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How the NASA Openscapes community supports Earthdata users migrating workflows to the Cloud

Slides: https://nasa-openscapes.github.io

Julia Lowndes, Openscapes • Ian Carroll, NASA Ocean Biology Data Center (OB.DAAC)

NASA Openscapes Mentors and the Openscapes Community

• Bri Lind • Catalina Taglialatela • Cassandra Nickles • Aaron Friesz • Michele Thornton • Daniel Kaufman • Alexis Hunzinger • Rupesh Shrestha • Mahsa Jami •

Luis Lopez • Celia Ou • Alex Lewandowski • Chris Battisto • Jess Welch • Brianna Pagán • Sargent Shriver • Amy Steiker • Makhan Virdi • Brandon Bottomley •

Stefanie Butland • Erin Robinson & more!

May 14, 2024

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What if we connected our skills & values as a daily practice, for climate?

data science + open science

mentorship + teamwork + community

“To address our climate emergency, we must rapidly, radically reshape society. We need every solution and every solver”. - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine Wilkinson, All We Can Save

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What if we connected our skills & values in our daily work, for climate solutions and justice? Connecting our values to our daily workflows with technical skills and leadership skills.

In our work we’ve seen that when we combine Data science <> Open science <> Teamwork & community is a way for us all to help address our climate emergency. As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson say in the book all we can save: “To address our climate emergency, we must rapidly, radically reshape society. We need every solution and every solver”.

I’m going to spend this talk telling two stories of what this looks like and invite you to join us

But first I wanted to tell a bit about me and what drives me to this work. I am often asked why a marine scientist would need data science, so I want to make sure you leave here knowing that marine scientists, as scientists more broadly, work with data every single day to do our science, and it is critical that we are supported to work with data responsibly and to code collaboratively.

So let me start off when a peek at my PhD work, which was here at Stanford University.

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What Openscapes brings

Focused on research teams, connecting to leadership
Centering climate
Kinder science, inclusion

Openscapes helps shift culture by helping people move from lonely science to teamwork as they explore and navigate the open data science landscape safely with their teams.

Kinder science for future us

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NASA Openscapes:

Supporting Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud

NASA Award# 20-TWSC20-2-0003 Leads: Julia Stewart Lowndes & Erin Robinson

A mentor community across NASA Earth science data centers that helps support users though:

Co-creating common tutorials
Hosting cloud training events
Practicing open science ourselves!

Proving ground for open source and Cloud community development within orgs

https://nasa-openscapes.github.io

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End-Users

NASA Openscapes Mentor Community Values

NASA Data Center Staff

Open Science Community

Consistent trust, feedback, & iteration has shaped tools & approaches

>> Learn together first

>> Peer-teach, document, and onboard

>> Teach scientists/users (Openscapes Champions is one format where we get to know users deeply)

>> Connect with the broader open source community, collaborate & give back

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Communicating barriers and achievements between NASA data centers
Leveraging open source work to broaden the success of cloud infrastructure supporting multiple NASA Earth science missions

Bridging data users and data providers: two Openscapes stories

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earthaccess aims to be a technical and social bridge between NASA Earthdata and scientific research.

Reproducibility with less code makes open science more accessible.

https://nasa-openscapes.github.io/news/2024-03-04-earthaccess-tech-spotlight

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earthacess: making things simpler

earthaccess is a Python library that simplifies data discovery and access to NASA Earthdata by providing an easy to use library to interface with NASA’s authentication and search APIs so that science can be done using less code.

Auth: earthaccess handles authentication with NASA EDL.

Search: earthaccess abstracts NASA’s search API (CMR) into a pythonic module.

Access: earthaccess can download or open data for both cloud and on-prem hosted datasets with the same code.

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Building a Movement & Infrastructure:

for better science in the cloud

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https://2i2c.org; recent slides at ICOR

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Building a Movement & Infrastructure:

for better science in the cloud

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Ongoing work: onboarding & “fledging” users; maintaining community infrastructure

2024 Goals:

earthaccess

Python library

Also: earthdatalogin R package, MATLAB library

Cloud Cookbook: tutorials, contributing

Workshop planning automation

Cloud infrastructure (2i2c JupyterHub)

https://nasa-openscapes.github.io

The mentors are learning how to work in the Cloud together using a 2i2c JupyterHub, where they are supporting researchers to work there in Python, R, and Matlab. They are leading learning events using tutorials they created and reuse and iterate for different audiences and events for researchers and other NASA staff, They are also identifying user needs and developing where they see needs including the earthaccess python library; cheatsheets and guides. They describe how they are now working openly with each other across their silos, feel braver speaking up in other places, and that they are comfortable sharing imperfect work with each other and getting and receiving feedback.

2i2c

Work of the Mentor Community

How to grow it - working on real researchers in the science teams

Luis showing this real example of work the Mentor community has done

We are really grateful for our NASA Mentors, and to NASA who is supporting their time so that open science can be a paid part of their jobs.

We’re supporting Support Mentors towards establishing a common set of NASA Earthdata tutorials that they can then build off their DAAC-specific and science examples

Again, these recurring themes. Wanted to reuse existing so needed to identify what is unique to NASA earthdata and what’s not, tease that apart to reuse existing. Only contribute to combine and fill gaps rather than reinventing

We center researchers, and we focus on this feedback loop between tooling and people

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Join us:

Mastodon, Bluesky: @openscapes

openscapes.org�NASA Openscapes

NOAA Fisheries Openscapes

Openscapes at the Water Boards

Learn, reuse, remix, support others, grow the movement

Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

Champions Lesson Series

Approach Guide

Thank you!

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Julia Stewart Lowndes, Ian Carroll

NASA Openscapes Mentors & Openscapes Community

Thanks to the people who made this possible!

Not pictured: more people!

Diverse, inclusive teams and communities are key

Slides: openscapes.org/media

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open source community: learning, doing, building together across academia and government.

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Documentation

https://openscapes.github.io/documenting-things

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Tooling

tools & practices

People

teams & community

Technical & social infrastructure together

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Developing a kinder, open science mindset

Mentorship is a skill we can all develop; let’s learn from & join existing efforts

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“Perfection is a colonial conditioning.

Worrying that you’re going to get it wrong holds you back from trying, and that erases.”

- Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee, Nahanee Creative

Territorial Acknowledgements Interactive Workshop

Psychological Safety

Growth Mindset

Generosity

Empathy

Asking questions

Listening

Not solutioneering

Meeting folks where they are

Reflecting

Connecting values to daily actions

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Further resources (incomplete list):

White Paper: The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs in enabling Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud - Nickels et al 2023
Openscapes Flywheel: A framework for managers to facilitate & scale inclusive Open science practices - Robinson & Lowndes 2022
Shifting institutional culture to develop climate solutions with Open Science Lowndes et al 2023
NASA-Openscapes.github.io - NASA Openscapes Mentors
Hello Quarto: share • collaborate • teach • reimagine - Lowndes &Çetinkaya-Rundel 2022 Keynote (video)
A Journey to Data Science: Tools for Equity and Diversity in STEM - Fenwick 2022 (video)
Open software means kinder science - Lowndes 2019
Supercharge your research: a ten-week plan for open data science - Lowndes et al. 2019
Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools - Lowndes et al. 2017
3 lessons from remote meetings we’re taking back to the office - Cabunoc Mayes et al. 2020
Toolkit for Incentivizing Open Science - National Academies (NASEM) Report; Openscapes blog post
All We Can Save - Johnson & Wilkinson 2020, eds
Braiding Sweetgrass - Kimmerer, 2013
From Open Data to Open Science - Ramachandran, Bugbee, & Murphy 2021
Unmet needs for analyzing biological big data - Barone et al. 2017
How to bring open source to a closed community - Cabunoc Mayes 2016

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Robinson & Lowndes 2022

Invest in learning and trust Everyone has something to learn, ask, teach; don’t need to be an expert in everything. Cultivate psychological safety, growth mindset. Slowing down to speed up.

Flywheel

Create space and place to connect and collaborate; remove barriers to participation (paid time, part of jobs)

Empower

Learning culture

Engage

A Future Us mindset

Amplify

Open leaders

Work Openly Put what you learn into practice quickly, role- modeling sharing imperfect work. Identifying common challenges & opportunities. Documentation. Openness is a spectrum; first Future You and soon Future Us.

Welcome

bright spots (be they mentors or researchers) –people who want to work better and collaborate

Leverage common workflows, skills, tools. This is where we speed up: Iterate, reuse, remix with each other and the broader community

Inspire broader research communities through celebrating people & small wins that accumulate – Open science shift

Handoff back to Julie

This is how we work: we’ve developed a cyclical process we talk about as the Openscapes Flywheel. We engage a Future Us mindset through welcoming and creating space and place, we Empower a learning culture by investing in learning and trust, and working openly, and we amplify open leaders by leveraging common open data science workflows, skills and tools and inspire broader scientific culture.

The Flywheel is a concept developed by Jim Collins in the book Good to Great; it’s the idea that when building something to last, there is no single defining action. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond. We’ve found these are the synergistic and overlapping elements for open data science movement building which we’ve tested, iterated, and refined in working with over 150 research teams since 2019. We are really focused on building habits that last, and institutional change that lasts. Let me share a few example:

https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html

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Inspire

Storytelling & artwork
Teach researchers together
Slides, blogs, language for reuse
Braveness sharing details with different audiences

Work Openly

Promote & support live coding, tutorial review, onboarding docs, teaching dry runs
Planning & organizing
Support infrastructure for Cookbook (Quarto, GitHub, Docker, 2i2c, Slack, GDrive)

Leverage common workflows, skills, tools

Reuse resources from open science communities (Posit, RLadies, Pangeo) and each other (corn, earthaccess, cheatsheets)
Support communicating, dev’ing rapport in giving and receiving feedback and not having to ask where things are or to reuse

Create space and place

Scaffolding & facilitation: regular meetings (Cohort Calls, Coworking, Clinics, Hackdays)
Manage software: Google Drive, Slack, GitHub Org, 2i2c JupyterHub, AWS Credits (remove Cloud cost), Quarto & notebooks
Time as part of their jobs