December Meeting Features Honest Discussion, Highlights and Lessons Learned

By Tom Gulbransen, NSF Program Officer

At our December two-day meeting of the Executive Council (EC) and External Advisory Board (EAB), there was a lot of constructive candor. Stephen Deems, Allocations PI, described how he “protects” his team’s developers from the franticness that sometimes occurs during coordination meetings. Tom Furlani, Metrics team PI, reacted firmly to the External Advisory Board’s improvement recommendations by reminding us to take the time to recognize the many amazing services we are already delivering. Shawn Strande, co-PI for the Coordination Office, urged us to adopt a different approach to convey in unison our collective progress during annual reviews. Alana Romanella, co-PI for the Support team, candidly shared lessons we’ve learned that prompt significant adjustments to our strategy for supporting researchers. (Alana also courageously faced into the stiff breeze of enthusiastic EAB dialog about how best to find and fulfill researchers’ needs). Dave Hart, Allocations co-PI, challenged the EC to revisit its immediate and aspirational visions regarding this loosely defined “ecosystem.” In nearly every session, John Towns, ACCESS Coordination office PI, dutifully reminded the hybrid gathering that our nascent program-wide goals now offer a framework to deliberate priorities among the multitude of opportunities and pressures we experience as the ACCESS program expands the ecosystem.

I’ll admit that, as an environmental data scientist, I cannot fully comprehend some workgroup technical successes. Nonetheless, I have a pretty keen ability to recognize organizational skills based on 40 years of helping implement enterprise-wide systems and enabling awareness, coordination, and accountability via project management methods. The constructive, honest vibe that persisted throughout our two-day agenda demonstrated skills that we’ll need to keep growing carefully.

As we push forward, please know that pushback is not only welcomed, it’s essential to strategically setting priorities. The Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure's blueprints envision an ecosystem that is agile and can evolve in response to changing research, engineering and education needs. That agility is manifest in each of us – in our ability to trust that we can offer feedback even with colleagues on other award teams. EC agreement on high priorities includes also learning from teammates about what we ought to change, defer or descope.

It takes skill to deliberate effectively, especially in hybrid meetings. Thank you to everyone who prepared and participated.

ACO Updates

ACCESS Shines at SC23

Eighteen ACCESS staff members, along with our Program Officer, helped tend our booth at SC23, held in Denver Nov. 12-17. This year's conference was the largest yet with about 14,000 in attendance. Our booth hosted a day-long "ACCESS the Experts" event featuring time with the PIs from our five awards as well as two Campus Champion get-togethers organized by our Support team. There were numerous booth events and BoFs hosted by our Resource Providers and other ACCESS partners. Overall, we had a successful time at this annual blockbuster event. 

Getting Started with ACCESS as Easy as 1,2,3

In response to feedback from ACCESS website visitors, we've updated content on the program home page to help those new to ACCESS find the information they need more quickly. Just click on the yellow Get Started button and you'll be led to the information you need depending on how you want to use ACCESS.

Share Your Conference Experience with Us

Have you attended a conference in the past year representing ACCESS as either an attendee or exhibitor/presenter? If so, please share your experience with us here so we know what audiences we’ve reached; please don't forget to include your name(s). Please share by Thursday, Jan. 18. Thank you!

ACCESS Coordination Team at NeurlPS

ACCESS Coordination Office's science writer Kim Mann Bruch and NSF program officer Tom Gulbransen joined three others from the ACCESS Coordination Office at the NeurIPS conference held December 10–16 in New Orleans. The conference and workshop on neural information processing systems is a machine learning and computational neuroscience conference held every December.

Operations Updates

New Software Discovery Interface

By the end of January, Operations will release a new Software Discovery interface where Resource Providers will share information about software available on their resources. This new functionality will make it easier for community members to easily find resources that offer the software applications they need. 

STEP Applications Coming Soon

Coming soon! The ACCESS Operations Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP) will open the application window for the 2024 cohort. Keep an eye on our website for details on how to apply, and please encourage students you know who are interested in exploring careers in operational support, networking or cybersecurity to apply.