Thursday, 9 am MT, 11 am ET, 27 October 2016

Logistics

Agenda

• 17A
  • TAC Meeting Postmortem (Lewis, Dana)
  • Director's Review (Dana)
• 17B
  • Call for Proposals (Dana)
  • PST (Rick, Dana)
  • SRP Recruitment (Mark C., Dave)
  • TAC Recruitment (Lewis)
• PST Sessions (Dana)
• AOB

Minutes

• 17A
  • TAC Meeting Postmortem.
    • Process. No major issues and the TAC appreciates the level of attention from the staff. It would be useful if SRP chairs added more info to the TAC comment section during the telecons. Having TAC members remote is not desirable but it seems to work okay. The concept of Legacy proposals was discussed with no specific recommendations, just that the current TAC process does not handle very large proposals very well.
    • Materials. The TAC felt that there has been significant progress with the documentation, but there is still room for improvement. The TAC still has to view multiple documents. It would be good to have some indication of which proposals need to be discussed (especially for the VLA given the large number). Each TAC member had a slightly different approach. During the TTA meeting LewisBall suggested it might help if we provide better guidance to the TAC.
    • Policy. The majority of the TAC agree with the current policy that there should not be any contact with the PI during the review process.
    • SRP Balance. There was some discussion about the balance of proposals. Some SRPs are near 20, whereas others are up to 60. Several TAC members said the proposals in their SRP are a mixed back. There was a suggestion of using external reviewers in some cases. During the TTA meeting LewisBall noted that ALMA uses multiple panels per SRP as a way to mitigate a large number of proposals. BarryClark noted that we did this last semester with AGN (due to the large number of GMVA proposals).
    • Three Observatories. The TAC felt that the joint process was not an issue for them and they thought it was useful to have a common process.
    • User Communication. The TAC had no issues with communication (e.g., CfP, disposition letters, etc.).
    • VLA Undersubscription. The TAC had some concern with the undersubscription at some LSTs and that we should track it. They suggested it might be feedback do to large pressure from the previous semester with D-configuration.
    • Gender Balance. The TAC had some concern of the gender balance on the SRPs (10 of 48) and that we should work harder to recruit female reviewers.
  • Directors' Review. The review will be held on 2 November at 9-12 EDT. Info for VLA and VLBA has been provided. ToneyMinter will try to send GBT info soon. Regardless, DanaBalser will send a draft report by the end of the day (Thursday).
• 17B
  • Call for Proposals. Material for the NRAO CfP is due 19 December at 9:00 EST. Because of scheduling issues it would be good to complete this sooner if possible. Also, if GBO and LBO require significant assistance from DavisMurphy please let him know asap.
  • PST. RickLively is on schedule to release items for testing before the week of Thanksgiving. No major issues thus far.
  • SRP Recruitment. No report.
  • TAC Recruitment. No action thus far.
• PST Sessions. Current plan:
  • GBT. ToneyMinter will let DanaBalser know when the Google Doc is completed with sample use cases. DanaBalser will work through some of these cases and schedule a meeting for the GBT support staff (sometime after the EIS).
  • VLBA. MarkClaussen will craft a few VLBA use cases. Only one was provided in the requirements document.
  • VLA. LorantSjouwerman will review his notes for additional issues for the VLA. If necessary we can either use the TTA meeting or a separate meeting to flesh out any issues.