EARTHCUBE END-USER COMMUNITIES AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

STAKEHOLDER ASSEMBLY WORKSHOP

March 18-20, 2014Washington, DC

Full Workshop Report

ConvenerM. Lee Allison, University of Arizona/Arizona Geological Survey, EarthCube Test Governance Project (Principal Investigator)

Facilitation/Evaluation TeamJoel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, University of IllinoisJewlya Lynn, Spark Policy Institute

Steering CommitteeDavid Arctur – University of Texas at AustinJennifer Arrigo – CUAHSILiping Di – George Mason UniversityTom Heath – TuftsRoberta Johnson – NESTA, University at AlbanyChristopher Keane – AGIAlbert Kettner – CSDMS, INSTAAR, University of ColoradoDwayne Porter – University of South Carolina, NOAAJordan Read – USGSErin Robinson – Foundation for Earth ScienceKevin Rose – University of Wisconsin–Madison Alex Speer – Mineralogical Society of AmericaDavid Small – Tufts UniversityToni Viskari – Boston UniversityNic Weber – University of IllinoisIlya Zaslavsky – San Diego Supercomputer Center

EarthCube Test Governance Project Operations Team at the Arizona Geological SurveyRachael BlackKate KretschmannKim Patten

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CONTENTS

Executive Summary..................................................................................................................................................................................3

Introduction................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6

Key Discussions......................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Day 1: Understanding Each Other and EarthCube...............................................................................................................9

Introducing EarthCube.......................................................................................................................................................9

Participant Standpoints......................................................................................................................................................9

Identifying ‘Hopes and Fears’ with EarthCube......................................................................................................10

Grand Challenges in the Geosciences.........................................................................................................................11

Day 1 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................................13

Day 2: Engaging with Each Other and EarthCube..............................................................................................................13

Opening Presentations.....................................................................................................................................................13

Visualizations: Taking the Role of Systems Architects.......................................................................................14

Designing the Commons..................................................................................................................................................15

Selecting Priorities: How Do We Move Forward?................................................................................................17

Day 2 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................................19

Day 3: Action Planning on Selected Priorities.....................................................................................................................19

Academic Social Networks.............................................................................................................................................20

Community Engagement Advisory Council.............................................................................................................20

Education Advisory Council...........................................................................................................................................21

Global Flood Information System of Systems.........................................................................................................22

Paleoenvironmental Database (Digital Model of the Earth [4D Earth]).....................................................22

Summer of Cube..................................................................................................................................................................23

Use Case Wiki.......................................................................................................................................................................23

Conclusion and Next Steps.............................................................................................................................................24

Workshop Outcomes.............................................................................................................................................................................24

Impacts on the EarthCube Test Governance Process.......................................................................................................25

Lessons Learned...............................................................................................................................................................................27

Best Practices.................................................................................................................................................................................... 28

Appendix 1................................................................................................................................................................................................ 31

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundationunder Grants No. 1340233 and 1417948. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in

this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYIntroductionEarthCube is a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative for the development of a community-driven cyberinfrastructure framework to understand and predict responses of the Earth as a system—from the space-atmosphere boundary to the core, including the influences of humans and ecosystems. To fulfill this mission, EarthCube is facilitating the creation of a commons-like environment where stakeholders can bring together existing and new tools, models, databases, software, and collaboration spaces to facilitate the conduct of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research to transform the way we do science.

One of the first and most fundamental challenges of EarthCube is developing a structure and governance system that will inspire and empower many diverse stakeholders to participate. To develop this governance structure, the EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance Project1 is implementing a two-year process to identify community-guided solutions for EarthCube governance and test them—prototyping governance much in the same way as we prototype technology. Community workshops are a key conduit to identifying and testing these solutions.

Workshop OverviewThis was the final of four Stakeholder Assembly Workshops convened by the Test Governance Project Operations Team between January and March of 2014 and encompassing six Assembly groups2. The objective of these workshops was to solicit clear guidance on the governance of EarthCube as part of the development of an overarching draft charter, by laws,‐ and terms of reference3 to be presented to the EarthCube community and the NSF for review in June 2014. These documents will guide an EarthCube Demonstration Governance Pilot from September 2014–August 2015.

The goal of the End-User Communities and Professional Societies Workshop was to facilitate communication, collaboration, and coordination among end-user geoscientists and their representative professional societies allowing them to inform the development of the EarthCube initiative. Participants and organizers aimed to reach this goal by:

Determining how short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals align with the goals of EarthCube.

Providing input on the overall structure and operation of an “EarthCube Commons”. Identifying alignments and potential areas of collaboration among groups represented by

the EarthCube end-user communities.

More than 60 attendees were assembled from two distinct but related groups: Participants from the domain-specific NSF-funded End-User Workshops (which took place through 2012 and 2013) along with other representatives of end-user communities, and representatives from the scientific and technical professional societies serving those communities. In addition to targeted invitations from the Assembly Development team, an open call for participation released to the EarthCube community.

Workshop OutcomesAs the final workshop in a series, organizers and facilitators came equipped with agenda-development protocols and other best practices established over the course of the previous workshops, allowing them to be agile and responsive in their approach to the proceedings. The

1 Funded as part of the NSF EarthCube awards made in September, 2013. For more information, please see www.earthcube.org.2 Includes Data Facilities and Users, EarthCube Portfolio, EarthCube End User Communities & Workshop Participants, ‐Professional Societies, Information Technology and Computer Sciences, and Industry & Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS): Instrumentation, Software, and Technology Developers.3 Also referred to as a “draft governance framework.”

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following key outcomes of this workshop will inform the development of an EarthCube Test Governance Draft Charter at the Assembly Synthesis Workshop to be held in April, 2014.

1) The formation of two chartered advisory councils and five working groups produced a series of actionable next steps to address both short- and long-term goals for EarthCube. Among the emergent groups, participants immediately considered potential cross-project collaborations. Several groups offered clear plans to leverage each other’s efforts and support larger priorities such as community engagement, while others outlined plans to reach out to current EarthCube funded projects and geosciences organizations to align their efforts. Groups formed within this workshop are:

a. Academic Social Networks: Aims to evaluate the viability of EarthCube as a social network and to leverage information from existing social networks to build an engaged EarthCube member database.

b. Community Engagement Advisory Council: A chartered group that aims to cultivate broad community participation by fostering connections, providing value, lowering barriers to participation, and articulating the shared vision of EarthCube.

c. Education Advisory Council: A chartered group that aims to ensure EarthCube data resources can be used by K-16 educators and students, informed by (and informing) national STEM standards.

d. Global Flood Information System of Systems: Proposes a use-case project focusing on flood monitoring and prediction, working toward a near-real-time flood information system of systems.

e. Paleoenvironmental Database (4D Earth): Envisions a paleoenvironmental database offering a synthesis of sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics, and climate data.

f. Summer of Cube: Aims to coordinate a hackathon-style event in which small teams of geoscience and computer science students collaborate on community-guided projects.

g. Use-Case Wiki. Interested in developing a wiki environment to aid in creating and expanding data access pathways.

2) This workshop enabled a closer connection between EarthCube and geoscience professional societies. Participants agreed that these organizations and their respective publications are key elements in securing long-term stakeholder buy-in for EarthCube. With a closer association to the American Geophysical Union and new opportunities to attend member meetings of the Geological Society of America and American Geosciences Institute, the future EarthCube leadership will have a significant advantage in bringing together the greater Earth sciences community.

3) The efforts of the Test Governance Operations Team to reengage participants of the End-User Workshops and forge new relationships with professional societies resulted in specific input on a draft governance framework for EarthCube. As with the learnings gleaned from the previous three Stakeholder Assembly Workshops, this information is being synthesized by the Operations Team and incorporated into the development of the draft governance framework.

Over the course of the workshop, participants quickly grew to envision EarthCube as a potential federation of individual organizations and capabilities. Progress reports from EarthCube funded projects yielded significant interest and discussion about the projects themselves and in working across multiple domains and organizations on future solicitations for EarthCube. Input on a Draft Governance Framework for EarthCubeThroughout the workshop sessions, participants identified a number of potential long-term

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leadership, engagement, and funding issues related to the creation of a draft governance framework:

1. As governance is being determined, some provisional leadership should emerge to guide the community through the governance-building process.

2. An EarthCube governance framework should embrace the concept of “servant leadership,” in which leaders share power and prioritize the needs of the community and its individual members.

3. EarthCube should be proactively transparent in regard to its governing body, including election procedures and leadership roles and responsibilities, and in communicating funding decisions, with the regular publication of itemized information on awards.

4. EarthCube should look to successful data efforts, particularly in the atmospheric sciences, as examples of organizational leadership and collaboration.

5. Leadership should include a “disinterested facilitation body” of stakeholders who work outside of the geosciences circle but are knowledgeable enough to lead from behind.

6. The number of governing boards within this framework should be limited, as too many leadership bodies can become unwieldy.

7. EarthCube needs a small permanent staff with limited coordinating and support functions to maintain continuity.

8. EarthCube Governance should not be bound to any particular agency, to avoid absorbing that agency’s culture.

9. EarthCube needs to present a clear, concrete vision to be vetted by the community and molded into an accepted version.

10. EarthCube governance must coordinate with geosciences professional societies and their respective publications in securing long-term stakeholder buy-in for EarthCube, from the crowdsourcing of the charter through the Test Governance Pilot phase and beyond.

11. It’s important that EarthCube secure its longevity with a community engagement body that will retain and motivate current stakeholders, as well as generate new engagement among early career and K-16 communities.

12. EarthCube needs a mechanism that enables groups established under EarthCube to continue should the larger initiative not succeed.

13. EarthCube needs a mechanism to support additional funds and resources for cross-project development activities.

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INTRODUCTIONEarthCube is a National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative for the development of a community-driven cyberinfrastructure framework to understand and predict responses of the Earth as a system—from the space-atmosphere boundary to the core, including the influences of humans and ecosystems. To fulfill this mission, EarthCube is facilitating the creation of a commons-like environment where stakeholders can bring together existing and new tools, models, databases, software, and collaboration spaces to facilitate the conduct of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research to transform the way we do science.

One of the first and most fundamental challenges of EarthCube is developing a structure and governance system that will inspire and empower many diverse stakeholders to participate. To develop this governance structure, the EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance Project4 (a virtual organization composed of dozens of partners throughout the country) is implementing a two-year process to identify community-guided solutions for EarthCube governance and test them out—prototyping governance much in the same way as we prototype technology. Community workshops are a key conduit to identifying and testing these solutions.

Workshop ParticipantsThe End-User Communities and Professional Societies Stakeholder Assembly Workshop brought together roughly 60 leaders from two distinct but related groups: Members of the geoscience research communities (end users), and representatives from the scientific and technical professional societies serving these communities.

The involvement of end users is essential to achieving the visionary potential of EarthCube, as the development of cyberinfrastructure must be informed by the actual needs of the science community that it is intended to serve. Beginning in June, 2012, the NSF funded a series of End-User Workshops with domain specific topics. Each of these workshops was organized by a Principal Investigator (PI) and steering committee and included between 50 and 100 attendees. The End-User Assembly group is comprised of representatives of that community, whether it is the PI of the organized workshop, workshop participants, or other representatives of that end-user community. This group may also include representatives of end-user communities not included in the initial workshop series.

Professional societies play central roles in informing members within the geosciences communities as well as addressing challenges on topics ranging from open access to scientific publications, data citation, education, and workforce development. This Assembly group is comprised of scientific and technical professional societies whose members constitute one of the primary foci of EarthCube. Most scientists belong to at least one professional organization; thus, this group targets professional organization administration, executives, and section chairs.

Workshop Purpose and GoalsThe goal of this workshop was to facilitate communication, collaboration, and coordination to allow end-user geoscientists and their representative professional societies to inform the development of the EarthCube initiative. Workshop attendees aimed to reach this goal by:

Determining how short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals align with the goals of EarthCube.

Providing input on the overall structure and operation of an “EarthCube Commons”. Identifying alignments and potential areas of collaboration among groups represented by

the EarthCube end user communities.

4 Funded as part of the NSF EarthCube awards made in September, 2013. For more information, please see www.earthcube.org.

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In relation to the larger Test Governance Project, this workshop was the fourth of four Stakeholder Assembly workshops5 convened by the Test Governance project operations team, bringing together six Assembly groups.6 Assembly workshops have the goal to solicit clear guidance on the governance of EarthCube as part of the development of an overarching draft charter, by-laws, and terms of reference7 to be presented to the EarthCube community and the NSF for review in June 2014. These documents will guide an EarthCube Demonstration Governance Pilot from September 2014 – August 2015.

Workshop PreparationAssembly Development Team and Workshop ParticipantsPlanning for the workshop began with numerous virtual meetings between the workshop organizers and the Assembly Development Team, a group within the EarthCube Test Governance Secretariat that was selected by the Principal Investigator for their knowledge of and connection to potential stakeholder groups. Their primary role is to help to populate the broad-based groups that attend the Assembly Stakeholder Workshops. Workshop organizers collaborated with the Assembly Development Team on selecting which end-user domains, institutions, and scientific and technical professional societies should be present at the workshop and who should be contacted to represent them.

An open call for participation in the workshop was then released to the public, resulting in an even broader list of participants representing an array of academic and research institutions, professional societies, and computer science organizations.

1. American Geophysical Union2. American Geosciences Institute3. American Meteorological Society4. AMS Board on Outreach and Precollege Education5. Arizona Geological Survey6. Boston University7. Colorado State University8. COMPRES / University of Hawaii9. Coventry University10. CSDMS, University of Colorado11. INSTAAR, University of Colorado12. CUAHSI13. Del Mar College14. Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany15. Ecological Society of America16. Element 8417. Foundation for Earth Science18. Geological Survey of Alabama19. George Mason University20. Hampton University / STEPPE21. Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology22. James Madison University23. LacCore / CSDCO, University of Minnesota24. LDEO, Columbia University25. Los Alamos National Laboratory26. MapStory27. Mineralogical Society of America28. National Academies29. National Environmental Education Foundation30. National Science Foundation

5 Assembly workshops were convened January – March 2014.6 These groups include Data Facilities and Users, EarthCube Portfolio, EarthCube End-User Communities & Workshop Participants, Professional Societies, Information Technology and Computer Sciences, Industry & Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): Instrumentation, Software, and Technology Developers. For more information about the Assembly groups, please see: http://www.earthcube.org/page/assembly-groups7 Hereafter referred to as a “draft governance framework.”

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31. NCAR / Earth Observing Lab32. NESTA / University at Albany33. New Jersey Institute of Technology34. NOAA / NERRS / CDMO35. NOAA / NESDIS / STAR36. Open Geospatial Consortium37. Oregon State University38. RENCI, UNC-CH39. San Diego Supercomputer Center40. Stroud Water Research Center41. Tufts University42. U.S. DOE Geothermal Technologies Office43. U.S. Geological Survey44. University of Alabama in Huntsville45. University of California Center for Hydrology Modeling46. University of Florida47. University of Illinois48. University of Kansas49. University of South Carolina50. University of Southern California51. University of Texas at Austin52. University of Wisconsin–Madison

Steering CommitteeA Steering Committee, comprised of participants who indicated their interest to sit on the committee when accepting their invitation to the workshop, was engaged in the planning and execution of this workshop. The Steering Committee participated in a number of virtual meetings with the workshop organizers and facilitators prior to the workshop in order to refine workshop goals, develop the agenda, and provide insight into how best to engage their particular community during the workshop.

The chief role of the Steering Committee, however, was its involvement in providing feedback on workshop activities to aid the facilitators in evaluating and modifying activities in order to achieve workshop goals. As part of the agile development process, the Committee acted as a sounding board and provided insights from their roles as community members during the evening debriefing sessions. Development of the AgendaThe agenda for this workshop began development during a series of meetings between workshop organizers and facilitators, and the Steering Committee. Past workshops revealed that the agenda should be flexible in order to accommodate the path that the participants are ready and willing to take in order to meet workshop goals. Therefore, the agenda developed prior to the workshop contained a specific set of activities for Day 1 and the first part of Day 2. The subsequent time was less detailed in the agenda, containing a list of optional themes generated by the Steering Committee, as it would be largely driven by the outcomes of Day 1. More specified agenda items for days 2 and 3 were discussed and decided upon during evening debriefs between workshop organizers, facilitators and Steering Committee, keeping in mind the goals of the workshop.

Workshop organizers have found this method of agenda development to be extremely successful as it allows the participants to play a large role in deciding how they will accomplish workshop goals. This not only produces more authentic and meaningful outcomes for the both the participants and the organizers, but also empowers participants, keeping them more engaged and vocal throughout the workshop.

Each day focused on a particular theme, building on outcomes of the previous day.

● Day 1: Understanding each other’s work and EarthCube

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● Day 2: Engaging with each other and EarthCube● Day 3: Actionable next steps

Activities consisted of one informal plenary session (Changes and Challenges Influencing the Future of Geosciences Research) and a series of whole- and small-group discussions.

KEY DISCUSSIONSDAY 1: UNDERSTANDING EACH OTHER AND EARTHCUBEDay 1 of the workshop focused on establishing a clear understanding of EarthCube8 9 with a focus on current projects and results; identifying participants’ hopes and fears associated with EarthCube; and generating insights on the changes and challenges influencing the future of geosciences research.

INTRODUCING EARTHCUBEBased on learnings from previous Stakeholder Assembly workshops, it was determined during the agenda-planning stage that additional focus should be placed on presenting a clear picture of EarthCube at the onset of the meeting, and iterated throughout the workshop with ample question-and-answer opportunities for participants.

Initial presentations from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance (ECTEG) project provided a broad vision of the EarthCube initiative as well as ECTEG’s role in facilitating cross-project collaboration as part of the chartering process. An overview of the Stakeholder Alignment for EarthCube study and subsequent QA session addressed connections within and across disciplines, fields, and areas of expertise. Finally, a preliminary summary of results from the EarthCube End-User Workshops revealed technical challenges and key science drivers previously identified by end-user communities.

PARTICIPANT STANDPOINTSIn an effort to establish a starting point for peer-to-peer dialogue about what EarthCube is and could potentially be, participants were divided into seven small groups for a ten-minute free discussion. Group members talked about initial impressions of EarthCube, their past engagement with EarthCube, and their perceived goals for the workshop:

Group 1 discussed issues ranging from physical samples, quality control, and access to and awareness of available data.

Group 2 noted that three of its members were representing professional organizations and had no previous experience with EarthCube. Its collective goal for the workshop was to generate ideas for how different professional societies could find a place within EarthCube and help to connect other representative groups.

Group 3 was most interested in the end goal of having freely available, standardized data. This group agreed that engaging the private sector would be highly beneficial, as it could help in identifying gaps in end-user domains, and because cutting-edge science often originates from private industry. An additional point of interest was the role of the international community in the initial and future stages of EarthCube.

Group 4 expressed an interest in determining how to represent data management within EarthCube.

8 “EarthCube Introduction” presentation given by Lee Allison is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/EarthCube/earthcube-introduction 9 “EarthCube Stakeholder Alignment Survey” presentation given by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/EarthCube/ec-stakeholder-alignment-it-software-assembly-boulder-mar-2014

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Group 5 talked about ways to conceive and manage metadata, and the involvement between academia and industry in terms of marine geophysics.

Group 6 reported varied levels of previous engagement in EarthCube, and discussed collective goals such as determining how tools can be best integrated in end-user structures, and issues of data scalability and the extent to which data should be curated.

Group 7 described personal and general goals regarding education, open data publishing, and sharing and accessing scientific data.

IDENTIFYING “HOPES AND FEARS” WITH EARTHCUBEWith the aim of delving deeper into the potential of EarthCube, participants brainstormed and identified, first in small breakout groups, then as a large group, an array of hopes for EarthCube or opportunities they envision it producing, as well as fears or concerns they have regarding EarthCube.

Hopes/OpportunitiesDuring the hopes and opportunities brainstorm, work groups focused on the potential for EarthCube to enable significant interdisciplinary collaborative work, and to benefit from associations with external communities such as education and private industry.

EarthCube will engage with private sector groupsEarthCube would benefit from the significant amount of data generated in the private sector. While private organizations may often be willing to share data, the academic community will first need to produce a framework to make this data available and accessible.

EarthCube will provide solutions to common interdisciplinary issuesParticipants brought forward a number scenarios regarding EarthCube’s potential to bring together multiple disciplines and perspectives. Field researchers would be able to combine their knowledge of an area with those working nearby or in comparable systems; datasets shared through EarthCube would be easily citable by different disciplines; and diverse communities would be able to learn from each other, adopt new best practices, and collectively raise the bar across disciplines.

EarthCube will help K-12 teachers engage with the geosciences and research community The subject of K-12 and K-16 education emerged as a key topic of interest early in the workshop. Participants envisioned an EarthCube that would allow students to work with real data and data analysis in the classroom, and that would align with Next Generation science standards and the Office of Science and Technology Policy mandate on public access to government-funded research.

EarthCube will provide data access for low-resource groups and individuals EarthCube would enable easy access to data for educators, independent researchers, and other low-resource (“non-power”) groups, via long-term sustained support for education and training related to EarthCube and data use.

EarthCube will simplify model developmentParticipants from the modeling community hoped that EarthCube could streamline the process of finding input data and validation data to use in models. The collaborative nature of EarthCube could lead to community-driven models developed using known software best practices.

EarthCube can lead to established workflows in data sharingEarthCube might enable the forging of workflows for data sharing that combine autonomous action with collective action to enable continuous improvement in data quality, discoverability, and use. EarthCube could document characteristic workflows by role, which would serve as the requirements for capabilities that need to be provided. Different workflows could be established for scientists, data providers, and other stakeholder groups.

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Fears/ConcernsA wide-ranging list of a fears and concerns with EarthCube was generated during the second half of this exercise. Several overarching themes emerged within this list:

EarthCube will go the way of previous initiativesSome participants had concerns that EarthCube would be just another large-scale system that is built but not widely adopted. Another fear is that EarthCube would try to tackle too many issues, with too broad of a scope, and may end up compromising its own usefulness.

EarthCube is reinventing the wheelEarthCube risks reinventing the wheel by not looking hard enough at external models, and not engaging external groups and communities that have been having similar discussions about cyberinfrastructure.

EarthCube risks a loss of effort if it is unsuccessfulIf EarthCube is not successfully built or adopted, some were concerned about the fate of organizations established through EarthCube, and whether the knowledge amassed through the project would be properly recorded and reused.

EarthCube will not involve K-12 educationIf K-12 needs are not incorporated into front-end planning, participants feared that an opportunity would be missed to revolutionize K-12 geosciences education, with critical impacts on workforce development and society. Participants interested in education also feared that NSF will cut education from all EarthCube solicitations or subsequent initiatives, NSF funds generally go to educational research in K-12 rather than integrating research and education.

EarthCube will not keep its community on task due to perceived lack of “payoff” Multiple groups addressed this issue in terms of a lack of “payoff” or incentives for the community to invest time and effort in the project. Because members of the EarthCube community are generally overcommitted, they will need real incentives for long-term participation. EarthCube will need to provide “carrots” to stakeholders sustain engagement.

Longevity/sustainability issuesA common fear across the working groups was that EarthCube will have issues with longevity and long-term goals. Issues within this theme included concerns about long-term sustainability of data repositories, the difficulty of maintaining long-term engagement and dialogue with invested parties, and that EarthCube will underestimate the amount of time, effort, and resources needed to succeed.

Data issuesA number of reported concerns revolved around how EarthCube will address technical and cultural issues in sharing datasets:

If EarthCube puts too much focus on interoperability, the resulting system could render data interoperable to the point where it’s no longer useful.

EarthCube may not find solutions to attribution issues, which are the key cultural barrier to data sharing.

Vast amounts of dark data and metadata are lost as scientists retire. EarthCube may not lower the “effort bar” enough to rescue this data from the long tail.

GRAND CHALLENGES IN THE GEOSCIENCESThe afternoon session opened with a panel discussion addressing the changes and challenges influencing the future of geosciences research. Four panelists (Nicholas Heavens, Hampton University/STEPPE; Brian Wee, NEON; Alex Speer, MSA; and Pat Leahy, AGI) addressed a number

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of key issues, including data quality and standards, open access, acquiring and digitizing dark data, and the role of social science in addressing cultural barriers to data sharing.

Following the panel discussion, workshop participants were asked to identify the grand challenges they’d most like to delve into during the afternoon breakout, with six work groups forming around the topics that generated the most interest:

1. Industry-Academic Cooperation and Resource Sharing2. Finding a Way to Rationally and Intelligently Integrate Education in EarthCube3. Social/Natural Science Data Cooperation4. Maintaining End-User Engagement and Participation in the EarthCube Process5. Dealing with Long-Tail Heterogeneous Data6. Increasing Cyber Capabilities of Every Geoscientist

Group 1: Industry-Academic Cooperation and Resource SharingThis group noted that industry outpaces academia in terms of models of interdisciplinary sharing. The academic geosciences community should be looking for a way to engage with and learn from industry so that it can better educate their future workforce. It also indicated that EarthCube has a unique opportunity to promote and facilitate industry/academic cooperation and sharing, and called for a trust-building focus between the NSF, academia, and industry. The EarthCube Professional Societies assembly and industry-embedded academic faculty were both identified as important players in bridging the gap between industry and academia.

Group 2: Integrating Education into EarthCubeThis group would like to see a sustainable long-term plan for an education component within EarthCube, bringing educators to the table at the “front end” of planning and proactively involving the education community in the EarthCube process. This is borne from a concern that education efforts related to the geosciences are often put together as afterthoughts, often due to sizable cultural and funding barriers. In an effort to ensure a strong representation for geosciences among the STEM fields, EarthCube can start by leveraging education networks to build innovative workshops for teachers and develop interest groups to help with the design of K-16 geosciences education.

Group 3: Social/Natural Science Data CooperationThis group discussed the challenges raised by very different approaches to data between the social and natural sciences. Social scientists may be able to contribute valuable insights regarding protocols, privacy issues, quality issues, and the acquisition of dark data. The group suggested that professional societies may be appropriate intermediaries to forge connections between these two areas of discipline.

Group 4: End-user Engagement and ParticipationGroup 4 proposed a number of strategies to engage the present and future EarthCube community. The group reported a need for EarthCube to identify and engage key informants (“connectors”) who work on the verge of science and technology; to address challenges directly via hackathon-style workshops to produce tangible, presentable results; to act as a professional matchmaker and encourage face-to-face work; and to eventually produce a “killer app” or “killer dataset” to engage new people and generate enthusiasm among project stakeholders.

Group 5: Long-tail Heterogeneous DataThe long-tail group discussed data discoverability and accessibility issues, their implications for interdisciplinary work, and ways that EarthCube can begin to address the challenges inherent to data sharing. The group felt that the existing RCNs are making good progress in this regard, and that EarthCube needs to go a step further by prioritizing what data needs to be standardized,

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strengthening efforts to connect domain scientists and cyberscientists, and pursuing community convergence on common data standards.

Group 6: Increasing Cyber CapabilitiesGroup 6 suggested that instead of focusing on lowering the bar for data access, EarthCube should think about “Raising the floor”, or training geoscientists to access better data. Geoinformatics and software training would be highly useful at all levels of experience, benefiting early-career and senior-level scientists alike. EarthCube could eventually support on online “EarthCube University,” with organized courses and supplements targeted toward domain-specific end-user communities. This type of training would also hold value as a community engagement tool.

Grand Challenges Follow-upThe afternoon session wrapped with an informal discussion of the classic challenges of complex, transformational work. In pairs and small groups, participants talked about past collaborative efforts in their own work and suggested examples of the conditions required for successful collaboration, including:

Necessity and urgency: Two groups want the same answer, but neither has the full data set.

Persistence Communication between all members, no matter what size. Face-to-face is still the best

method of collaboration. Members can hone in on feasible goals. Respect and trust among all members. Rapid prototyping with immediate and iterating results A range of perspectives: All can benefit from the expertise of more than one group

member.

DAY 1 CONCLUSIONAt the end of day 1, participants were equipped with an enhanced understanding of EarthCube, its vision, and its relevance to their work, though it was evident that more efforts were needed to fill comprehension gaps. Participants were motivated by the day’s group dialogues, expressing a desire to begin moving toward tangible outcomes and an interest in honing in on immediate, feasible goals.

DAY 2: ENGAGING WITH EACH OTHER AND EARTHCUBEThe second day of the workshop focused on furthering participants’ understanding of EarthCube, generating ideas for how and why end users and professional societies should engage with each other within the scope of the project, and to provide input on the overall structure and operation of an “EarthCube Commons”.

OPENING PRESENTATIONS The beginning of Day 2 included a second series of brief presentations on EarthCube10. As with the previous stakeholder assembly workshops, it was apparent on Day 1 that there varying levels

10 “EarthCube Day 2: Imagine a World…” presentation given by Lee Allison is available online at: http://www.slideshare.net/EarthCube/earthcube

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Figure 1: Participants’ recap of Day 1 in three words

of prior engagement and knowledge of EarthCube among workshop participants. Some attended the first EarthCube charrette (community meeting) in late 2011, while others first heard of EarthCube when they received their workshop invitation. Thus, to foster a convergence on a common understanding of EarthCube, workshop organizers modified the agenda to include additional educational presentations about EarthCube at the beginning of the day, with audience QA sessions at regular intervals to solidify participant understanding.

The opening presentation gave a more detailed overview and history of EarthCube, reviewed its goals and guiding principles, made clear what EarthCube is and what it isn’t, and outlined resources available via the Commons to EarthCube stakeholders. Presenters then moved on to address EarthCube’s role on a global scale, including a brief overview of parallel initiatives (such as the Belmont Forum and COOPEUS), their relationship to EarthCube, and the potential for future international collaboration.

To provide a ground-level picture of current progress within EarthCube, representatives from the current round of NSF-funded Building Blocks, Conceptual Designs, and Research Coordination Networks outlined the goals, workflows, and recent tangible progress associated with their respective teams.

VISUALIZATIONS: TAKING THE ROLE OF SYSTEMS ARCHITECTSParticipants broke out into small groups and were tasked with creating an image that represents how they visualize EarthCube (Appendix 1). Constructing visualizations is important for three reasons.  First, in thinking through the visualization, it adds precision and engagement that will help build a shared vision for EarthCube.  Second, in presenting the visualization it builds out our ability to tell the story of EarthCube. Both visual images and storytelling are, of course, among the most ancient ways that people communicate and can often convey ideas that writing cannot. Third, the combination of the images is part of the crowd sourcing that will feed into the consensus images that the Test Governance operations team will develop and use going forward. 

Image 1: Data Curation and Access Resembling a Rube Goldberg device, this visualization used a collection of images to reflect data from diverse sources (industry, academia) entering a funnel and emerging as curated data for use by various constituencies. As people learn how to properly access and use this data, they are then able to “diploma surf” to positions in government, industry, academics, and professional organizations.

Image 2: Digital Earth This image reflected a series of relationships and processes related to a digital Earth. A data user access a digital Earth model, with cyberinfrastructure teams building tools behind the scenes. Diverse groups such as end users, professional societies, educators, and outreach teams, several of which are funded by the NSF, feed into the “user pipeline” that supplies EarthCube with data.

Image 3: A Collective NetworkThis group used a series of images, starting with a photomosaic of the famous Afghan Girl photograph. This image served to represent EarthCube as countless individual components coming together to form something greater than the sum of its parts. This was followed by three similar images of a neuron, a neural net, and the known Universe, depicting the connections and networks within EarthCube.

Image 4: A World of DataThis group created a picture of the Earth as an analogy to EarthCube data, tools, and infrastructure. Satellites represent user communities with an interest in specific data sets and resources, and a software package that processes that data to give them what they need.

Image 5: Arrows and InputsGroup 5 created a diagram depicting EarthCube as a process, highlighting dynamic groups of end

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users, the professional societies they work with, and the cylinders into which users can feed data through various entry points. Circles within the cylinder represent data translation and standardization. The center of the diagram represents modeling and visualization tools, with arrows to signify the output of this system as a whole.

Image 6: The EarthCube UmbrellaThe Umbrella of Cubes model highlights community connections. End users and professional societies are represented by jellyfish-like strands leading from the larger EarthCube umbrella. Individual end users, having different needs, are connected via a community network to each other and to EarthCube via the professional societies.

Image 7: The EarthCube BridgeThis drawing serves as a metaphor for the relationship between society (educators, policy makers) and the sciences. A river divides the two, with bridge representing the EarthCube Commons, with professional societies and cyberscientists creating access to the bridge. EarthCube allows the two sides to communicate more easily than before, by enabling them to combine their information sources and transport information more accurately across the gap.

Image 8: Peer-reviewed DataA dominant globe in the center of this image depicts EarthCube as a catalyst for data sharing, and it sits on the backs of two turtles symbolizing peer review through nonprofit (professional societies) and commercial publishers. At the foundation of the structure are the producers and funders of research papers. Users access this peer-reviewed information via EarthCube, and moves on to the next project.

Image 9: Questions and Questions AnsweredThis image addressed the utility of EarthCube and how that utility reaches the average user. Knowledgeable intermediaries in this process include educators, librarians, and research specialists. If a student has a question, the intermediary should be able to access EarthCube to find an answer. EarthCube needs a mechanism (from tech groups, industry, or elsewhere) to allow users access to data at different levels, from relatively simple information to complex scientific models.

Discussion/Conclusions The visualization exercise prompted an active group discussion that revisited some of the presented images, introducing a few new and insightful observations. After the presentations, participants were asked to identify patterns appearing across multiple visualizations, with participants pointing out three major themes:

The potential for EarthCube to provide data to diverse user communities. The need for feedback loops in the EarthCube process. The lack of a central governing entity, in tandem with a focus on collaboration.

DESIGNING THE COMMONSThe next session asked participants to draw on everything they’ve discussed thus far in the workshop—including hopes and fears, grand challenges, visualizations, and the scope of what EarthCube could be—and use that insight to think about planning a common governance structure for EarthCube. In an effort to encourage detailed outcomes, facilitators divided the task into digestible pieces: All participants were given a list of several different aspects of governance and asked to work in areas they were most comfortable with. With a directive to be as specific as possible in their reporting, participants broke into small groups for an hour-long session, concentrating on one or more of the following areas:

Leadership Vision (Shared Agenda)

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Structure for Engagement Transparency Communication Coordination Advocacy Building Buy-in Community Building Education/Training Connections to Existing Efforts Creation of New Resources Incentives

Leadership EarthCube should embrace the concept of “servant leadership,” in which leaders share

power and prioritize the needs of the community and its individual members. As governance is being determined, provisional leadership should emerge to present

strawman visions of permanent leadership and guide the community through the governance-building process.

EarthCube should be proactively transparent in regard to its governing body, including election procedures and leadership roles and responsibilities.

Leadership should include a “disinterested facilitation body” of stakeholders who work outside of the geosciences circle but are knowledgeable enough to lead from behind.

The number of governing boards should be limited, as too many leadership bodies can become unwieldy.

EarthCube needs a small permanent staff to maintain continuity.

Vision A clear, concrete vision is necessary: EarthCube should form a small panel to create a

vision to be vetted by the community and molded into an accepted version. Part of this vision should note that improved access to data will lead to great

advancements over time. Descriptions of EarthCube as a “process” needs to be phased out. Engaging the

community requires more precise messaging. Both the current structure and the future direction of EarthCube should be addressed.

Communication and Engagement Post-workshop engagement is crucial. A great deal of momentum is lost in the absence of

good follow-up communication with workshop participants. It’s important that EarthCube generate further enthusiasm among early career and

student communities. To encourage further participation, EarthCube needs to validate the contributions of

participants through some form of community recognition. Its usefulness in terms of securing promotion and tenure will be a key motivation.

Engagement should take place via a diverse number of avenues targeted to specific subcommunities.

Marked progress is a key to engagement. Smaller projects (“mini building blocks”) with a quick turnaround and demonstrable results could go a long way in maintaining enthusiasm.

Publicity is very important, especially promotion of project progress. Introductory presentations should address the current structure of EarthCube and what

the future structure might look like. EarthCube should actively pursue coordination with existing agencies and professional

societies (such as USGS and AMS).

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EarthCube should ramp up current efforts at conferences, including booth presence and session promotion.

New avenues of communication should be sought at all stages.

Transparency EarthCube needs to be transparent in communicating funding decisions. Published

information (likely via the website) should communicate how much money has been awarded to day, and itemize the awards in multiple configurations.

Some communication should be tailored to end-users who may not have the full picture of what’s happening in EarthCube.

Building Buy-in EarthCube should be focused on building buy-in and funding to inform what a governing

system might look like. To secure this, EarthCube needs to communicate itself as an organization that is long-term and sustainable, with funded projects interweaving their efforts throughout the course of the initiative.

EarthCube’s governing body needs to be long-term and stable to win the full support of stakeholders.

EarthCube should not be bound to any particular agency, to avoid absorbing that agency’s culture.

Additional funds and resources should be available to project teams for cross-project coordination activities.

Connections to Existing Efforts EarthCube should look to successful data efforts, particularly in the atmospheric sciences,

as examples of organizational leadership and collaboration. It is important that EarthCube pay close attention to parallel initiatives to prevent

duplication of effort. The CINERGI project is a good start to creating an EarthCube network connecting

multiple organizations and data collections.

Incentives Suggested incentives for continued participation in EarthCube include funding mandates

on data sharing, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for data and models, and data citations to give contributors credit for uploading.

The community would be very likely to contribute to a system in which end users could post their interest in a given type of data and be matched with other users.

Final Reflections:The “Designing the Commons” session sparked discussion about the organization and eventual leadership of EarthCube. Participants suggested that because there is no established body of influence charged with the leadership of EarthCube during the demonstration phase, the EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance project may need to step into a provisional decision-making role to ensure that the project continues to move forward. The participants also predicted that while some elements of governance will be well defined within the coming months, others likely will not, and thus it’s important to remind stakeholders that EarthCube Test Governance is a continual process of creation.

SELECTING PRIORITIES: HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD? After two days of productive dialogue among workshop participants, the group was ready to begin generating ideas on specific and meaningful projects to tackle on Day 3. Participants were asked to form small groups with those they identified as “birds of a feather” and think about

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issues important to EarthCube stakeholders that could also apply to the larger EarthCube community.

After a brief discussion, participants generated ideas about specific ways to address these issues. Workshop organizers clustered similar ideas into 13 larger topics, allowing participants to vote for the project they’d most like to work on. Those topics with a sufficient number of votes would be the focus of Day 3.

Votes Activity or Topic15 Use Case Wiki

Leverages experience of others (“A Yelp for geoscience projects”)Leverages crowdsourcingSimilar to NCAR data guideExamples of data sets, sensor locations, models, visualization sharing, papers

11 Digital Model of the Earth (4-D Earth Through Time)Users can look anywhere on Earth for any type of dataStart with Eocene and CretaceousInclude multiple altitudes up to the stratosphere

11 Engagement of non-power usersGetting data to the greater community, outside of high-resource users

11 Research Advisory CouncilA standing board to assess concerns in the research communityHelp prioritize strategic directionUpdate and maintain a “Societal Vision” to answer new challengesTrack societal trends

11 Summer of CubeHackathon preceding the All Hands MeetingGraduate students/early careers from cyber and geo backgroundsPresent outcomes at All Hands Meeting

9 K-12 User Community Interface Education needs for use of data and modelsContributing to STEM educationUpcoming opportunities to engage the K-12 community

8 Data Trust: Peer ReviewPeer validation of dataConnections to tenure and promotionEnhancing the social value of working with data (tenure, career advancement)

8 Minimal Critical Metadata by Domain for ReuseDetermine what is sufficient metadata and at what point it can be releasedDetermine how metadata should be cataloguedIdentify the additional information needed to reach this standard

7 Integrating Services and Academic Social Networks in EarthCubeHow to leverage connections in existing scholarly networks (e.g. ResearchGate)

6 EarthCube Case Study: FloodsIntegrating hydrology flood-monitoring discovery & access toolsDevelopment of better storytelling abilities and mapping mechanismsPotential EarthCube test scenario

4 Classification of Data Types/Degree of Curation by User CommunitiesIdentify similar groupsFocus on data uncertaintyEngagement strategies

2 Improving Real-Time Weather Forecasting

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0 Streamlining Efforts with Federal AgenciesDeduplication of previously funded efforts

DAY 2 CONCLUSION At the end of day 2, participants expressed satisfaction with their understanding of EarthCube and the progress made in the workshop so far. The group widely agreed that success in Day 3 was contingent upon identifying clear next steps for EarthCube and taking meaningful action toward tangible outcomes to present to the EarthCube community.

DAY 3: ACTION PLANNING ON SELECTED PRIORITIESThe agenda for Day 3 was dedicated to the development of actionable next steps. Seven consolidated topics were identified based on the outcomes of Day 2:

Community Engagement (adapted from Engagement of Non-power Users) Digital Model of the Earth/4D Earth Through Time EarthCube Case Study: Floods Integrating Services and Academic Social Networks in EarthCube K-12 User Community Interface Summer of Cube Use Case Wiki

The variety of topics accommodated the diverse priorities of the group, allowing participants to choose the areas they were most interested in or felt they could best contribute to. Minimum specifications for a working group were the identification of:

Group mission and goals Deliverables (with target dates or milestones if appropriate) Members and champions/leaders

Staff support from the Test Governance Operations Center Project Coordinators (based at the Arizona Geological Survey in Tucson, AZ), was offered as a resource to establish virtual collaboration spaces, schedule meetings, take notes, and provide other logistical support as needed. With these resources in mind, and with an emphasis on addressing gaps while leveraging existing initiatives, participants organized into seven groups:

1. Academic Social Networks. This group aims to evaluate the viability of EarthCube as a social network, and to leverage information from existing social networks in order to add more invested participants to the existing EarthCube member database.

2. Community Engagement Advisory Council. This chartered Advisory Council aims to cultivate broad community participation by fostering connections, providing value, lowering barriers to participation, and articulating the shared vision of EarthCube.

3. Education Advisory Council. The goal of this chartered Advisory Council is to ensure that EarthCube data resources can be used by K-16 educators and students, informed by (and informing) national STEM standards.

4. Global Flood Information System of Systems. This group proposed a use-case project focusing on flood monitoring and prediction, working toward a near-real-time flood information system of systems.

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Figure 2: Participants’ vision of what success would look like at the end of Day 3, in three words or less

5. Paleoenvironmental Database (4D Earth). This group envisions a paleoenvironmental database offering a synthesis of sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics, and climate data, which would be open to user contribution and easily accessible from mobile devices.

6. Summer of Cube. This group aims to coordinate a hackathon-style event in which small teams of students from geoscience and computer science backgrounds collaborate on projects that bring forward a product in response to a specific need of the community.

7. Use-Case Wiki. This group is interested in developing a wiki environment to aid in creating and expanding data access pathways, which could potentially work in concert with other proposed EarthCube groups.

ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKSThis group is interested in evaluating the attractiveness of EarthCube as a social network, and investigating what information might be leveraged from existing social networks in order to add more people to the existing EarthCube member database (workspace). The group has two main objectives:

Expand the universe of EarthCube profiles: to meet this objective, the group proposes identifying what unique and relevant information is already available from social networks (LinkedIn CV, ResearchGate topics), and the feasibility for integrating this information into EarthCube profiles. The group also proposes developing EarthCube’s communication channels with professional societies to get relevant information on publications, meetings, and events automatically, eliminating the need to search the web for such information. Finally, the group proposes developing a common information model for social networks and professional societies and forming a working group to manage the common identifiers for the EarthCube website.

Add a geospatial component to the EarthCube page: The group proposes connecting with publishers to evaluate the potential of scraping spatial locations latitude/longitude from the literature that would then be connected with this to the professional societies’ data. The group indicates the possibility of using the Journal of Coral Reefs as a test case for how to incorporate these elements.

Next Steps1. Investigate the social network aspects. See how this might fit with current efforts such as

Member Connections and CINERGI.2. Contact AGU and other societies to investigate best methods for extracting information

from abstracts to expand existing data in Member Connections.3. If a coral network RCN gets funded, a geospatial test project may ensue.

Members and Champions11

Megan Donahue, Hawaii Institute of Marine BiologyThomas Heath, Tufts UniversityToni Viskari, Boston UniversityIlya Zaslavsky*, San Diego Supercomputer Center

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ADVISORY COUNCILThis group envisions an advisory council that will parallel other councils formed at this and previous workshops. The mission of this group will be to make EarthCube ubiquitous by enabling community connections, providing value, lowering the barriers to participation, and articulating the shared vision for community benefit, through:

11 Names marked with an asterisk (*) denote volunteer champions for each group.

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Providing a venue to reward participation, highlighting new approaches and success stories

Direct outreach to universities

In order to carry out this mission, members of this group will objectively look at community engagement efforts and determine what is working and what is not. The Board would serve in a visioning role that would then guide the efforts of the Community Engagement team (or operations staff) in carrying out this vision. In short, this group would set the vision which would direct the way others (staff, champions, and other groups) would engage with the community.

Next StepsIn moving forward in forming the Community Engagement Advisory Council, the following points need to be addressed:

1. Membership: The group proposes an 8–10 member council. However, several questions remain about the creation of such a council, such as:

a. What criteria should there be for membership? Should membership be a mix of funded participants, non-funded groups, individuals, or representatives of institutions?

b. How will members be chosen/ nominated? Initially, the group favors self-nomination to ensure members are actively engaged.

c. How will reporting between advisory groups be maintained? Should there be cross-board membership with technical and education boards?

d. What should the term lengths be? Initially, the group proposes a staggered 2-year term, with 3 term limits to avoid volunteer fatigue.

2. Representation: The group needs to create strategies to enable the council to reach underrepresented communities.

3. Support: The group will determine the type of support needed for council members (WebEx, regular communication with the operations team, travel support for face to face meetings, etc.)

Members and ChampionsEmilie Dassié, LDEO/Columbia UniversityKen Keiser, University of Alabama in HuntsvilleJasmine Nahorniak, Oregon State UniversityAnders Noren, LacCore/CSDCO, University of MinnesotaErin Robinson*, Foundation for Earth ScienceKim Patten, Arizona Geological Survey

EDUCATION ADVISORY COUNCILThis group formed around a common vision of ensuring that EarthCube data resources, software, tools, and visualizations are used ubiquitously by educators and students in their work to expose, develop and deepen their geoscience knowledge through discovery, exploration, and authentic research. In order to make the vision a reality, the group stresses that it important that the development of EarthCube is informed by national STEM and next-gen science standards and vice versa.

Elements of success for this group would include:

Breaking down barriers between K-12 and post-secondary education communities Bringing research data into education, and engaging students in the discovery process Developing science process skills – as instantiated in standards Enabling the sharing and reuse of electronic educational learning objects Professional development in how to use materials Connecting EarthCube to STEM and science standards

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People may be a power user in one field, but may be a novice in others Pathways between scientists, educators, and students Career readiness and workforce development Advancing professional development

Next Steps:Functionally, to meet these goals, the group is proposing a chartered advisory group to represent these interests in the context of EarthCube, and EarthCube governance. Moving forward, the group will address questions of membership in such a body, operational needs, communication, and roles and responsibilities of the group.

Members and ChampionsJim Brey, American Meteorological SocietyJohn Heidelberg, University of Southern CaliforniaRoberta Johnson, NESTA/ University at AlbanyJohn Moore*, AMS Board on Outreach and Precollege EducationSusan Winter, University of Illinois

GLOBAL FLOOD INFORMATION SYSTEM OF SYSTEMSThis group proposed a use case project focusing on flood monitoring and prediction. The group has several goals associated with this project:

Galvanize group around concept of near real-time flood information system of systems: This would involve collaboration on standards-based water resource data monitoring and prediction and registering resources in GEOSS.

Improve visualization of inundation maps and data. Improvements for Dartmouth Flood Observatory

Next Steps:The group identified several potential next steps including seeking funding sources, as a potential EarthCube RCN, through the USGS Powell Center or NSF CyberSEES.

Members and ChampionsDavid Arctur*, University of Texas at AustinLiping Di, George Mason UniversityRey Dizon, MapStoryAlbert Kettner, University of ColoradoJordan Read, USGS

PALEOENVIRONMENTAL DATABASE (DIGITAL MODEL OF THE EARTH [4D EARTH])This group developed a grand vision of a paleoenvironmental database: self-consistent synthesis of sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics, and climate, focused on the data used to generate it. The database would integrate those interested in recent Earth and deep Earth history, and should be accessible from mobile as well as desktop platforms and be open to user contributions.

Next Steps:1. Inform the community about what useful tools already exist. STEPPE can take a

leadership role in spreading the word (even beyond the geosciences) and solicit feedback to build the necessary financial support for further development.

2. Engage industry, also with the help of the STEPPE Board, which has industry representatives among their members. The group will make sure cyberinfrastructure is a component of a joint industrial-academic-government workshop.

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3. Brad Singer will solicit Shanan Peters about using Mapstory as a Paleobiology Database secondary interface.

4. Nick Heavens will start to develop a topography-bathymetry file generation tool on the basis of gPlates and other information, since the basic work will fulfill his current grant. If development work is beyond his effort level, he will engage NCAR in the task by emphasizing both research practicality as well as broader impacts through MapStory.

Necessary Support from Test Governance: The group appreciate support in bringing in Mike Gurnis, Shanan Peters etc. to participate, as well as travel support for Everett Lasher and/or Shanan Peters to collaborate with the team. The group also requests travel support for a few cyberinfrastructure-expert participants to come to a STEPPE-organized workshop to bring together academia, industry, and government. The Test Governance team could also be useful in motivating STEPPE to participate.

Members and ChampionsNicholas Heavens*, Hampton University/STEPPEBrad Singer, University of Wisconsin–MadisonChris Tucker, MapStoryDoug Walker, University of Kansas

SUMMER OF CUBEThis group is interested in coordinating an event in which small teams of students (undergraduates, graduates, and post-docs) from geoscience and computer science backgrounds collaborate on projects that bring forward a product in response to a specific need of the community. Teams of students will submit a proposal consisting of a technical challenge they are currently facing, and a plan to solve this issue through a collaborative project that can be completed in one week. The resulting products will be presented in a juried competition at the EarthCube All Hands Meeting, June 24-26, 2014.

Next Steps:If the team secures approval and support to move forward, a timeline will be established covering proposal deadlines and workshop dates, and a plan will be put in place to promote the event. With input from the Test Governance team, Summer of Cube will then determine the criteria for entry as well as the judging criteria and awards.

Members and ChampionsMike Daniels*, NCAR/Earth Observing LaboratoryCedric David, University of California–IrvineJonathan Marino, MapStoryNic Weber*, University of Illinois

USE CASE WIKIThis group is interested in creating a wiki environment to aid in creating and expanding data access pathways. The wiki would serve as a hub to help guide users to resources and best practices from multiple domains. Contributors to the wiki would fill in details, thus providing a mechanism in which common questions and discussions could take place. Users of the wiki would help vet the information via a system of voting. For example, the group envisions that someone with an interest in modeling could use the wiki to find information on data, methods, and connections to more experienced users. The group notes that this wiki would not be an attempt to reinvent current resource catalogs, but would rather link to them. This wiki would be a resource to help guide end-users through the available EarthCube resources, as well as serve as an introduction for new community members.

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Next Steps:Moving forward, the group is interested in seeing how this wiki might fit in with other work groups, such as the Community Engagement Advisory Council, Summer of Cube, and Academic Social Networks group. In addition, the group recognizes the need to address potential barriers and hurdles associated with initial engagement in developing the wiki and mechanisms for sustaining engagement.

Members and ChampionsGus Alaka, Colorado State UniversityJeremy Cothran, University of South CarolinaAaron Piña, Colorado State UniversityDave Small, Tufts UniversityKevin Tyle*, University at AlbanyJim Tung, MathWorks

CONCLUSION AND NEXT STEPSAt the conclusion of the workshop, participants seemed energized by the promise of meaningful action within EarthCube and were intent on taking demonstrable next steps. As of the writing of this workshop report, several action items had already been implemented. Draft charters were drawn for both the Community Engagement and Education advisory councils, and the Summer of Cube team has submitted a full proposal for their project. Arizona Geological Survey staff (members of the Test Governance operations team), are assigned to support these working groups and have already begun to engage group champions.

As part of the agile development process, members of the Test Governance Secretariat identified a need for a fifth and final Stakeholder Assembly event to synthesize workshop outcomes. The operations team, along with the Test Governance Assembly Development team, will be inviting emergent leaders from this and other Assembly workshops to an Assembly Advisory Council Synthesis workshop in April, during which participants will construct a Test Governance draft charter to be presented to the EarthCube Community.

WORKSHOP OUTCOMESPast Stakeholder Assembly workshops prepared our team to be responsive in our approach to planning and executing this workshop and to anticipate a wide variety of outcomes. Due to the agile nature of the EarthCube Test Governance Project and the Stakeholder Assembly workshops, workshop goals were successfully met in unforeseen but positive ways:

Goal 1: To facilitate communication, collaboration, and coordination among this stakeholder group in how they might achieve mutual goals, as well as determine how those goals align with the long-term goals of EarthCube.

Because this workshop combined two distinct stakeholder assemblies (End-user Communities and Professional Societies), its participants comprised a diverse group of public and private researchers, information scientists, and educators coming from a wide array of projects, companies, and institutions. Throughout the workshop, discussions highlighted common threads within the participants’ work, challenges, and goals, and the Test Governance operations team was continually impressed with the high-level communication and collaboration that occurred throughout the activities and discussions. Participants recognized key technical and cultural challenges spanning their various fields, as well as common goals that would serve to address those challenges. The formation of seven working

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Figure 3: Participants’ three-word summaries of the workshop reflect a sense of forward motion.

groups, each with associated milestones, deliverables, and collaboration strategies, represent actionable next steps to achieve mutual goals within EarthCube.

Another valuable outcome of this workshop is a closer connection between EarthCube and geosciences professional societies. Participants agreed that these organizations and their respective publications are key elements in securing long-term stakeholder buy-in for EarthCube. With a closer connection to the American Geophysical Union and new opportunities to attend member meetings of the Geological Society of America and American Geosciences Institute, EarthCube will have a significant advantage in bringing together the greater Earth sciences community.

Goal 2: Solicit clear guidance in the development of an overarching draft governance framework for EarthCube, which will be presented to the National Science Foundation for review in July 2014, and which will guide an EarthCube Demonstration Governance Pilot September 2014 – August 2015.

The efforts of the Test Governance operations team to reengage participants of the end-user domain workshops and forge new relationships with professional societies resulted in specific input on a draft governance framework for EarthCube. The sequence of discussions allowed participants to begin thinking deeply and creatively about the potential social and structural components of EarthCube, and generated a robust list of ideas and guidance about what EarthCube governance could or should look like. This list, with particular consideration to the ideas presented in the “Designing the Commons” session on Day 2, is currently being collated and refined by the Test Governance operations team and will be incorporated into the development of the draft governance framework.

Goal 3: To identify alignments and potential areas of collaboration among groups represented by the EarthCube end-user communities.

Over the course of the workshop, participants quickly grew to envision EarthCube as a potential federation of individual organizations and capabilities. Progress reports from EarthCube funded teams yielded significant interest and discussion about the projects themselves and in working together on future NSF solicitations for EarthCube. (The CINERGI team in particular embodied this collaborative spirit by inviting workshop participants to directly engage with its data inventory efforts.) Workshop organizers also introduced participants to its Member Connections stakeholder matching tool to facilitate potential working relationships within EarthCube.

Among the emergent work groups, participants immediately considered potential cross-project collaborations. Several groups offered clear plans to leverage each other’s efforts and support larger priorities such as community engagement, while others outlined plans to reach out to current funded teams as well as geosciences organizations such as STEPPE to align their efforts.

IMPACTS ON THE EARTHCUBE TEST GOVERNANCE PROCESSThe previous Data Facilities Stakeholder Assembly Workshop had a profound impact on the EarthCube Commons process. This workshop did not yield another large, direction-changing impact (often referred to as the ‘pivot’), largely because the lessons learned and new direction taken as a result of the Data Facilities workshop were carried out. As with the subsequent Portfolio and IT/CS/FOSS workshops, however, participants offered numerous insights into new governance forms that EarthCube could potentially take as its draft governance framework.

Collective Impact ModelCollective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common

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agenda for solving a complex problem12. This organizational model favors cross-sector collaboration over dispersed involvement of individual organizations.

Successful examples of collective impact typically meet the following five conditions:

1. Common Agenda: Collective impact requires all participants to have a shared vision for change, one that includes a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions

2. Shared Measurement Systems: Developing a shared measurement system is essential to collective impact. Agreement on a common agenda is illusory without agreement on the ways success will be measured and reported.

3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Collective impact initiatives depend on a diverse group of stakeholders working together, not by requiring that all participants do the same thing, but by encouraging each participant to undertake the specific set of activities at which it excels in a way that supports and is coordinated with the actions of others.

4. Continuous Communication: Developing trust among nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies is a monumental challenge. Participants need several years of regular meetings to build up enough experience with each other to recognize and appreciate the common motivation behind their different efforts.

5. Backbone Support Organizations: Creating and managing collective impact requires a separate organization and staff with a very specific set of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiative.

This model was first introduced at the Data Facilities workshop by one of our facilitators as an off-the-cuff suggestion to encourage workshop participants to begin thinking about governance in a less ‘top-down’ fashion. The principles of collective impact resonated so well with participants from previous workshops that the team decided to incorporate it at this workshop as well. During the Grand Challenges discussion on collaboration at the end of Day 1, exercise workshop participants echoed many of collective impact principles in their own experiences of successful collaboration.

New Ideas for the EarthCube CommonsWith inspiration from the collective impact model and the discussions held at all four Stakeholder Assembly workshops around its principles and past collaboration projects, the Test Governance team is now looking at the following ideas as new considerations to bring to the table during the development of the draft governance framework:

A federated or distributed governing model with an EarthCube coordinating office as a small staffed office (with a community-selected type of oversight committee).

Potential for a rotating EarthCube “backbone” office with limited coordinating and support functions such as: running the EarthCube website, hosting meetings and forums, community engagement, and acting as a conduit between community and the NSF (and other funding agencies). The EarthCube ‘backbone’ could assess and codify system needs and priorities and communicate those to the NSF which would use that information to establish funding solicitations.

12 Kania, J., & Kramer, M. Collective Impact. (2011). Retrieved March 11, 2014, from Stanford Social Innovation Review: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact

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A distributed, loosely coupled set of NSF-funded entities doing the primary work of EarthCube. Examples of these entities are the groups coming out of the EarthCube Test Governance process already (i.e. Council of Data Facilities, Technical Advisory Council, EarthCube Portfolio Group, and the Architecture Forum).

Potential for EarthCube to provide support to existing groups that are already doing the needed work (in order to not duplicate efforts), to existing groups that propose to take on new functions in support of the EarthCube cyber-ecosystem, or to new entities, teams, or coalitions organized to meet specific EarthCube needs.

This process opens the potential for entities to propose activities that they envision as ‘moving EarthCube forward’ that may not have been previously identified or recognized by the larger EarthCube community. Thus, this process sparks and promotes innovation and entrepreneurship and avoids the problem of a single overarching centralized governing body.

Two very different, basic governance models are emerging, 1) A single EarthCube office, or 2) several distributed, either loosely coupled or independent, entities that work on specific aspects of geoscience cyberinfrastructure.

The possibility of a highly nimble governance model (not just agile), which is able to quickly adapt to address the changing needs of the EarthCube community.

BEST PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNEDOver the course of the four Stakeholder Assembly workshops, the operations team and workshop facilitators identified and implemented the following best practices. These guidelines will continue to be tested, evaluated, and refined as part of the agile development process employed by the Test Governance project.

1. Communicate EarthCube Governance as a Commons Environment.By the end of data facilities workshop, we transitioned our use of the term “governance” from what was widely viewed by participants as a set of structured formal managing bodies to a more flexible “commons” concept. In this model of a commons, EarthCube functions not as an overlying organization, but instead as a backbone, supporting stakeholders to engage in the experimentation and development that is needed to achieve the vision of EarthCube.

Organizers and facilitators used the term “commons” when communicating the EarthCube Test Governance body in their introductory presentations and throughout discussions on Day 1 and throughout the workshop.

We found that communicating EarthCube governance as a “commons” concept was very successful with this group. Participants did not have the negative (almost defensive) reaction to the idea of, and discussion around, governance that we had experienced in prior community engagement efforts. The EarthCube Commons is now the primary language we use when referring to EarthCube governance as it better conveys the role that test governance will play as a ‘backbone’ and support mechanism for other EarthCube work.

2. Design a Flexible Agenda. In preparation for the Data Facilities workshop, a detailed agenda was created for all three days of the event, but it was greatly modified in response to developments throughout Day 1 and Day 2. In subsequent workshops, the Test Governance operations team altered its approach to agenda planning to have Day 1 outlined in detail and days 2

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and 3 planned more generally, allowing organizers to develop the agenda throughout the workshop.

The agenda created prior to this workshop contained specific activities only for Day 1 and the first part of Day 2. The remainder of the time slots contained a list of optional themes identified by the Steering Committee, knowing the agenda for these days would be largely driven by the outcomes of Day 1. Activities for Day 2 and Day 3 were discussed and decided upon during evening debriefs between workshop organizers, facilitators, and the Steering Committee. We found this method of agenda development to be extremely successful as it allowed participants to play an active role in deciding how they will accomplish workshop goals. This not only produced more authentic and meaningful outcomes for all involved, but also empowered participants, keeping them more engaged and vocal throughout the workshop.

3. Open Up Debriefs to All Participants.In each of the Stakeholder Assembly workshops, debriefs were held during each lunch break and after the close of each day, and included organizers, facilitators, and members of the Steering Committee. In some of the feedback received following the Data Facilities workshop, it was noted that asking just the steering committee to participate in debriefing sessions was negatively perceived by some participants. In an effort to provide more transparency in the agenda development process, an invitation to the debriefing sessions was extended to all workshop participants.

4. Add an Additional EarthCube Primer.As with the previous Data Facilities and IT/CS/FOSS workshops, the operations team modified the agenda to include a second presentation about EarthCube in order to answer questions or clarify confusions that were brought up during Day 1. The first presentation is a simple series of introductory information targeted toward those who are learning about EarthCube for the first time. The second presentation is given with a day’s worth of context behind it. Participants might look at the same information in a different light, have different insights, and hear new information that clarifies their initial confusions or misunderstandings about EarthCube. Several Steering Committee members, some of whom were new to EarthCube, expressed appreciation for the further exposition. Future workshop agendas will include a second EarthCube presentation on the morning of Day 2 that is tailored to the questions that arise on Day 1.

5. Call on the Evaluation Team to Foster Agile Development.The original premise of having an Evaluation team of social scientists embedded in the Test Governance process was demonstrated to be highly successful in a multitude of ways. During this workshop, the Evaluation team played multiple roles: 1) providing developmental evaluation services designed to help organizers remain agile and responsive in real time to the community and the context; 2) providing high-level insights on where the group was going and facilitating the chartering process for a group if that was the direction they wanted to take; and 3) facilitating the workshop sessions. Through a combination of stakeholder research and facilitating a learning process with the broader Test Governance team, the Evaluation team has helped organizers and participants to uncover long-term issues that need to be addressed by EarthCube governance and to rethink messaging to stakeholders. This work provided a solid foundation from which to initially plan workshops.

During the workshop, the Evaluation team facilitated the meeting and either participated in or facilitated debrief dialogues every evening and during lunch with workshop organizers. As part of the process, they guided workshop organizers to steadily adapt the agenda—not just daily, but in the moment—to meet the group where it was at. They brought new insights and models into the dialogue that helped workshop organizers to understand the group’s needs and consider alternative approaches to discussing and

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discerning governance concepts that would be more responsive to those needs. Ultimately, the evaluators helped the Test Governance operations team to fully leverage the expertise and insights of the workshop Steering Committee in order to better meet the needs of EarthCube stakeholders—a cornerstone of the agile development process.

6. Organize an Active Steering Committee.In organizing a workshop, it is important to engage the Steering Committee early on in the planning process. The Committee assisted evaluators and support staff in developing the agenda, determining criteria for invited participants, and populating the workshop.

The chief role of the Steering Committee, however, was its involvement in running, evaluating, and modifying workshop activities in order to achieve workshop goals. They acted as facilitators and note-takers for the breakout sessions, and as part of the agile development process, acted as a sounding board and provided insights from their other roles as data facility community members during the lunch and evening debriefing sessions.

7. Meet People Where They Already Are.Using a voting process to identify the most desired paths forward was extremely helpful because it allowed workshop participants to focus their energy into areas that most suited their interests.

8. Balance Plenary Sessions with Small and Whole Group Discussions.A good balance between short plenary sessions and small and whole group discussions worked well. Whole group discussions were mixed with plenary sessions, small group breakout sessions, report-outs, and ‘turn to your neighbor’ discussions, the latter of which ensured that everyone had a voice and brought energy levels up when they were lagging.

9. Develop Clear Goals for Plenary Sessions.The workshops incorporated two types of plenary sessions. One follows a traditional format (each panelist gives a slide presentation, followed by Q&A at the end), and the other required panelists to take turns answering a set of questions, followed by Q&A at the end. Both formats were successful and informative, although workshop participants were most engaged in the non-traditional. Whatever the format, plenary session goals should be made clear to panelists, and each presentation should be held strictly to a time limit, so as not to cut into group activities later on or distract from the purpose of the session.

10. Conduct Daily Check-Ins and Recaps.Daily goals and outcomes from the previous day were presented each morning. Workshop participants commented on the goals and outcomes and brought to light any outcomes that were mischaracterized or with which they disagreed. This process was very helpful in developing a common understanding of what the workshop had accomplished thus far, and what organizers hoped would be accomplished in the future.

Facilitators also took the pulse of each day by asking participants to provide three-word recaps, answering different questions each day. This activity was extremely helpful for workshop organizers to measure the results and directions of each day’s activities and pulse of the group, as well as to modify the next day’s agenda to address concerns and achieve workshop goals. These three-word recaps were then organized into Wordle clouds and presented the next day, thereby providing participants with a visualization of how they felt at the end of the previous day.

11. Identify Opportunities for Ongoing Leadership and Clear, Actionable Next Steps.By identifying a series of actionable next steps with clear leadership positions, working

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groups are able to provide opportunities for further engagement for participants who want to take a leadership role.

12. Schedule Longer Breaks.Workshop organizers extended the scheduled breaks and lunch hours (to 30 and 60 minutes, respectively), allowing participants extra time to carry out usual break activities as well as time to speak with each other about their work, revisit a topic covered in the previous discussion, or begin planning for the next session. Facilitators noted that with 30-minute breaks, participants returned to the general session more alert, attentive, and ready to get back to work.

13. Take Live Notes in Real Time.Workshop organizers and facilitators encapsulate the discussion in real time by taking notes that are projected onto the presentation screen. Live notes tend to keep discussion on track, preventing participants from restating themselves or losing focus, and are also an important visual reference for virtual users following along online. Due to requests from several participants from this workshop, live notes will be posted on a synchronous editing platform (such as Goodle Docs) in the future, so that all participants may contribute to the narrative.

14. Be Proactive in Virtual Communication Efforts.Organizers will continue to work with meeting facilities and set aside additional time and resources to ensure that Webex tools run as smoothly as possible for virtual participants. Furthermore, in response to unexpected audio complications at previous workshops, the Test Governance operations team has invested in a microphone setup to ensure audio consistency moving forward.

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APPENDIX 1 Image 1: Data Curation and Access

Image 2: Digital Earth

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Image 3: A Collective Network

Image 4: A World of Data

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Image 5: Arrows and Inputs

Image 6: The EarthCube Umbrella

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Image 7: The EarthCube Bridge

Image 8: Peer-reviewed Data

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Image 9: Questions and Questions Answered

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