The UEC is eager to engage with you. This is a message from the UEC Chair.
I wish all the members of the ARM/ASR community a happy new year. It is hard to believe that 2020 is upon us, as I always thought 2020 was supposed to be in the future!
Updated Decadal Vision Document
The ARM Decadal Vision strategic planning document was released in 2014, and it will be updated by ARM Technical Director Jim Mather in the coming months. Among other things, this document called for the creation of the UEC to serve as a liaison between the user community and the ARM management. I believe the UEC has also played a key role in expanding the impact of ARM beyond its core user community. Nevertheless, I would like to ask all of you reading this to think about how we could increase this impact. Feel free to email me or other members of the UEC to share your comments.
2020 Triennial Review
Every three years, a panel selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducts an extensive external review of the ARM facility. The last review happened in 2017, and a lot of work has been completed since that last set of recommendations was issued. Among those recommendations, two actions were particularly relevant to the UEC:
- continue improvements to the Data Discovery browser
- broaden ARM’s reach beyond DOE and ASR users.
I would like to take stock and note that using feedback from the ARM user community, funneled through the UEC to ARM management, and under the leadership of Giri Prakash (ARM Data Services manager), the Data Discovery browser has been greatly improved, and a new version of Data Discovery is expected to be released as a beta version in February 2020. Please continue to provide feedback on this tool, as it is always evolving!
2020 ARM/ASR Joint Meeting
It is time to start thinking about the 2020 Joint ARM User Facility/ASR Principal Investigators Meeting, which will be held in June in Rockville, Maryland.
At the 2018 and 2019 meetings, the UEC organized networking lunches for new members of the ARM/ASR community. Both networking lunches were a success, and the UEC will definitively organize another one this year.
On the other hand, the UEC poster that we use as a vehicle to gather feedback from the user community was poorly attended last year, possibly because it was buried in the middle of bustling poster sessions. The poster probably will move to another location, but we are also soliciting new ideas from users on how to gather feedback during the meeting.
Remember that the UEC is the official voice of the ARM user community and we want to represent you. You can reach me here and learn about members of the UEC here. We all look forward to hearing from you!
Sébastien Biraud