NDS3 Meeting Summary

[Ray Plante <rplante@illinois.edu>]

Hello friend of NDS,

Now that we're back from Austin and our 3rd NDS Consortium Workshop
(March 25-27) and we've had time to catch our breath, I wanted send
out a brief summary of the meeting, particularly for those of you who
couldn't make it.  It was an exciting and productive meeting with some
clear outcomes.  And just because you couldn't make it doesn't mean
you are shut from getting involved; I'll note the ways you can as I
summarize:

  o  THE NDS LABS TUTORIAL
  o  INSPIRATION BUILDING: THE ARC TO THE BREAK-OUTS
  o  PROJECT BREAK-OUTS
  o  CONSORTIUM BUILDING & DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES
  o  MEETING OUTCOMES

Note that all of the slides and notes are now available on the NDS
wiki via http://wiki.nationaldataservice.org/NDS3DetailedProgram.

THE NDS LABS TUTORIAL

On the Wednesday before the plenary, we hosted a tutorial on NDS Labs,
the environment for developing ideas useful to NDS (see
http://www.nationaldataservice.org/projects/labs.html).  While only 10
registered, we ended up with about 26 people in attendance.
Participants were introduced to the cloud-based environment and the
use of Docker containers for providing useful applications and tools.
They were taken through some example workflows, and then they had
plenty of time to try things out on their own.  In the afternoon, we
saw a few demos (including one on the NDS Dashboard tool and one on
H5Serv, a restful web-service for serving HDF5 data), and we collected
feedback and suggestions for Labs going forward.  

I was pleased to see several individuals and groups make at least some
progress in the limited time available bringing up a new tool of some
sort.  For example, one pair managed to update the NDS Dashboard to
allow it to pull data from the SciDrive cloud storage application.  We
also got a lot of great feedback, particularly on improving the
documentation.

INSPIRATION BUILDING: THE ARC TO THE BREAK-OUTS

Our agenda on the Thursday, the first day of the plenary, was designed
to get people thinking about practical problems and projects we could
work on to help pilot out the NDS infrastructure.  Ed Seidel brought
us up to date on what's been happening with NDS since the last
meeting.  He highlighted the construction of NDS Labs as a platform
available to the Consortium to develop and experiment with new tools,
standards, and services.  He also noted a number of funding proposals
and grants within the Consortium that will support NDS-related effort.
Anita de Waard shared very relevent experiences and advice from the
history of Force 11, a grass-roots organization for examining the next
generation of research communication.  Rebecca Koskela represented the
RDA and gave us a report on the recent RDA Plenary in San Diego early in
the month; she highlighted the recent working group deliverables as
well as the RDA fellowship program, both of which could be supported
going forward through NDS Labs.

Matt Turk then gave us a report on NDS Labs, introducing some of the
technical underpinings that are in place now and what's still to come.
This was followed by a series of eight lightning talks, each touching
on a particular project (either in progress or proposed) or important
use case which could be a starting point for an NDS pilot effort.
(See http://wiki.nationaldataservice.org/NDS3DetailedProgram for links
to the speakers' slides.)  The session included plenty of discussion
time where additional ideas and variations were suggested and
discussed.

PROJECT BREAK-OUTS

Using some of the ideas proposed during the lightning talks as well as
the disciplinary interests of the participants as starting points, we
had people organically combine and organize around different problem
ideas.  Four interesting projects emerged.  

  o  The problem of cross-disciplinary data search in the humanities
  o  The internet of physical samples
  o  Integrating SciDrive with other data applications
  o  Implementing the NDS cartoon (see the video at
     http://www.nationaldataservice.org/about/vision.html)

As part of the break-out, we asked each group to explore their
problem's scope, identify possible use cases to address, list any
issues that are important to address, and outline actions for creating
a simple pilot project.  While this was a tall order for the
relatively short time available, we were very pleased that all four
groups were able to reach the final stage identifying actions.  Notes
from these breakouts are available at
http://wiki.nationaldataservice.org/NDS3Notes.

This month, we'll be following up with these groups to help move the
projects forward.  If you are interested in any of these activities,
you are welcome to join in.  Let us know you want to be kept in the
loop via an email to info@nationaldataservice.org, or watch for
additional information through the mailing list.  

CONSORTIUM BUILDING & DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

This meeting was also marked by the introduction of the newly elected
Steering Committee (see http://www.nationaldataservice.org/about/groups.html
as well as the introductory slides on the detailed program page).
That group has already begun to meet, and one of its early tasks will
be to define membership in the Consortium.  

We also heard from Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld with regard to our latest
stakeholder alignment survey which is currently underway.  The big
push on this survey is to reach beyond data providers and
technologists and out to practicing researchers.  Joel shared some of
the early results from the survey so far.  

Joel also led a discussion of the barriers and challenges to advancing
data research practices through a national infrastructure.  This
discussion was highlighted by examinations of two real-world data
research workflows (with thanks to Mary Vartigan of ICPSR and Shelly
Knuth of CU-Boulder).  

MEETING OUTCOMES

We achieved some important outcomes that can be readily acted on and
built upon; in summary:

  o  We saw a great enthusiasm for NDS Labs as a resource for
     developing ideas that can bring about the NDS Vision.

  o  To help guide further development of the its infrastructure,
     we will form an NDS Labs Technical Advisory Committee.  

  o  The group urged better use of the website to connect people with
     current data resources and to help them understand what exists
     today.  

  o  We formally announced the creation of a coordinating committee
     to discuss issues of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science
     (HASS).  This committee will meet soon (via telecon) to document
     key issues for this combined community; data privacy issues will
     be a key topic.  If you are interested in this conversation, let
     us know via email to info@nationaldataservice.org.  

  o  Action plans for four new pilot projects were created.  We will
     be sending out further information on these projects and begin
     supporting participation in carrying them out.  

Overall, we found that participants were ready to see a real shift in
the NDS Consortium toward building things.  NDS Labs will a key
resource for making this happen.  

Remember, you didn't have to be there in Austin to get involved in
Consortium activities.  Visit the meeting site, let us know of your
interest via email to info@nationaldataservice.org, and we can connect
you to the right groups.  

Thanks to all the meeting participants and supportive on-lookers,
Ray Plante
NDS Interim Project Manager & POC Chair



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