December 2018 – quarterly news update
…from CaRCC Council Chair Thomas Cheatham and the leadership team:
Happy Holiday Season and winter from CaRCC! I am happy to see that CaRCC is making significant headway in its goals ranging from shoring up the internal workings and operations to significant progress with the various working groups. We have a better handle on document and meeting management, and are enabling the various working groups to more easily disseminate their information and get feedback. Feedback from some members of the larger ecosystem has people noting that they associate CaRCC with products for the community.
There is a new event calendar at http://carcc.org and soon forms will be made available to allow anyone to suggest events to add to the calendar. The intent is to crowdsource relevant calls, events, workshop, conferences and training.
Below is a summary of the state of working groups from the respective working group co-chairs; we will try to provide this information quarterly.
Thanks for your interest and involvement with CaRCC and best wishes for the new year! If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail admin@carcc.org.
Working Group Updates:
People Network (co-chairs: Lauren Michael, Dana Brunson)
People Network efforts this fall have focused on pursuing additional opportunities for community ownership and expansion. Claire Mizumoto (UCSD) and Bob Freeman (Harvard Business School) were appointed as new coordinators of the Researcher-Facing track. Together, they're solidifying regular contributions from track members to drive call topics and serve as discussion leaders, as well as identifying ways to strengthen track communication via other discussion channels. Leveraging experience from launching the Researcher-Facing track, a core group was identified to launch the Systems-Facing group and invite membership. Alan Silver (UW-Madison) and Brian Haymore (Utah) will serve as interim track coordinators, working closely with the People Network and Researcher-Facing coordinators. Be on the lookout for upcoming invitations to the Systems-Facing track and People Network, and remember to recruit members of your team who would like to join. (Future tracks will include Software-, Data-, and Stakeholder-Facing tracks.)
CI professionalization (co-chairs: Scott Yockel, Patrick Schmitz)
The CI Professionalization team has focused on planning and building a team to move forward with the deliverables that were identified as priorities for the next year. This includes recruiting for a broader working group, with a range of roles (some to help generate specific content or develop ideas, and others to review and comment). In the near term, we will be producing some materials to support communications and outreach around the work completed at, and since, the workshop this past Spring.
Value Proposition (co-chairs: Andy Sherman, Barr von Oehsen)
This working group updated the the stakeholders and value proposition document to be more broad and generic (i.e. less CaRCC focused) and is currently looking for feedback from the community. Next steps include convening the stakeholders and value proposition group for a final review, taking into account any comments and suggestions from the CaRCC community. Once complete, we will look for volunteers to conduct field tests on CaRCC member's respective campuses.
Logistics (co-chairs: Lauren Michael, Dana Brunson, Gail Krovitz)
The Logistics team has been busy establishing common practices and tools for executing consortium-wide activities, including external communication practices (including quarterly updates, like this one), internal documentation and coordination of working group activities, and determining processes and tools for voting on consortium changes requiring input from the CaRCC Council and broader members. Though future efforts will transition to maintenance and adjustments to these practices, the group is working very hard for the time being, in order to initially establish them. Input and ideas from community members beyond CaRCC's leadership across working groups is incredibly welcome.
Future of Research Computing and Data (co-chairs: Jackie Milhans, Gwen Jacobs)
The Future of Research Computing and Data team has identified the goals and deliverables over the next 24 months and will convene the committee to kick off this effort in January 2019. A goal of this committee is to enhance communication between CaRCC, CASC, and NSF ACCI. CaRCC and CASC have been invited to participate in a panel with the ACCI at the ACCI Spring Meeting in April, 2019. The committee will develop an NSF EPSCoR workshop for harnessing the data revolution, a survey to identify needs of researcher PIs from research computing organizations, and a white paper on the future vision of research computing to inform university leadership and funding agencies.
Ecosystem workshop planning (co-chairs: Dana Brunson, Gail Krovitz, Jim Wilgenbusch)
The Ecosystem Workshop planning group is planning a workshop to be held in spring 2019 to bring together representatives from the broader research computing and data communities who are also striving to support and advocate for our emerging profession. The workshop endeavors to energize the community by bringing these various groups together to help define, share, and strengthen the research computing and data ecosystem. The working group is currently developing a set of workshop goals and deliverables, a potential participant list, and a living document describing the ecosystem.
Participate: If interested in joining a working group write to the working group chairs or help@carcc.org