“A sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
For the past 7 weeks I have held the distinctive title of “Incoming Executive Director” alongside Erin as the “Outgoing Executive Director.” In August, Erin led while I shadowed and in September I took on more of the leading with Erin’s support. This week on October 1 my training wheels come off and we will complete our transition. I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly thank Erin for the opportunity to learn from her and alongside her. She has executed such an orderly transition and I am extremely grateful for the stable foundation she has created for ESIP. In the last month she has facilitated so many introductions and conversations, she has secured multi-year funding agreements with our sponsors, and she has helped me to understand the cultural nuances that make ESIP the unique and vibrant community that it is.
I am confident this is not goodbye. I know that Erin wants to give me space to lead, but it is my hope that in time she will return as a valuable and contributing member of ESIP. I know she has so much to give. In getting to know ESIP and Erin over the last 10 weeks I am even more humbled and honored now to be entrusted with this responsibility. I know you all join me in wishing Erin well in her next steps and we all look forward to welcoming her into ESIP as a valued community member.
I am excited to dive head first into Winter Meeting planning and the selection process for 2021 ESIP Board and Committee Leadership. Please see below for more information on the call for sessions and nominations.
Have a great week,
Susan
Susan Shingledecker
Incoming Executive Director (for 3 more days)
See the full telecon calendar here. Select the meeting you'd like to attend, login instructions are included in description.
ESIP News
2021 ESIP Winter Meeting: Call for Sessions OPEN NOW through 11/5!
The session proposal portal for the 2021 Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Winter Meeting (January 26th-28th, 2021; Online) is open now through 11/5. For over 20 years, ESIP meetings have brought together the most innovative thinkers and leaders around Earth observation data, thus forming a community dedicated to making Earth observations more discoverable, accessible and useful to researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and the public. We especially welcome session proposals related to the meeting theme: Leading Innovation in Earth Science Data Frontiers. Sessions are 90 minute blocks and can follow a number of different formats. Learn more and submit a session proposal by 11/5 here.
Putting Data to Work Webinar Series
Did you miss last week's webinar given by Este Geraghty (Esri Chief Medical Officer) on Putting Spatial Data to Work for COVID-19 Response and Recovery? You can check out the slides and recording linked here. Our next webinar will take place on October 8th at 3 pm ET and will feature Ed Kearns, Chief Data Officer at the First Street Foundation, a non-profit research and technology group defining America's flood risk. More details will be shared soon.
Cloud Computing Cluster Telecon *TODAY* at 1 pm ET Join the Cloud Computing Cluster this afternoon at 1 pm ET to see Kyle Barron of unfolded.ai discuss in-browser and GPU based visualizations of cloud-optimized data. You can also be a part of the group's discussions about future invited speakers. Find connections details here.
Documentation Cluster Telecon *TODAY* at 2 pm ET Join the Documentation Cluster this afternoon at 2 pm ET, when Alice Meadows will talk about the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and recent work she is leading there on standardization of the CRediT taxonomy for describing roles in scholarly publishing. NISO is also the home of the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) which is the XML used universally for storing journal articles and associated metadata. JATS for Reuse (JATS4R) is a related effort focused on a profile of JATS for facilitating reuse of journal articles. Alice will also touch on using ORCIDS as identifiers for people – she worked at ORCID before joining NISO so she is very familiar with the benefits of ORCID which she also discusses in the recent blog. Find connections details here.
Please Share: Call for 2021 ESIP Community Fellow Applicants
ESIP Community Fellows are graduate students and post-docs (<2 yrs since graduation) interested in bridging the gap between informatics and Earth Science. This fellowship provides fellows with a chance to work closely with professionals in an interdisciplinary, cross-sector group (ESIP collaboration area) on current Earth Science problems. Community fellows become engaged in ESIP collaboration areas as rapporteurs, documenting group activities on monthly telecons and at ESIP’s semi-annual meetings. As fellows become more familiar with collaboration-area activities, they may choose to integrate their own research, which can result in publication and additional funding opportunities. Fellows receive a stipend of $2000 and paid participation in the 2020 ESIP Winter and Summer Meetings. Fellows must be able to attend both meetings to participate in the fellowship. You can learn about the 2020 Class of Community Fellows here. Learn more about the opportunity and apply by 10/9 here.
Call for ESIP Leadership Nominations We are at the time of year when we begin accepting nominations for ESIP leadership positions. There are many different positions that you can be nominated (or nominate yourself) for – see https://wiki.esipfed.org/Nomination_Committee/2021_Nominations_and_Ballot between now and October 31, 2020. Send nominations (self-nomination is encouraged) to nominations@esipfed.org. Multiple nominees for each position are welcome and encouraged. We want to grow the ranks of our leaders and encourage the leadership-curious among you! If you have questions, you can also also write to the Nominations Committee (chaired by Karl Benedict) at nominations@esipfed.org.
Call for Nominations for the 2020 Partner of the Year Award The ESIP Partner of the Year Award honors an ESIP Partner Organization that exemplifies the spirit of ESIP in one or more areas, through the sharing of a success story. This year, we are looking for partner organizations that have supported the 2020 ESIP theme of Putting Data to Work: Building Public-Private Partnerships to Increase Resilience and Enhance the Socioeconomic Value of Data. We are looking for ESIP partners who have:
Been involved in an activity or interacted with ESIP in a manner that has improved the use and value of Earth science data and information, or
Helped the Earth science community put data to work, using and reusing data in new and creative applications, creating derived products and showcasing examples of data integration in order to enhance the resilience and enhance the socioeconomic value of data, or
Formed or strengthened a public-private partnership that supports the goals above.
This award will be given annually at the Winter Meeting. The partner organization will receive a plaque and two free ESIP meeting registrations for an upcoming meeting. Learn more and nominate an organization here by 10/31.
2021 Martha Maiden Award: Call for Nominations
In honor of Martha E. Maiden’s leadership, dedication and tireless efforts to nurture ESIP into a vibrant and mature organization, the Martha Maiden Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Earth Science Information Community award was established in 2009 to recognize outstanding service to the Earth science information community. This award honors individuals who have demonstrated leadership, dedication and a collaborative spirit in advancing the field of Earth Science information.
This award is named for Martha E. Maiden, NASA Program Executive for Earth Data Systems. Ms. Maiden is widely credited for nurturing the ESIP Federation in its infancy and has overseen its growth and maturity. This award is presented annually at the January meeting. Learn more and nominate an individual here by 10/31.
Laying the Groundwork for Developing International Community Guidelines to Effectively Share and Reuse Digital Data Quality Information—Case Statement, Workshop Summary Report, and Path Forward
A recently published report in Open Science Foundation (OSF) Preprints, which stems from a pre-workshop held in July 2020 prior to the ESIP Summer Meeting, describes the approach that will be taken to develop community guidelines for preparing and sharing data quality information. The report was prepared by Ge Peng (lead author) along with other ESIP Information Quality Cluster leaders.
Virtual Data Help Desk at GSA20: Please Volunteer Volunteer by 10/9 to be a Data Expert for the Virtual Data Help Desk at GSA 2020, to be hosted during the week of GSA 2020 Connects Online (October 26th-October 30th, 2020). This event, which is a program of EarthCube, ESIP, and the GSA Geoinformatics & Data Science Division) connects researchers with informatics experts familiar with their scientific domain to learn about skills and techniques that will help further their research and make their data and software open and FAIR. You can volunteer to take part in one or more of the following ways:
Answer data questions (monitor question forums and answer where you can during the week of October 26th)
Share a recorded demo of a tool or resource (ideally <5 min)
Share a one-pager about your tool or resource
To volunteer, please complete this brief form as soon as possible by October 9th. Learn more about specific options for participating here.
More News
SGCI Webinar: Guidance and Survey Results from the Trustworthy Data Working Group (10/7)
On Wed. 10/7 at 1 pm ET, Jim Basney, Senior Research Scientist at NCSA will present on the guidance and survey results from the Trustworthy Data Working Group. Learn more here.
Seeking scientists, engineers and data experts to advise the NEON program
Interested in ensuring that the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a valuable resource for the community? Consider joining a Technical Working Group (TWG) and help shape NEON science and data. NEON relies on almost two dozen TWGs to advise the program on topics ranging from data standards to specific collection methods. The overarching objective of TWGs is to ensure that the design and operation of the observatory is based upon sound scientific rationale and good engineering practice. NEON is seeking TWG nominees that represent a diversity of expertise, backgrounds, perspectives, and career stages. If you are interested, learn more and nominate yourself or someone else by 9/30 here.
New from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN:
The most recent update to the Global COVID-19 Viewer provides enhanced capabilities to visualize pandemic data and identify at-risk populations, via daily and 7-day trend charts, additional subnational data, and user-friendly mapping tools that let users define a custom area or focus on a location of interest. The Viewer was developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN.
Online training modules in English and Spanish on the fundamentals of spatial data integration for demographers have been released by the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) hosted by CIESIN. Developed by Susana Adamo, CIESIN research scientist and PERN co-coordinator, and Landy Sanchez, former PERN scientific committee chair, the modules include video tutorials that draw on pre-packaged data and open source geographic information system and Web-based tools. Production was supported by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) through a grant of the Hewlett Foundation.
NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities – Fall 2021 (NSTGRO21)
NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) seeks to sponsor U.S. citizen, U.S. national and permanent resident graduate student research that has significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration, and economic future. NASA Headquarters has released a solicitation, titled NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities – Fall 2021 (NSTGRO21). Please note that this solicitation replaces the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowships (NSTRF) solicitation. Proposals in response to NSTGRO21 must be submitted electronically through NSPIRES and are due on November 2, 2020, by 6 PM ET/3 PM PT. Learn more by visiting the following URL: https://tinyurl.com/NSTGRO21.
Help AGI Understand COVID-19 Impacts on Geoscience Workplace & Instructional Environments
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is conducting a year-long study to understand the impacts on geoscientists, employers and educational institutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to discover which of these changes will become permanent. Over the next 52 weeks, survey participants will be emailed a brief online status survey twice a month. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete. For more information about the survey, visit www.americangeosciences.org/workforce/covid19.
LTER Network Synthesis Working Group Proposals
With 28 active research programs going back 40 years and more, the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) has generated a rich trove of data (including over 7000 publicly available long term datasets housed at the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI). To encourage reuse, synthesis, and integration of these data, the LTER Network Office is funding 2-4 new synthesis working groups for up to 2 years and up to $55K/year. Proposals emphasizing LTER's core thematic areas are encouraged, as are novel applications of LTER data. Proposal PIs do not need to be current LTER investigators, but synthesis teams should involve some LTER researchers and must draw on data from at least 2 LTER sites. Proposal deadline is October 14, 2020, with decisions in early January 2021. Full details at https://lternet.edu/synthesis/request-for-proposals-2020/.
Questions/comments? Reply directly to this note or click the button below to email us at staff@esipfed.org
ESIP is funded with support from NASA, NOAA, and the USGS.
