Weekly Telecon Notes

From Education

September 4

Michelle, Kay, Jim R., Henry, Kathy, Fitz, Steve Gordon, Susan, Clyde, Mary Ann, Laura, Jim F., Jeff K., Randy

Reviews & Acceptances

• Head count - 108 participants, based on budget (5 taken for UCEF finalists)
• So we're trying to find top 100 to bring to SC
• Yet to be answered - how many from each team?
  • Judge students separately from faculty?
  • Variation on how people handled this issue - some used different scale for deciding ratings for students than for faculty
• Teams?
  • A few columns specifically about team-work aspect, about 20% score per person
  • Some of the teams have higher/lower scores specifically based on individuals
    • Currently three teams from U of Illinois - small, but not necessarily strongest individual candidates on same team - could mix and match from teams at the same university?
• Selection team? Probably Michelle, Laura, and Scott (short on time, need to do quickly)
• Personalized e-mails will be given to people accepted as well as to team leaders letting them know who on team was accepted
  • Don't send out a reject right away unless right on bottom of list, because wait to hear back how many accepted decide they can't come anymore
  • For rejected, will also include reminder that they're willing to pay their own way to conference and then just let us know if want to participate in education program

Instructors

• All of the slots have been filled, only one waiting for instructors for is math section
  • Bob is going to try to get ahold of Dan Warner to find out what's going on
• Pathways leaders did a good job of cutting back and doing lean selections (from 60 last year to less than 30 this year)

Booth

• Booth people need answer from Laura and Scott, but probably do have swag
  • If we could get estimate of budget, that would help a lot
• Kay will ask Scott about floor space guy
• Need to finalize what need for furniture
• Probably will have continental breakfast and box lunch for student contest, and will have water coming throughout day
  • Laura is going to see about finalizing this

Student Contest

• Michelle compared if students for teams are already on other lists
  • Just don't know yet how many are student volunteers or broader engagement, Michelle will forward these on to check with Tiki and Paul
• Michelle will sent out e-mail to teams making sure they know can only have five

Alumni Speakers

• Shawn in charge of choosing them (not on call)

Curriculum Fair

• Masa in charge (not on call)
• Michelle sent him a first draft to Masa about curriculum fair announcement, then will send that out the week of September 15th once acceptances finalized
  • Also will send this to Broader Engagement people
• Some people not going to Ed Program interested in presenting and have been in touch with Laura about it
  • Potentially send message to nsci list and tell can present materials at Curriculum Resource Fair if are coming
  • Need to make sure they know no funding is available and at least one author must be present
• Will stay at the Red Lion and not participate at OmniSci because probably best for our program

Teacher Program

• Saturday during the day, perhaps Portland State University or another science center location
• Coming together well
• Will be using different people (not from our program), but willing to come to come on their own funding
• Invite the Portland teachers to the hotel for the curriculum fair (Saturday night)
  • Probably about 30 people, should be able to come

August 19

Scott, Jeff K, Stephanie, Rany, Bonnie, Clyde, Henry, Michele, Dalma, Kay, Laura, Jim R, Richard, Shawn, Mary Anne, Leandro, Fitz, Tom
If I've missed anyone, please add yourself to the list. thx. lfm)
Update on Charlie’s note to the committee

• A lot of conversations happening among Scott, Wilf, Cherri, Charlie, Laura and others.
• What happened and why is still unclear
• Very strong commitment from SC Education Community to present the quality program we were working on before all this happened
• Scott will continue to talk with Wilf to get things straightened out
• Laura is reviewing budget and expenses so we know what we have to work with for November
  
  

Re-grouping

• commitment for moving forward: ABSOLUTELY. The SC Education Community is committed to producing the program that we have been working on.
  • The group has requested that we reconsider the meeting time, now that classes are starting for so many members of the community. See the doodle online at http://www.doodle.com/grrtexp3fm2h9efu and indicate when you will be available for a weekly concall.
• appoint a chair: By acclamation, Scott Lathrop will oversee the remaining activities that get us through the November conference.
  • This is, per Scott, because Charlie concurs with Scott taking on this role
  • Laura will continue to handle the financial aspects of the program
• budget update and next steps
  • Cherri's current estimate for the SC Ed November program is $275K, which she believes will support 130 participants and 18 instructors/staff/committee.
  • Laura is verifying all of the receipts submitted for the Education Program so far and will have a more precise (and defensible) estimate in the next day or so.
    
    

Application Review Process

• review selection criteria
  • Scott will (has) sent the review worksheet out to the committee. He needs comments back by the end of the day tomorrow (Thursday)
• identify reviewers
  • Current reviewers: Shawn, Tom, Jim F, Jim R, Henry, Bonnie, Clyde, Dave, Stephanie, Mary Anne, Susan, Kathy. Laura & Scott as/if needed. (update as of 5pm: we now have 20 reviewers)
  • Scott will also invite reviewers from the TeraGrid EOT community to help review
  • Would like to have 30 reviewers, if possible, since there are over 350 applications and we should have 3 reviews of each (total is 1050 reviews to be done).
• timeline for reviews
  • Applications will be handed out on Friday, August 21.
  • Reviews due back no later than Aug 31; the sooner the better.
• acceptance timeline of applicants
  
  • We should know our headcount target (how many participants we can invite) by Sept 1.
  • Would like to send notifications as soon after that as possible, no later than Sept 15, to meet hotel and travel deadlines.
    
    

Committee registration, housing, etc. (deferred) Update on program agenda

• Richard is reviewing the schedule to be sure all slots are filled
• Richard will send out the acknowledgments to the presenters/instructors/speakers early next week
• Parallel track may need some instructor support

Other?

• Teacher Day
  • Bonnie is working out a solution that will let us present to the Portland teachers somewhere offsite; this will let us make contacts without incurring the complications that the SC General Committee pointed out wrt meals, badging, etc.
  • Bonnie has a team in place to work with her on this
  • Teacher Day schedule will be coordinated with SC Education Program schedule for Saturday so that instructors won't have to be in two places at the same time
  • Will need to talk to someone in the SC General Committee (Communications committee? Wilf?) if the event will have the "SC09" brand or use the SC09 logo.
• Booth
  • Intel would like to do on-the-"street" interviews from our booth; will need network drop, power, and a little bit of space. These interviews will happen in the afternoons, probably starting Tuesday.
  • Need to consider how/where to display "curriculum resources" (i.e. posters) in the booth, since Space says we can't use the convention center halls for bulletin boards. Might need to do "best of" or "viewers choice" to decide which to show at OCC.
  • "SC Petting Zoo" (LittleFe), etc will need tables, etc for display.
  • Kay will convene a booth team concall to work out details
• Student Programming Contest
  • Organizing group right now is: Kay, Tom, Jim Rome, Fitz
  • Three past team members from Carnegie Mellon have also offered to help; Laura will send contact info and details to Kay

August 12

• Charlie, Michelle, Dalma, Scott, Kay, Susan, Shawn, Jeff K., Tom, Richard, Stephanie, Clyde, Kevin, Fitz, Randy, Steve, Henry

Teacher Day:

• Meetings in New Orleans This Week: Cheri (Broader Engagement) and Jeff (Finance chair) not supportive of our teacher day this late in the game - one-day badges, space for lunch, etc. a problem
  • Thought a good idea but for next year
  • They are cancelling it for this year
• Possibly we could take in more K-12 teachers, have them on the computational thinking track - particularly need to look at whether people tell in enough detail, AP teachers, etc. (teachers making good case for themselves certainly considered on same level as undergrad teacher, etc.)
  • Also hold a BoF
• Have one of us do a computational thinking half-day session at one of the schools (Bonnie has some good intro materials)
  • Issues if we're sending money offsite, also we're going to have lots of problems going around roadblocks committee put up - need to use pathway funds, not committee
  • If schools can organize this themselves, Bonnie, Steve, etc. could just show up (just happens to be same week as the conference) - probably needs to be part of the school day and needs to already be on the calendar as a school event
  • People working on this idea: Stephanie, Bonnie, Susan, Steve

Past Participants:

• Scott is sending out e-mail to past participants to see what have been doing as a result of involvement in the conference
  • This will be used to fill the alumni slots
  • Send this to workshop and fall conference alumni
• Will be able to take this to steering committee, high PR
  • Also save them and start including them in SC newsletters
• What should we ask?
  • Yes - planning on coming to November and would come
  • Yes - not planning on November but would come to give talk
  • No - but you can include my success story in materials
• Point out that we need to keep the funding coming so help us as a team effort
• Scott will create SurveyMonkey and then send it to us for review

SC Fall Conference:

• We're limited to 160 participants and at most 40 participants
  • Leadership concerned about overall volume because booths bought have gone down
  • Also disagreements about some of the offsets they gave us
• Times for BOFS: maybe Sunday, Monday evening (5-7) until the gala
• Networking/lab time: 12:30 - 1:30 each day, instructors supposed to be available to help, make sure clear everyone will be there
  • Like open lab during evenings at workshops
  • In the breakout rooms sessions are held in - we can preassign certain topics to certain rooms
  • Can do BoFs at this time as well if have specific ones
  • No lab time 12:30 - 1:30 on Tuesday because rooms being used by other
• Currently have one, maybe two, people for alumni talks (10 minutes talk, 5 minutes questions)
  • We need a certain place for abstracts to be sent - same time as asking for curriculum fair abstracts (only send curriculum fair to applicants)
  • Everyone should be asked to apply, won't guarantee application to SC09 but will help
  • Sent to a mailing list
• Ethernet and wireless ready to go for fall conference, electrical requests still going through
• Conference schedule - good overall, but:
  • Chemistry presentation on Intermediate Molecular Modeling disappeared from schedule (but will give up NSDL session to put it on)
  • Physics will give up a session to include the Chem one
  • Parallel needs to figure out their schedule
  • One schedule is set, we'll start requesting abstracts and links to resources

Booth:

• For more information, see http://wiki.sc-education.net/index.php/SC09_Booth
• Need to talk about possibly having Intel broadcast their stuff in the booth
• Room along wall to keep the posters up during conference

Curriculum Fair:

• Will have an update next week, Masa and Michelle will talk
• Send suggestions to Masa to incorporate into curriculum fair
  • Roughly same as last year, except portion set aside for alumni, and portion set aside for the Blue Waters project

August 5th

• Present - RichardG, Mary AnnL, JimR, SteveG, SteveS, CharlieP, MichelleK, TinaG, Dalma, RandyP, ShawnS, HenryN

Conference Program

• Schedule review (Michelle's email of Aug 5th)
  • Back to "conference" schedule - start at 8:30a, etc.
  • Some horse-trading between the disciplines, Parallel and Cluster is looking for more space but they need to produce a schedule of topics.
  • Plenaries
    • Welcome/orientation/announcements (1 hour or 1.5 hours, Saturday)
    • UCES talks and award (1.5 hours, Sunday)
    • Alumni session (1.5 hours, Monday) - invite steering committee members?
    • Panoff and Verona awards and Student Programming Contest awards (1 hour, Tuesday)
  • Alumni talks
    • Discipline diversity is important (quality trumps though)
    • Acceptance to program if accepted for alumni talk
    • Communicate nature of the talk well beforehand and again when accepted:
      • general audience
      • pedagogical and implementation issues are important
      • show CSERD entry for their project
      • 10 minute presentation + 5 minutes for questions
  • Parallel Curriculum panel - 5:30p on Tuesday, large room (225 people), infrastructure and signage details needed
  • Kathy Traxler is going to work with Bonnie on the pre-college program for Saturday.
• Application review process
  • All of the SC09 committee should register
  • Lead and group
  • Guidelines (individuals and teams)
    • Teams - if more students than can be accepted from a particular school let their faculty choose the students. RandyP has lots of ideas about the team process.
  • Process and tool - organize over coming week, initial cut by 19th, final by 26th
  • How many and which staff/instructors, guidance from Pathway's leads, 160:40 ratio is the goal.
• Shirts - quotes coming, Michelle will forward them along.
• Booth - the booth gang has met and put their ideas on the wiki, more news next week.
• Software image
  • USB drives with content, tools; second one with BCCD
  • Kevin Hunter is the lead, Pathways leaders should contact him with needs
  • Mathematicians, do you need a local Sage notebook server?
• Other long lead-time items?

Workshops

• Last binders shipped yesterday to OU; a small celebration was held in Iowa...

July 29th

• Jeff K, Shawn, Michelle, Charlie, Dan, Bonnie, Stephanie, Kay, Jim Rome, Mary Ann, Susan, Clyde, Randy, Henry, Laura, Tiki

Student Volunteers

• Student volunteers requests - Michelle is going to generate numbers of how many we need based on the events we have
  • About one student per room with a few extra - rovers and people assigned to the booth

Room Needs

• Charlie will talk to electrical and SCinet soon - need to know room setups, electrical
  • A/V requests have been entered in to the database
  • Each room has projector, screen, podium, one wireless lapel microphone (may not even need to use microphones for the small rooms)
  • Power to all of the classroom tables
  • Breakout rooms all wireless, plenary session is wired Internet

Schedule

• Proposed chedule is on the wiki: http://wiki.sc-education.org/index.php/Draft_Education_Conference_Program

T-shirts

• Michelle is going to talk to shirts contact again (haven't heard back), asking for pricing, etc.
  • Laura found more shirts
  • With partner logos of the t-shirts, have to also consider what partner logos look like on the back

USB Drives

• Should we use the USB drives from last year to put this year's SC Ed content on it?
  • Last year, everyone had their name on the side of the drive given out
  • Charlie will talk with committee if we can use last year's logo
  • Organized by track, not day, room, etc. this year
    • Need common track for plenaries and stuff like Netlogo ("general")

Curriculum Fair

• Masa has agreed to lead it, we will start talking and fleshing out details later

Pre-College Day Plan

• We would partner with someone in NW/Portland and in Saturday or Sunday bring many teachers in with content available to them, tours, etc.
• Lou Fredericks at Portland State University, John Koonie, Ruth Farmer - want to help and do informal help
  • Bonnie is contacting them to see what they're interested in offering
  • Probably want with Train the Trainers, What is Supercomputing, Netlogo stuff, curriculum we currently do - we can't do this separately, so we have to schedule on the day the K-12 are coming with the most content possible appropriate for that audience
  • Maybe we should tie in with the alumni presentations so we would have that
• Saturday much easier for us to add to our lunch since that's the only day it's just us, also curriculum fair is Saturday night
  • Workshop participants get laptops that day but we can't give out enough laptops to include the just Saturday people, so need to encourage the one day people to bring them
• We may be able to give them USB drive

Registration/Review Process

• Valerie and intern have started migrating Kay's system to Shodor
  • Still being updated, Shodor admins need to look at it some
• We need to look at folks doing reviewing and make sure we have similar lenses for what we are looking for and value as a program
• Deadline is August 1, with extension only for the two workshops (but silent extension - we aren't policing who uses the extension)
• SC General doesn't want us to make any notifications until August 31 - due to budget reasoning they want us to send acceptances after that
• New posted deadline: August 22 to be more honest, that way also August workshops have a week to register
• Need a way to be able to go back and see if they updated their applications if we start reviewing soon
  • There is a date last updated field for the applicants so we may be able to see this
• If interested in being a reviewer, e-mail Charlie
• Someone e-mailed Charlie interested in applying for both SC Ed and Broader Engagement
  • This has happened in the past, in past if accepted as SC Ed participant, we tell them they have to accept one or other
  • Can apply to as many as want, can accept only to one
• Right now we don't give people much feedback as what to do for teams
• BridgeDay people didn't specifically state they were from BridgeDay though formed teams - assume they should have let us know why they should bring them

Thoughts for Next Year's Applicants

• Give better feedback for why we want to have the teams
• Also want to make sure we're explicit about asking for their experience and why we should select them
• Need to help explain what we're looking at project together in teams
• Laura and Bonnie will help review this next year

Schedule

• Michelle is checking with people to see if we could move plenary session from 8:30 to 8:00

Next week -

• Discuss reviewing criteria
• Squeezing out what we need to do for the program in our slots

July 22

Present: HenryN, MichelleK, ScottL, CharlieP, TinaG, Dalma, StephanieS, ClydeM, RichardG, SusanR, SteveG, LauraM, RandyP, DanW, Shawn, Mary Ann, Andrew

Next Week (29th)

• Booth details
• Infrastructure requests in database
• Pre-college day schedule and which day

Conference Schedule provided by Steve Gordon (see updated on Wiki, Draft Education Conference Program)

• Based on available rooms may not fit the extra Physics session in.

• Steve would like the Education Committee to review and determine where sessions and people may overlap

Consider depth of sessions intro/beginner

• Work through agenda next week – need Pathways leaders to be on next week call

• Mathematics schedule provided by Dan Warner – planning three sessions

*1. Intro – schedule Saturday or Sunday *2. Introduce Sage – intermediate level *3. Advanced session – experimental mathematics In action – top ten algorithm

• Mathematics side note: Bob working with Mike Mascagni on computational math idea (Random Numbers)

Alumni/Success stories.

• Need non-committee/staff people presenting
• Six speakers at 15 minutes each – fill one plenary session – Monday -

Suggestions welcome for Alumni we should contact:

• Email to be sent to past attendees seeking willing participants (Laura/Scott assisting)
• Ask them to tell us how they have taken their knowledge from SC Education and applied it to their classroom.
• Looking at teacher action plans from SC07 and SC08 may be good source of info

Suggested Names:

• Antoinette Davis –
• North Polk Community School Teachers

• Need to update web site with tentative agenda, trouble getting people to commit without posted agenda

Additional Agenda Updates:

• Mini Symposia for UCES finalists, Sunday morning plenary 8 am – 9:30 am
• Five 15 minute presentations (extra time for questions and introductions)
• Plenary level speakers

• Tuesday Awards Presentations 10 am – 10:30 am
• Verona Award, Panoff Award, UCES Award, Student Competition Award

• Tuesday – 10:30 – 11:30 am "Express" Show Floor Tours
• Break out into smaller groups of 10 people (will need several group leaders)
• Divide group into interest area of show floor (ie: different groups visit different vendors)

Shirts

• Michelle will contact SC wearables coordinator to provide samples and get order started

July 15, 2009

Agenda:

• Shirts, see Michelle's message and previous minutes.
• Conference Program
  • September 15th travel list due-date
  • Track by track program drafts
  • Places for synergy between track attendees - Leading CT Workshops, others?
  • Pre-college outreach activity, possibly with NCWIT? (Bonnie)
  • Application process, instructor to participant ratio
• Finance stuff

Present: Charlie Peck, Steve Gordon, Kevin Hunter, Andrew Fitz Gibbon, Kay Wanous, Tom Murphy, Susan Reagan, Jim Ferguson, Stephanie Stevenson, Jeff R., Laura McGinnis, Richard Gass, Dan Warner, Michelle King, Clyde Metz,

Shirts

• Staff
  • Short sleeve
  • Breast Pocket
  • Black w/ Logo (akin to past years')
  • "Staff" (more inclusive than "Instructor", "Committee")
• Participant
  • Long sleeve
    • Often gets chilly in conference rooms
  • Sea-Foam green for main color
  • Sponsor logos on back; main logo on front
• Sizes
  • Michelle: Get size distribution from past NCSI database and extrapolate

Conference Program

• Outlines
  • Physics, Engineer, Biology pathways have responded
    • Missing other pathways
  • Charlie to forward others to planning group
  • Up to 12 90-minute sessions per pathway
    • No need to fill all; try for minimal overlap and to enable "cross-pollination"
• Small group work on conference program
  • Michelle, Steve, Stephanie, Richard
• Applications from Alumni participants
  • Abstracts?
    • Different than the poster session submissions
    • Not mandatory, but would strengthen application
    • Quality matters
  • Alumni presentations give encouragement to current participants
• Masa agreed to be part of curriculum resource fair
• Someone to help/push Bob to find the Computational Thinking Leadership Track
  • waiting for outline from Bob
  • Susan (& Stephanie) to work with Bob on getting an outline done

Pre-College

• Talked about not doing a whole track
• Bring in local teachers for day (Saturday?)
• Stephanie will work with Bonnie
• Michelle: Saturday good day for this because of Curriculum Resource Fair
  • Less people in the communities food room, and meeting space, generally speaking we'll have more space on Saturday
• Small group of "facilitators" to stay with them, answer questions, introduce people, etc
• Sessions appropriate to k12 should try to happen on Saturday
  • Try to stagger these to enable attendance of all sessions
• Computer access?
  • If we have working sessions, then we might need local access
  • Assume net access only for the k12 attendees
    • Not enough conference laptops: encourage people to bring their own
  • Maybe pair up teachers with a normal participant

Logistics

• Applications by July 1
  • Possible extension to allow for participants from OU workshop (until Aug 16)
    • See http://sc09.sc-education.org/conference/registration.php
  • Equates to 2-3 weeks of application review
  • Meeting happening this Friday to discuss software to process applications
    • Tom and Laura express interest in this meeting
    • Past years this process was very [technically] arduous
    • Porting others' code would prove to be more time consuming than appropriate
• Travel lists must be 90% certain by Sept 15
  • This due to increased conference budget awareness
• Instructors should start applying
• Expense and stipend forms/requests must be in ASAP
  • Reference Charlie's email concerning budget (July 15, 2009: [SC09 Education] SC finance update ...)

Software

• Kevin to send email Aug 2:
  • Need list of instructors
  • Request for software lists/versions/etc
• Initial lists for software [should be] in proposed outlines

July 8, 2009

Present: Charlie Peck, Kevin Hunter, Laura McGinnis, Andrew Fitz Gibbon, Dan Warner, Richard Gass, Susan, Clyde Metz, Steve Gordon, Kay Wanous, Jim Ferguson, Michelle King, Stephanie Stevenson, Mary-Ann Leung, Bob Panoff, Tom Murphy, Tom Lochran, Leandro, Kevin Hunter, Bonnie Bracey, Tina Garrett

Shirts

• Last week's call decided for generic multi-year shirt
• Arguments made via email for same logo as the conference year with "Education Program" underneath
• Suggestion for 2 shirts:
  • T-shirts for participants (with year)
  • Polo for instructors (with year)
    • Suggestion for collared/polo: "Staff" (more inclusive than instructor)
    • "Instructor" or "Committee" more in line with general SC
  • "Committee" for polo/collared shirt
• T-shirts with printed logo; no pocket
• Pocket on polo (see about pricing)
• Michelle has logo samples from SC core

Workshops

• Atlanta -> Florida travel logistics

Florida cancelled.

• Flights credited, credit towards another travel opportunity (fall conference, etc.)
• For the participants already committed: what are they going to lose?
  • Most in local area. most probably going to drive; only a couple flight costs to handle

OSC set at 12 participants. Everyone local, so not many extra charges due to flights

• Kevin/Fitz driving to be assistants. essentially local.

• What's the capacity for Arkansas?

OU

• Participants need to commit
• Where are we on our limits?
• Deadline? Later this month (24th or so).
  • Need to see about air-fare.
  • Half of participants local and not flying

Conference

Networking:

• with the cost of wired infrastructure, we'll go with hybrid wired/wireless
• Plenary room half wired half wireless
  • wired to "classroom" seats, the rest wireless
• Session rooms w/ switch for easy access to wireline if needed
• Wireline always at speaker's podium
• We'll have all the wires with us too, just in case.

Program:

• Pathways leads send outline (rough daily schedule) to group containing what they want to see in each track during the conference
  • Do this before next week's call
  • (Dave Joiner physics lead?)
• Bob will offer a "train the trainer" session for Computational Thinking
• Every pathway doesn't need something for every time block
  • Or participants of the path won't get content out of the rest of the conference
  • Two 90-minute blocks in each of the 8 half-days.
• Early lunch to accommodate conference numbers
• Rough schedule:
  • 7-8a breakfast
  • 8-9:30 plenary
  • 10-11:30 breakout
  • 11:30 - 12:30 lunch
  • 12:30 - 2 breakout
  • 2:30 - 4 breakout
  • 4 - 5:30 open sessions
• 3 blocks per day, 3 days
• Air-wall on every day for plenary room

• k12 track? No, unless we can get some good HPC material for it.
• Room space incredibly tight (down to 4 rooms from 6)
• might still be interesting to look at what a k12 track would look like
  • each track develop an intro
• k12 to the computational thinking track

• Henry and Kay to do Ed booth
• About 50 applications already (not including committee members)
• Poster chair for curriculum fair?
  • Masa did good job last year. see about him again for this year
• Demos/talks/presentations by past attendees to fill some session for each track
• One session as an "alumni session" for each pathway
  • Someone from each pathway to say "what have I done since the workshop."

Who's doing licensing?

• Kevin Hunter contact for license issues.

Decision making process

• Largely by consensus
  • allows younger members to try to have a stronger voice
• Concern that decisions get made with a lack of quorum on calls
  • email lists guaranteed have quorum
• Need notes/minutes for every call
  • Ask everyone to read through the notes
• Notes should be more comprehensive, include some of the actual discussions
• Perhaps time critical things should be closer to executive decisions
• Good to have comprehensive notes in publicly available places in order to be able to reread

Charlie's notes from the July 8th meeting

June 24, 2009

Present: Jeff Rufinus, Charlie, Stephanie, Richard Gass, Kay, Michelle, Tina, Clyde, Tom L, Jeff Krause, Henry, Bonnie, Tiki, Tom M, George Chang, Steve Gordon

• Kevin is working with Intel, they seem interested to loan the laptops again
• Bonnie's contact - Women in Computing council (Ruthie Farmer) offered to do something in support of the conference - 4h, Girl Scouts, without attending the conference - make some awareness within that learning community
  • They have funding, and the groups would create their own project in support of what we're doing - computational science reverberation through community with SC logo on it
  • Free advertising offer
  • Some scouts come and do tours of the floor
  • Charlie will talk with Ruthie

Shirts:

• SC overall logo t-shirts (Kay will send logo to Michelle)
• Have them for the conference
  • Instructor polos gray, everybody ones blue
  • Either low end polos (just instructors) or high end collarless shirts (everyone)

Booth:

• Charlie is talking with Steve Dunlop
• Henry and Kay might do this together
• Exhibit Hall costs very much, free outside
• Michelle, Kay, Henry will talk about this

Conference program space footprint

• Lunch supposed to be at 11:30 - how long do we want to go after this?

Parallel Sessions:

• We only have four available sometimes, other times five or six parallel sessions
• Pathways people should talk about which sessions they want to have

Conference policies and procedures ok?

• Kay will wikify information Michelle has been sending around
• Charlie submitted request to SC conference site to change date to Aug. 1

Conference program content ideas

Joint sessions for learning CSERD, VVA, Teaching a CT {1/2 day, 1 day, 3 day} Workshop

• Bob willing to offer some of these (train people how to do a computational thinking workshop) - should help increase our population
• How to add/edit CSERD and ideas of validation, verification, and accreditation
  • Maybe CSERD as plenary?
• VVA - better done by someone giving overview of process, giving detailed instructions, and then everyone does a few while others walk around and give input
  • Help get people interested and excited about CSERD, improve comments and quantity in CSERD
  • Interest people in it early and then reinforce it during the social times
• Plenaries: CSERD first, then VVA

Networking/absorption/lab time:

• We have Friday night Curriculum Fair
• Dedicated room throughout the day? (staffed by shoulder surfers throughout the day)
• Consider going from 4 - 5 every day (123/124 is largest room, open in morning, then being split into two rooms in the afternoon for parallel sessions) - we have break 3:00 - 3:30, would take time to take airwall back down each afternoon - but we could use the rooms disparately
  • Use lots of many little rooms rather than one big one
  • Do Sunday, Monday (not Sat because have curriculum fair), we end Tuesday night - we also have room at the Red Lion Sunday, Monday, Tuesday nights
  • Mention on Saturday that we'll continue to have this social time available on Sunday and Monday
  • Need to have the instructors all there

Conference committee housing, student volunteer application deadline

June 17, 2009

Present: Tom, Laura, Dave, Michelle, Charlie, Clyde, Tina, Henry

Workshops:

• UC Merced drop-out rate was really high, most were within the week before the workshop and they had not sent the deposit.
• Atlanta is full now (30), take first 30 now and any future registrations go to waiting list.
• LSU is full now (34), take first 30 and remainder and any future registrations go to waiting list.
• Taking first means first come, first served; not based on geography.
• Conversation about how to vet applicants for the workshops, the details of this will need to be examined by Laura, et. al. during the fall.
• OK Parallel and Cluster, take first 45 now and remainder and any future registrations go to waiting list.
• PSC - Laura will nudge the marketing effort once the local accommodations and registration details are set. AG operators know what's going on. Fitz and Kevin will provision BCCD off of USB drives when they arrive at PSC. AG testing on Sunday afternoon, camera operator at LSU? PSC's and LSU's techs will contact Charlie soon about BCCD ISO testing.
• Workshop expense spreadsheet - Laura needs chart of accounts and the rest of the budget information (from Charlie).

Conference Program:

• Michelle's draft marketing message (review before COB Friday and send feedback)
• Michelle's space footprint (review for next Wednesday's telecon)

Next Week:

• Conference program space footprint
• Conference program content ideas
  • Joint sessions for learning CSERD, VVA, Teaching a CT {1/2 day, 1 day, 3 day} Workshop
  • Networking/absorption/lab time
• Conference committee housing, student volunteer application deadline
• Conference policies and procedures ok?

June 10, 2009

Present: Charlie, Michelle, Henry, Laura, Clyde, Tina, Dalma

Tina is heading to Texas for graduate school in August, Krell has a new person Dalma that will be taking-over similar tasks.

Workshop Stuff

• Registration numbers generally look good, Michelle will send us an update when she has a chance. AR has 24 and is still recruiting to fill drop-outs.
• PR for PSC side of LSU workshop will start in earnest next week, not concerned The deposit needs to be $100 not $150 on the terms and conditions page. Laura is working on catering and hotel details. Fitz and Kevin will be shoulder-surfing at PSC.
• Krell is working hard at duplicating notebooks as far ahead of time as possible to reduce shipping costs and insure that everything is in-place when it needs to be.
• URLs for materials with copyright attachments or materials that aren't "published" can be published on the Moodle. In general we want hard content but this seems like a reasonable exception.
• AR Computational Science workshop, taping the whole week is $2,700. We only really need Mon, Tue, Wed morning, includes post-production. Who "owns" the final product? What format? Participants can go back, instructor instruction.

Conference Program Stuff

• Logistics Fair at Portland - toured Red Lion, looks like sharing space with BE will work-out well, curriculum fair space looks nice. Michelle has pictures, 20 minute bus ride to convention center, grocery store close-by, each room has a fridge and a microwave. Our hotel is one of the few with a bus shuttle serving it, others will be using light rail. Laura spoke with Wilf and Cherri about LPCE, they are going to carry the message more conference wide.
  • A/V setup - Michelle and Charlie are working through the details. Henry suggested having a mixer in the plenary room and one breakout room.
  • Network setup - Considering using WiFi infrastructure rather than wireline. This would require additional access points in our area but that would be a much more cost-effective solution given our current network needs.
  • Booth - We need a conversation about what and how we are going to use it. Parts from Freeman. Presentations haven't worked well in the past.
  • SWAG - shirts?, padfolios?, think green.
• Intel and Laptops - Kevin and Charlie are working with Intel to arrange for the loan of 150 laptops (again).
• About 20 people have applied to-date.
• Send the application announcement to all the workshop participants. Michelle will put together something with a bit more marketing flair.

Marketing

• Kay was going to work on a new flyer for use at TeraGrid, Michelle will ping her.

Next Week:

• Homework - re-read post-mortem notes before the telecon!
• Booth - what, how, who leads?, etc.
• Conference program - how many of what sessions.

June 3, 2009

Present: Charlie, Tina, Tom, Kay, Henry, Michelle

Topics:

• Workshops
  • more than 12 non-students registered at LSU, have been sent confirmations - waiting to see if students will have mentors
  • shoulder-surfer for PSC - Fitz? Kevin Hunter? (Charlie will e-mail Kevin)
    • no one registered for PSC
    • talk to Laura about the marketing
    • virtual instructors need to sign up
  • need a post-mortem from Bob about Calvin
  • Michelle/Tina needs to send out bibliography for parallel/distributed library so we can decide how to div it up
• conference program
  • infrastructure costs have gone up quite a bit - ways to reduce include
  • stop using so much wired and also reduce A/V will save $$
  • reduce signs so only one sign per room per day
  • give instructors option of having a roommate
• Portland investigation
  • Hotel looks nice
  • Saturday night event - will space be big enough?
  • Registration space for Friday will be off of registration front desk on main floor
    • Also room reserved on lower level for the hors d'oeuvres
  • Checking to see if we could get a large suite for cost of a normal room - especially nice if whoever's room it is can crash and others still work
  • Wifi in all of hotel
  • Walkable to BE
  • Complementary airport shuttle that will also take participants to other parts of the island
  • Fridge and microwave in all the rooms
  • Safeway groceries walkable
  • Hotel shuttle can take down to MAX, MAX to convention center - about six miles by car, fifteen minutes (25-30 minutes by Max)
    • They will also provide bus from hotel to convention center just for us and BE
  • T-shirts and conference bags handed out at registration first night, then took them back next morning for people who hadn't gotten them
    • They'll get their folders, agendas, badges, and registration info at the hotel on Friday night - pick up conference bags, shirts, etc. the next morning
• Shirts for instructors and/or participants for fall

May 29th, 2009

Present: Charlie, Tina, Michelle, Kay, Henry, Scott

Topics:

• Conference Program - publicity, registration system, policies, other?
  • Valerie will open registration for us to register and test and then we'll go live on Monday
  • Next week we'll send out notifications about registering
  • Kay needs to update the sc-ed site
  • Potentially improve instructor/participant ratio in favor of more participants - some of SC07 instructors went on their own funds
• Awards program - registration system, publicity
  • Ready by Monday
• Workshop logistics
  • Does Kathy have a role with these students that she would server as mentor for the week? Tina will e-mail her
  • Michelle is crafting engineering e-mail and will see if Steve can send it out
  • All other workshops except LSU, OSU, OSC have been accepted
  • OSU can support more than 39 participants if Josh can be an assistant instructor (if Tom and/or Charlie have to cancel, Kay has agreed, potentially Kathy Traxler) -- tell people mostly likely won't be needed -- Charlie will do this
    • We should make sure Kathy does some work at LSU workshop
• Moving our weekly calls to Wednesday afternoons
  • We're going to move to 2 EST from now on through the summer, starting next week
• Publicizing and using the forums
  • Forums will be put on the front site
  • E-mail sent to instructors at beginning of week with reminders of awards, contest, forums
  • Charlie will send e-mail to instructors after Kay puts info on how to subscribe to forum up
• Other?
  • Later we need to discuss policies for instructors and participants at SC09

May 22nd, 2009

Present: Scott, Michelle, Tina, Tom, Kay, Laura

Topics:

• Conference Program registration system - Michelle is going to poke Valerie
• Workshops - Widener cancellation, LSU-PSC logistics, instructors (bodies at PSC?), AG planning
  • We're starting two months late from last year, we need to make a huge impact advertising
  • Deadline for closing registration is when housing needs the names - September 15th (housing) - and we need six weeks to fill that
  • Recruiting - NCSI database with this springs' additions, target marketing in Pacific Northwest, individuals talking to their contacts
    • Krell will print SC Ed November program one side/Awards one side to Laura for TeraGrid (500) to put in all the bags
    • Michelle will talk to IEEE/ACM (last issue posted workshops in member e-mail, maybe can list SC Conference), CiSE? (ask Rubin Landau about his bylines), EduCause (monthly online newsletter), SC news letter
    • Tom will blog about it and send e-mail to HPCWire (just text)
    • International Science Grid this year (just text) - Michelle will send text to Scott
    • Laura will check out e-mailing Inside Higher Ed (.com)
    • Probably won't do Chronicles of Higher Ed, but possibly - $910 for a 4inch square, $17,000+ for full page, quarter column ($415)
      • http://chronicle.com/advertising/adv/print_main.htm and http://chronicle.com/advertising/adv/scrates09.htm
• Forums
  • Instructors at workshops should introduce it
  • Kay will see if can create accounts for the instructors
• Please help test out the application submission system! http://sc09.sc-education.org/opportunities/award_app.php
• Workshops
  • Widener is canceled, Michelle is contacting the registrants and will also ask for thoughts on how to build that community to help for next year, and also will be sent pointer to register for other workshops and the fall conference
  • AG set up for LSU/PSC, Kay needs to change it from CMU to PSC (300 S. Craig, Pittsburgh, PA 15213)
    • Charlie and Kay need to register for the LSU one, Fitz going to Pittsburgh?
    • Still need to split parallel/distributed library between LSU and PSC - Michelle will send bibliography out
    • Minimum number to attend before accepting - 10 people; have capacity for 24
    • Laura will check about catering, no housing provided for this one but we can put links up for local hotels, Kay will put this on the info block for the workshop

May 15th, 2009

Present: Tom, Henry, Charlie, Shawn, Laura, Michelle, Tina, Clyde, Scott

Changes to the conference program registration system:

• Valerie thought that on the main the changes we need are pretty doable, including the team components. The dashboard page is still somewhat undefined still. Kay and Valerie are going to look at how to do the reviews through the NCSI system rather than in the standalone system that we used last year.
• The timetable for completing the changes is about week for the items which we depend on to open registration.

Workshops and instructors and travel:

• Charlie will take the responses from Michelle's queries and update the wiki pages. Then we all need to double-check them so we can submit the travel requests.
• Florida is over-booked, during the vetting process we'll encourage people who aren't K-12 in FL that they consider the Atlanta workshop.
• Widener has 11 registrations, we're hopeful that we can get a couple more with the mailings that are going out today. Cancel by is May 19th, we'll make a firm decision on the 20th.
• Henry suggested that we target PhD granting institutions in the upper mid-west for the engineering workshop in Columbus.
• Oklahoma EPSCOR has a paperwork process that Henry and Dana are pursuing (separately), Dana is working with Michelle now on the details.
• We're ready to close registration for the Calvin and Kean workshops. Michelle will check with Calvin and Kean to see how late the head-counts can change for food and housing.
• LSU/PSC workshop - deposit will be $100 rather than $150, workshop system entry for PSC, student assistant going to PSC to help at that end, Laura will check with Kathy on the AG plumbing/reservations, Laura will look into catering at PSC, figure-out if we can split the parallel and cluster library between LSU and PSC.

Conference program hotel facilities and events:

• For Sunday night consider a light food, networking and a work area.
• Michelle and Charlie will talk about some of the other details.

May 8th, 2009

Present: Tina, Michelle, Charlie, Clyde, Kay, Tom, Dave, Henry

What do we need to open registration for the Conference Program?

• Registration system changes
  • Leader creates team, team members register, team leader identifies members by email address.
  • Need a review mechanism at computationalscience.org for individuals and teams (replacing kludge)
    • Ability to accept subset of team members
    • Place for reviewer's score
    • Place for reviewer's notes
    • Better reporting mechanisms ala the workshops
    • Additional survey questions after acceptance
• Kay, Michelle, Tina, Charlie telecon early next week

• Policies page - See Michelle's email from April 26th, have all these and other changes been made?
  • Team policies about faculty presence, faculty/student ratio
  • Michelle will take her latest-and-greatest, merge with 09 summer, and distribute.

Workshops

• Telecons for each workshop scheduled? (OSC, Atlanta, ...)
• Marketing
  • Widener needs help - Penn State and SUNY next?
• Student assistants, any more in the woodwork we can bring-out? Potential instructors?
• USB drives with SC08 content to each workshop coordinator for distribution
• General notes for each instructor/workshop
  • Binders, USB drives
  • Session about CSERD, HPC-U, TeraGrid
  • Session about the SC Education Program, the Conference Program, SC generally
  • Pre, daily and post surveys - taking and reviewing
  • Bob's 4 part mantra
    • Teach the people who are there
    • Model how to teach the material
    • Another one
    • One more

Future Call

• Draft Portland schedule
• Three year evaluation report content

May 1st, 2009

Present: Michelle, Laura, Charlie, Shawn, Tom, Kay

Pathways

• Recap All-Hands meeting A/R items
• Distance education support - LSU to PSC via AccessGrid, AR to ? via technology Jim Goodlander is using there now (Laura to follow-up). Laura has shoulder surfers ready for the PSC end.
• LPCE discussion - we should talk to Jennine Cook about what we might do. Sherri and Jennifer VTH should be contacted as well about what the whole conference is doing WRT accessibility.

Workshops

• Marketing - PSC by Laura, Widener by Laura and Dave, Engineering to TeraGrid and mid-west universities.
• Weekly calls
• How to support participant communication, Kay suggested a message board with a forum per discipline to start. Let's go with this.
• Travel
• Surveys - Lisa is almost ready, do we want to keep as many divisions?
• Distance education - $100 deposit, feed them, looks like registration for a "regular" workshop, surveys, local shoulder surfers, same materials (notebooks, nametags, etc.) Maybe an experienced shoulder surfer in PSC?

Fall Program

• Curriculum lesson plan session(s)
• VVA session(s)
• Pathways sessions for each discipline and one at the high level for all
• Curriculum Resource Fair - posters and papers

Future Call

• Draft Portland schedule
• Policies page - See Michelle's email from April 26th
• What else do we need to open registration up?

April 24th, 2009

No telecon, travel to Durham Pathways meeting

April 17th, 2009

Present: Clyde, Paul, Tom, Michelle, Tina, Charlie, Kay, Scott, Henry

Workshops

• Michelle is going to send the list of e-mails of potential people for workshops to Charlie
• Charlie would like the script from Henry to send out the script to the "uniq" e-mail list diffs, so he can send them an opt in
• Need to continue collecting names and sending out the e-mails
• Flyer - Kay needs to make the last minute changes, then make first five
• Mailing lists - Michelle will send list of e-mail addresses for the individual workshop lists
• Bob may have one more petascale workshop - Scott is asking him for dates, expectations for that
  • Talk about accelerators

Meeting Next Weekend

• Henry and Charlie will talk about how we'll do remote delivery from LSU to PSC and U of Ark to ...?
  • Better to have a large range of remote delivery options
  • Potentially could offer certificates to remote participants
  • Remote surveys?
  • Potentially remote sites also require a deposit?
• Kay will put up workshop wiki pages

SC09 Conference

• We'll put a much smaller policies page up for the Shodor policies, then work to get a more fleshed out one
  • Need to get open sooner rather than later
• Later we also need to deal with team policies, etc.
• Kay will work with Michelle and Valerie to do this

---

Workshops

• Remote delivery from LSU to PSC and U of Ark to ?
• Instructor to workshop mapping - Kean, others?

Registration for Fall Program

• Updated policies and procedures.
• Need this sooner rather than later.
• Team stuff.
• Other things from the postmortem notes.

Pathways All-Hands Meeting in Durham

HASS Pathways effort - See Bob and Shawn's email messages

• Previous Weekly Telecon Notes