Minutes of SHUG Executive Committee Meeting of September 8, 2003
The Executive Committee convened by conference call at 12:00 PM EDT on September 8, 2003. 9 of the 11 members were present. The members in attendance were:
- Paul Butler (Secretary)
- Zema Chowdhuri
- Takeshi Egami (Immediate past chair)
- Christina Hoffmann
- Joanna Krueger (Chair)
- Nancy Ross
- Paul Sokol
- John Tranquada (Past chair)
- Angus Wilkinson
The meeting began with the question of the May minutes which were accepted as distributed. With respect to the June 30 on site meeting, Paul suggested that what he’d like to do is circulate a document called “notes” rather than minutes properly which briefly covered the salient points, in his mind, of the day long event and then circulate for input from the rest of the committee present so that the final notes reflect the main points of interest of all the members. This was agreed to be a reasonable way to proceed.
Joanna noted that the web site still lagged far behind on posting of the minutes. Also other items could use some updating and she asked who she should talk to about that. Paul said he’d work on getting the minutes up. As for other changes to the pages Paul said that in the past he’d worked with Charlie Horak and Judy Benton, but that normally we should go through Al Ekkebus first. Christina pointed out that she is becoming involved in web page development at SNS in a small way and could perhaps arrange to take care of some things. Joanna promised to contact Christina.
Next the state of the Fast Access proposal was raised. It was agreed that Joanna would email the final draft to SNS and HFIR along with a brief explanation and the statement that after they have time to “digest” the proposal they would be invited to discuss it at one of the SHUG meetings.
Fall elections were then addressed. Paul briefed the committee on the process, the experience from last year, and the steps needed. The bylaws suggest that any person with 3 nominations should be on the ballot. This presumably is mainly to prevent a non-responsive executive committee from locking people out since the bylaws also indicate that the executive committee has a duty to prepare a slate which represents the diversity in the community. The first task is to send an email out to the constituency asking for nominations (including self nominations). This should be out for about a month to give people time to think about it and respond. Next the names so received need to be collected and the process of adding names to achieve the requisite diversity begins. At this point potential candidates need to be individually contacted to ensure their willingness to stand (assuming it is not a self nomination) and to ask for a brief (1-2 paragraph with web page pointer if available). Finally this information goes to SNS and a web based voting program is set up with emails sent to everyone on the SNS mailing list to ask them to vote. This should be open for 3 weeks to a month.
At this point the committee discussed a timeline as follows: Send out the same email call for nominations as last year (with appropriate date changes etc) ASAP with a deadline for nominations on October 15, a Wednesday, with a reminder going out Monday Oct 13. Tentatively set a Nov 3 date for the next conference call to hammer out details of the slate with a target of opening up the voting web site on Nov 17. Dec 10 was suggested as the tentative date then for closing the polls, with another reminder on Monday December 8. This allows people to get over Thanksgiving and/or the Boston MRS meeting and still have time to vote.
The question of what SHUG should do for the ACNS in summer 2004 in MD was discussed. The experience of the previous year was discussed and the problem of how to get input from the community as a whole without being too overbearing was examined. It was noted that most people left the sessions at the previous meeting, but that Shenda Baker of Los Alamos seemed to be the only one to really get substantial interest from the remaining people. It was suggested that the interest stemmed from the fact that she brought questions of direct and immediate relevance to the group which stimulated some discussion. The suggestions was made to move away from the formal session to a sponsored evening poster/reception. Paul Butler pointed out that Los Alamos wanted to do something like that last time and encountered some resistance mainly because there was only one free time for a reception and allowing only one group to officially sponsor it was viewed as unfair and it would be likely that such a proposal would meet with resistance again. Paul Sokol pointed out that the NIST user group executive committee would be addressing the issue soon and that perhaps a joint session with various user groups would be appropriate. The idea then would be for the members of the executive committee to use the opportunity to gather information informally from the user constituency.
The next item on the agenda was the DANSE software. Since Paul Butler had just returned from a workshop on that topic he was going to brief the committee. However the hour being late, Joanna suggested that perhaps this could be postponed to the following meeting. Paul agreed but felt it important to point out that an SNS sponsored workshop to lay the groundwork for what the software needs are (e.g. define what DANSE or a competitor must provide) was being planned in a few weeks time (well before next meeting) and that it seems like SHUG should somehow be involved as software is clearly one of the major user issues. Hopefully several of the executive committee members will be able to participate despite the short notice.
Finally, Takeshi had asked that the executive committee consider his proposal that a new category of participation, below IDT, be created to allow people who cannot afford 10 million dollars for an instrument but can afford 1 million for some special equipment to get some smaller discretionary beam team allocation. This equipment would then be left at the facility for use by the general user community providing a mechanism for giving the user community access to more equipment than otherwise possible. Again in view of the time, Takeshi suggested that since everyone had received his email with the proposal they could just send him any comments directly. Paul Butler suggested that would be OK, but that he felt he had to point out that after some thought he believes this to be a rather bad idea as he believe it serves more the facilities needs than those of the general user, and that while this may well become a necessary evil if the facilities cannot provide all the necessary equipment, it seems nonsensical for the user community to try to push for a policy up front to cover such an eventuality. A good discussion ensued among several members with no clear consensus ensuing.
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 1:30PM EDT
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Butler
SHUG Secretary
