2019-05-14 Board Meeting
Attendees
Board members: Brian, Joe, Elise, Gaurav, Geraldine, Simona
Non-board members: Zachary Brym
Agenda
- Approve last week’s minutes – UF-Carpentry/website#39
- TREC workshop debrief
- Discuss long-term plan for REC program
- Logo design updates
- Travel award updates
- Biodiversity 1-day geospatial debrief
- ResBaz planning updates
- USDA machine learning workshop #99
- Planning for Carpentries membership renewal
- request amount + incentives
- draft message
- who to ask
- update on IFAS funding
- Draft plan for need-based scholarship / fee reduction
- Draft social media / website guidelines
Notes
- Approve last week’s minutes:
- Last week’s minutes approved
- How do we want to approve minutes:
- Pull request versus just pushing notes to website before approval
- Board Decided: push to website prior to approval
- TREC workshop debrief
- No issues, people still need to send in results from post-workshop survey
- Zach: well-attended, post early to RECs,
- There were some grad students that found out about it too late
- Prioritize folks in area?
- Some grad students had mobility issues
- Location-specific challenges with catering,etc.
- Set a procedure for location-specific organizing
- On checklist: when at REC, check local catering/set up
- Future plans with REC workshops
- Simona won’t be around, but would like to see it continue
- Goal of one workshop per year
- Simona and Zach propose that it doesn’t become centralized (i.e. not run by board members on non-main campus)
- Geraldine suggests make running the REC program is the external (non-main campus) board member’s responsibility
- Other person who runs REC workshops has to be on the board
- Need to find avenues for communicating with RECs
- Change “external” board member title to “REC representative, etc”
- Get someone from IFAS to sit in on board meetings?
- Zach would like his group to help with this
- He hasn’t found a student to take on the role at the moment
- He can help be a point of contact for prospective candidates
- The south Florida group would be different than the other RECs
- North Florida REC would serve different role, try to expand for both North and Southern RECs
- Involvement could be a requirement for the recipient of the REC scholarship
- Think about how to advertise this, how we want to structure this
- Logo design updates
- Joe wants to see a blue border around the nut in the alligator’s mouth: will message Hao to see if he can modify this
- Elise doesn’t have the contact information for the person in charge of the UF guidelines, will track it down and ask for approval
- UF promotional logos: are subject to UF review
- Do we want to contact carpentries? Gaurav followed up with the old carpentries logo issue
- https://github.com/carpentries/logo/issues/2
- “Trademark: “The Carpentries”, “Software Carpentry”, “Data Carpentry”, and “Library Carpentry” and their respective logos are registered trademarks of Community Initiatives.” – https://docs.carpentries.org/LICENSE.html
- Once UF approves the logo design, we’ll place sticker order (more than 100 stickers, which was our last order for carpentries stickers)
- Travel award updates
- Ellen Bledsoe was awarded the travel award
- She has been approved for the conference, is in contact with Alethea for reimbursements, etc.
- Biodiversity 1-day geospatial debrief
- Went well, but there were no registration fees
- UFBI paid for all expenses
- About 10 days before workshop, Brian emailed to have ppl confirm that they’ll attend
- All but 4 people replied, Brian followed up with them
- Three cancellations, but filled in cancellations with waitlist
- Full house
- For future free workshops, shouldn’t be concerned about low attendance
- Issues with people getting setup
- Covered most of the material, didn’t have issues during teaching
- Timing was good
- 3 instructors, should follow the same structure for future workshops
- 1/3 said it was too fast, 1/3 said it was too slow, 1/3 said perfect timing
- Good location but hassle for Alethea and Flora
- How might the location work during the semester
- Good alternative space
- ResBaz planning updates
- Documents in Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EYnH0W2aI-8bWdzSkOpi9t1Al-Ee6cJj?usp=sharing
- In-person meeting will be scheduled (based on Hao’s whenisgood poll)
- Hao will send out email to groups that may want to get involved
- Elise and Joe are helping organize as well
- USDA machine learning workshop #99
- https://github.com/UF-Carpentry/Coordination/issues/99
- Keep track of github discussion
- Up to Adam Rivers to decide on curriculum and timing
- Seems to be a lot of interest on github
- Probably covered with instructors (USDA)
- Will likely lean on us for logistics if UF hosts
- 20-30 USDA attendees, depending on resources, could be open to UF students
- Message has been sent out, discussion on github
- Adam open to co-creators, co-instructors, or mentors/helpers
- Planning for Carpentries membership renewal
- update on IFAS funding
- Geraldine hasn’t heard anything back yet; Dean said he would get us ffunds before the end of the financial year
- Pam said UFBI will also support with same amount as last year
- Alethea said UFII will also likely go for the $3750
- BEBR: potential funder
- request amount + incentives
- dean indicated that could go for $5k
- make sure we’re clear with what donors will get
- Pam interested in UFBI/IFAS symposium next year: could be an incentive to do this annual workshop
- dean indicated that could go for $5k
- draft message
- Still have the one we sent to WEC last year, work off of this
- Simona will put this on Google Drive
- who to ask
- Ask whoever supported us last year, to keep people involved
- deadline: mid-August
- Incentives for donors:
- open 50% of seats for those departments
- won’t need a lot of modifications to current system
- the approach from Spring 2019 wasn’t streamlined
- As is: 6 seats per sponsor for any workshop
- Brainstorm this meeting, decide next meeting
- if we go over, could maintain balance for next year
- 2018/2019 Financial sponsors worksheet is up to date, Alethea has been updating, good to work off of this one, includes contacts
- update on IFAS funding
- Draft plan for need-based scholarship / fee reduction
- Especially for instructor training workshop, a lot of new instructors were concerned about the fees being a barrier to entry
- We don’t know how many people are actually put off by the fee (at least one!)
- Need to be clear, careful about announcing
- Difficult in determining need
- Can we offer a lower fee?
- General fee reduction could be difficult to implement
- Catering costs are going up!
- Another option: “Please let us know if you can’t attend because of the student fee.” – with NO promises, just to gather numbers on how many people can’t attend workshops because of the fees
- Or: “What would you be willing to pay for a workshop like this?”
- Maybe do this through an anonymous survey?
- That way, we will know what the scale of the problem is.
- Draft social media / website guidelines
- Gaurav didn’t have time, but will have something out by Thursday
Action items
- Simona put old donor email on Google Drive
- Elise check with UF re: logo design
- Gaurav: will draft social media/website guidelines
- Hao: contact Alethea about ResBaz dates
Next meeting: May 28th Chair: Simona Secretary: Elise