.
    • There will be no scheduled events after June 15th - to allow NAASC staff to focus on proposals.

AOB

-- CarolLonsdale - 2012-02-02
Topic revision: r5 - 2012-02-03, CarolLonsdale
This site is powered by FoswikiCopyright © by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding NRAO Public Wiki? Send feedback