Mentors Retreat 2024 - Oct 16-17

[jules32]

Hi All! This is our planning issue for the 2024 Retreat: Oct 16-17 2024, 10am-2pm PT each day (remotely, online).

We are hoping to have all 12 DAACs present, to mix people who have been around a while with new folks who are onboarding. This will be different from normal co-working. Special. There will be professional development, meeting colleagues, reinforce/develop ethos/culture. Likely some learning/hacktime, since that is our jam.

POP

We will be designing the retreat to meet the group's needs. Here is our draft POP - please share in this issue ideas you have for the POP, especially outcomes you'd like

Purpose: reconnect, reinvigorate, going into fall. Emphasis on the users
Outcomes:
Process: two consecutive days, 4 hour sessions (Chosen because it’s 2 consecutive 4-hour days that suit timezones Alaska-EastCoast that don’t conflict with UWGs/meetings we know of or JPL off Fridays), virtual, co-designed with Liz Neeley. reconnect and ​​reinvigorate our cross-DAAC community going into fall. We will hear from many voices to share progress and barriers to support users, and onboard more of our growing community as contributors as we refine our shared vision for momentum forward.

Email sent Sept 3

Also posted at https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/mentors.html#mentors-retreat-2024

Hello NASA Openscapes Mentors (cc: Justin Rice, ESDIS),

We are excited to be hosting a NASA Openscapes Mentors Retreat Oct 16-17 2024 (remotely, online). Please share this email with your DAAC Managers. This retreat will bring together user support staff from across the DAACs that have engaged as leaders through NASA Openscapes and are helping users migrate workflows using NASA Earthdata to the cloud. It is also a way to onboard new user support staff as mentors. NASA Openscapes is not meant to be extra time, but time where people do their existing work in a different way – with open source science workflows to tackle common things together. We have seen the biggest momentum when there are 2-3 mentors at each DAAC, so that pairs/trios can work together within their DAAC as they bring back what they learn from cross-DAAC work. NASA Openscapes Lead Julie Lowndes is happy to email/meet with mentors and managers for any questions. Thank you to DAAC Managers and ESDIS for supporting staff in this way, it makes a real impact – more momentum & background below.

Retreat Details - Oct 16-17 2024, 10am-2pm PT each day (remotely, online). We see the main value of this retreat as a chance to reconnect and ​​reinvigorate our cross-DAAC community going into fall. We will hear from many voices to share progress and barriers to support users, and onboard more of our growing community as contributors as we refine our shared vision for momentum forward. Mentor actions by Sept 20: Please confirm Y/N in this spreadsheet if you are able to attend, and protect this time as intensively as if we were in person. We will follow up with report-out summaries and ways to contribute for mentors not able to join.

Momentum - NASA Openscapes Mentors have created “go-to” resources for staff and users across DAACs – such as the earthaccess python library and tutorials in the Earthdata Cloud Cookbook. Over the last 3.5 years, mentors have developed a supportive community and created these resources in response to teaching hundreds of DAAC users via workshops and events together, and then further iterated through active use, documentation, and teaching. Recent presentations showcasing this work is Supporting NASA Earthdata users in the Cloud: NASA Openscapes onboarding & fledging and earthaccess: how to accelerate user value through open, collaborative development; all work is developed openly and linked from https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/.

Background - Openscapes is an open source approach and a movement. Openscapes is a way to work together that shifts culture by helping people find each other and collaboratively evolve their work with modern and kind open data science workflows. Openscapes launched in 2018 through funding from Mozilla, via an open science fellowship awarded to Julia Lowndes. Openscapes grew with funding from NASA Earthdata, via decades-long community building leadership by Erin Robinson. In addition to our flagship Champions program that helps science teams shift workflows to open science, we lead multi-year projects with NASA and NOAA. Our NASA work supports scientific researchers using data from NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) as they migrate workflows to the cloud; our NOAA work is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act funds to support NOAA Fisheries’ data, infrastructure, and workforce modernization.

[jules32]

Today I emailed managers at CDDIS and LAADS to see if we could onboard mentors from their DAACs.

Updated Oct 2: 19 mentors signed up from 9 DAACs!

1. PODAAC
2. NSIDC
3. GES DISC
4. OB DAAC
5. ORNL
6. ASDC
7. SEDAC
8. LP DAAC
9. ASF DAAC

[jules32]

Draft Agenda