On June 7, the USAPECS Board held its summer 2016 meeting. The minutes are below.
1) Reporting to & getting help from APECS (recap of NC meeting)
Alex is in charge of all non-European National Committee activities, so contact him if you need anything
There’s now a National Committee form that all committees are supposed to fill-out to update APECS on activities that have been going on & also if they need help with anything
Reporting forms are also supposed to help organize activities between National Committees
Anyone interested in listening-in on National Committee meetings is welcome to attend to get a feel for what’s going on
Funding is available (~350 Euros) to fund one or potentially more National Committee event(s) each year
normally allocated to AGU but we can use it for whatever we choose… funded on a first-come first-serve basis
not all the funding is typically used so it’s possible to request additional “left-over” funds in September
ideally funding is used for one event to minimize Norwegian foreign transaction fees
Excom call w/ Russian National Committee revealed that they’re interested in chatting with us & the Canadian National Committee to talk about how to coordinate activities in such a large country
2) Recap of webinars:
(April) Data Visualization
(April) Boiling Down Your Message
(May) Outreach from Afar
(May) Building Bridges & Designing Activities with Teachers
(May) Broadening your Scientific Impact & Addressing NSF Funding Criteria
(June) The Art and Science of Blogging
(June) Writing for the Media & General Public
ideas for increasing attendance: advertise through APECS, keep titles broad
3) IGS:
La Jolla (2016) symposium activities: research balance & juggling work and life
Ellyn will take pictures & write-up a short summary to post on our website
Update on the science communication workshop proposal:
Immediately before IGS in Boulder in 2017
32 attendees, partially funded by grant
2 days of activity/improv-based oral communication skills
1 day of written communication skills
not submitting to a set call but to NSF & NASA general calls after shopping around with program managers beforehand
4) Polar Week activity ideas (w/ UKPN?)
Compilation of suggestions on videos people should watch if interested in polar regions (call it the “US Virtual Film Festival”) and include lists of netflix, amazon, youtube, and miscellaneous free videos…. suggest that people host watch parties in their departments
Have different days set-up for specific topics & say a specialist on that topic will be watching at the same time and live tweeting (using the USAPECS twitter) then will answer questions via a Reddit AMA… can add a list of people to post tweets using tweetdeck
For a Reddit AMA, we’ll have people answering questions about the videos as well as general questions (need to schedule with Reddit at least 3 weeks)
Include ~3 feature-length movies and also short videos (Allen: allows people to just dip-in or dive-in)
Can advertise with the entire US email list to try to get everyone engaged… advertise for themes
Olivia will also help with this
Alex is organizing a Reddit AMA for all the National Committees hopefully for the entire Polar Week… will advertise for videos and live tweeting in there as well
Other Polar Week activities??? Other countries can tag on to our video postings so that the “film festival” is global
5) AGU:
Exploration Station w/ PolarTREC & PEI: Ariel will help organize the booth
focus on getting some sort of activity going for kids (glacier goo?, build an ice core w/ marshmallow “ice” and fun-dip “ash”?, polar bear videos)
recruit other USAPECS members from outside the Board to help run activities & answer science questions
Panel:
Probably keep it as a “careers” panel
Lunch panel pitched as a town-hall meeting? contact AGU career center to get a room reserved would be better because hosting a town-hall requires paperwork and may be more difficult (Alice will email the career center to get a room)
If during lunch, have it for only ~45 minutes so people can bring their own lunch and we could provide maybe coffee and fruit
Contact meetings group at AGU to ask about cost estimates ask Cryo to partially fund (Ellyn will contact)
Sara will float out the idea of having an international Council member help organize the panel & possibly get international funds
Instead of the pub meet-up, we’ll piggy-back off of the ARCUS reception
Need to email list later this summer (Aug or Sept) to ask for volunteers to organize
6) Un-fun business: cleaning-up the USAPECS mailing list
Do we want to find a way to remove people from the US list in an efficient way?
Send-out a survey asking if people want to stay on the list?
Set-up a mailchimp account for USAPECS?... Allen can do this (w/ Alex’s assistance) later this summer
Alice will contact Gerlis to check if that’s OK with her