Dear UCGIS Colleagues,
UCGIS Exec Cmt, Board, Chairs, Delegates and partners who are available will
meet Wed Feb 4 1:30-4:30PM in the Boardroom of Hilton Doubletree Hotel to
discuss GISKW funding strategy. If you are receiving this message directly from
me it means you are in a leadership role to help move the GISKW forward.
It is possible I have missed someone, please let me know. This is an open
UCGIS meeting, but it is being organized for all those who have shown sincere
interest in moving GISKW forward. (Note the email list for
board-exec-chairs@ucgis.org is used in the address. If you want to see who they
are have a look at the vision doc project summary attached.)
If you are not able to make the Wed afternoon meeting please do not feel
left out. We will review results
and take action on Friday morning at the GISKW workshop.
Many of you know that I was trying to set a meeting between UCGIS and NSF
personnel on Wed afternoon Feb 4 to discuss funding opportunities for GISKW.
The flurry of planning activity at NSF related to American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, and likely a host of other things, has prohibited
those arrangements. I received a
telephone call to let me know a meeting at NSF would not occur and to inform me
of some of the flurry of planning activity as a possible opportunity.
More details will be shared at the UCGIS winter meeting, but I provide the
following as the action items between now and then.
I attach the latest version of the
GISKW vision document
for your review.
The new additions to this version are updates to the team personnel tables
based on information received from individual emails, and an update to the
funding appendix relative to the NSF Dive into Data program announcement.but
that is only one of the near term opportunities...and I do mean near term. The
other is described below.
During the Wed Feb 4 meeting we will discuss recent information obtained from
a telephone call about a GISKW proposal opportunity. You should make sure to
read the "NSF SBE Dear Colleague" letter (attached) previously distributed Dec
31 by Jack Sanders UCGIS Exec Director to all UCGIS delegates. Pay particular
attention to the "infrastructure goal", but the other two goals are also
relevant for the GISKW initiative. Make links between your team interest in the
GISKW vision document and the Dear colleague letter goals. This will be
important for the Feb 6 workshop.
For some close to home new context, please read the Strategic Plan
announcement for the Geography and Regional Science Program that is being
renamed Geography and Spatial Sciences as of mid-February. It is available at
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/bcs/grs/GSS_StrategicPlan_2008.pdf
See Objectives and Strategies section A.4 and B as related to GISKW.
For broader new context, but by no means less significant because of the
GISKW infrastructure focus, please have a look at the web site for the federal
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Programm
http://www.nitrd.gov/
The NITRD Strategic Plan will influence budget priorities across the thirteen
federal NITRD agencies as well as within NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure
(OCI) and Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
(CISE). Every award made by OCI and CISE is part of the government-wide NITRD
portfolio. Together, OCI and CISE
provide more than 25 percent of the federal government's annual investment of
approximately $3 billion in networking and information technology.
We are going after SBE funds through GSS (see strategic plan above for new
acronym), but there is some liklihood that OCI and CISE will support this effort
if we are as broad-based a spatial sciences group as we say we are (again see
strategic plan for GSS). In any
case, UCGIS and the GISKW must appreciate the bigger picture of funding
activity. Note however, NSF is not the only opportunity for UCGIS.
It is likely you have lots of questions. If you attend the UCGIS winter
meeting I am sure those questions will get answered as much as possible. The
timeframe on this extraordinary opportunity is short - one month. The GISKW
vision document was intentionally left open so when the opportunity came we
could seize on it. Bring your GISKW
ideas for what to focus on to the Friday Feb 6 morning workshop.
The Wed Feb 4 pre-meeting will set out a funding strategy by answering the
following questions.
What portion of GISKW team effort does UCGIS as a not-for-profit organization
propose to what organization?
What portion of GISKW team effort do UCGIS member institutions propose as a
collaborative effort through their respective institutions?
Those are the two immediate questions to be discussed at the Feb 4 mtg. We
will then revisit and refine the ideas in the Feb 6 workshop.
Hope to see you at both meetings.
best regards,
Tim
Prof. Tim Nyerges, Geography,
University of Washington
Box 353550, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
voice: 206-543-5296,
fax: 206-543-3313,
email: nyerges@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/nyerges