Summary and Moving Toward Sustainability

September 18, 2023

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Retreat’s Purpose: To celebrate our accomplishments 🎉 and create a sustainability plan for this community going forward ♻

NASA Openscapes

Mentors’ Retreat 2023

NASA Openscapes Mentors

Erin Robinson, Julia Stewart Lowndes

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

What makes the NASA Openscapes Community Work

for DAAC Staff Mentors

Shared Mission

• Collectively, agreed on the goal to move users to the Cloud.
• Built on existing efforts
• Trust from DAAC Leadership to invest in this approach
• Co-designed to tailor community to meet needs of the

Mentors

Open, Growth Mindset (AKA Openscapes Mindset)

• We don’t know, but we will figure it out together
• Erin/Julie facilitate these conversations and connections.
• Being able to reach out to probe and poke and explore.

Space, Place and Technology (a third place) - a place to learn and explore and develop and teach; “a comfort working with each other”, “latitude to work on things where we see the need.”

• From Google Docs to 2i2c JupyterHub to the NASA-openscapes Github org.
• Seeing these evolving to Cloud Playground: Earthdata Cloud Cookbook & Github workflows is one piece of this group’s efforts that we want to keep building on/integrate into Cloud Playground.

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All of this together: Helps us explore, build, be so productive together.

Results from the NASA Openscapes Community 🥳

• Technical success: 12+ workshops, 2 Champions Cohorts, earthaccess python library & Cheatsheets & Cookbook in response to user needs
• Growing community with new DAACs in year 3 - now includes 10 DAACs
• Openscapes 2i2c JupyterHub has become the default space to develop, test, & teach tutorials and scripts produced by the LP DAAC, NSIDC, GES DISC - also true for other DAACs
• Beneficial for distributed teams (combatting remote work fatigue)
• Mentors are stronger user needs experts as teachers and have a shared approach to teaching technical skills through partnerships with the Carpentries and peer feedback and practice
• Mentors developed collaboration habits together here and take back to their own DAACs and to new places / different meetings
• DAACs are leveraging and reusing materials from common set of co-developed resources
• Mentors are creating valuable connections across and beyond NASA - Year of Open Science
• User needs: direct interfacing with researchers (ex: Champions teams)
• Open communities: Coiled, Quarto, VEDA, R, 2i2c, Pangeo, ESIP, Carpentries …
• Openscapes Cohorts across Federal Agencies (ex: NOAA Fisheries)

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Toward Sustainability (Technical Infrastructure):

Long-term home for the 2i2c Hub and resources

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• Reuse Cookbook tutorials & corn environment (Python, R, Matlab) to Playground
1. Sustained single repo that we maintain; Playground accesses a subset of those (“menu”)
2. Earthdata cloud cookbook is alive and pulls from that repo - continues to be alive
• Move Cookbook to be more official/visible
• GitHub Repos > NASA organization
• Cookbook book > wanting a more official affiliation: a nasa.gov url
• GitHub maintenance - review, decisions
• 2i2c Jupyter Hub -> NASA Earthdata Cloud Playground

Toward Sustainability (Social Infrastructure):

Long-term Home for the NASA Openscapes Community

• Shift from cohort, more closed model to a broader community model
• Staff member to replace Erin/Julie outside DAACs.
• Role & Responsibilities: Onboard/Offboard; role-model, facilitate conversations, coordinate and connect; documentation; get input and lead decisions for the group
• NOTE: Not just facilitation help! Collaborators & doer - learning 2i2c, Carpentries Instructors, Coaching, leverage networks, Cookbook shaping
• Consider community membership: More engineers who are scientist-forward (like Luis Lopez) “20% of your time” rotation of technical folks. (In Year 3 - currently onboarding Year 4)
• Innovate. Interact with and include more communities
• Continue to be responsive to user needs (e.g., earthaccess)
• Continue to have leadership & manager buy-in. Not volunteer but “part of our jobs.”
• Doesn’t turn into a working group or seminar series. Clear distinction from User Needs.
• Continue to innovate, opening and tackling issues in GitHub

Thank you!

More depth on everything at

nasa-openscapes.github.io

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Learn about our recent work: Blog Posts • Presentations • Annual Reports • Flywheel Preprint • White Paper: The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs

We believe open science can accelerate data-driven solutions and increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in research and beyond.

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Today’s Purpose: To celebrate our accomplishments 🎉 and create a sustainability plan for this community going forward ♻

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Network: HulaGuest

Wifi: HulaJulyGuest85549

NASA Openscapes

Mentors Retreat 2023

Julia Stewart Lowndes, Erin Robinson, Stefanie Butland

NASA Openscapes Mentors,

and the Openscapes community

Burlington, Vermont, July 17, 2023

Artwork by Allison Horst

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

Around-the-room Check-ins

• Name, Org
• What brought you joy on way here
• Excited about this week!?

Code of Conduct

https://openscapes.org/code-of-conduct

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Any issues please contact:

erin@metadatagamechangers.com

lowndes@nceas.ucsb.edu

justin.rice@nasa.gov

NASA Openscapes Project

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

1. Engage a mentor community across NASA DAACs - 8 + IMPACT so far!

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https://nasa-openscapes.github.io - links to all Mentors’ work, comms & impact

2. Together empower research teams as they migrate analytical workflows to the Cloud:

• Co-creating common tutorials; review & reuse process
• Community of practice for teaching, mentoring, facilitation

3. Amplify and scale to leave a sustainable community of DAAC Leaders

“Our approach will increase the number of scientists that work on the cloud and work reproducibly, collaboratively, and openly.

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The mission for this project is to build on existing efforts in open science and scientific cloud computing to design a scalable training and community building framework using Openscapes approaches that is co-created and adopted across NASA DAACs to support NASA researchers migrating to the cloud.

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Importantly, it will also increase, and network horizontal leadership within the NASA community, empowering researchers to teach and mentor each other, streamlining the way DAAC researchers learn, create, and share resources, so that there is less (re)inventing.”

• NASA Openscapes Proposal, Sept 2020

Openscapes’ Flywheel

for movement building

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The Openscapes Flywheel:

A framework for managers to

facilitate and scale inclusive Open science practices

Robinson & Lowndes 2022 (preprint)

Leverage common workflows, skills, tools

Work Openly

Invest in learning and trust

Inspire

Flywheel

Create space and place

Welcome

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Empower

Learning culture

Engage

A Future Us mindset

Amplify

Open leaders

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 then 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 and small wins that accumulate – Open science shift

How we work:

Our approach to supporting NASA Openscapes Mentors

Inspire

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

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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, Carpentries, 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

Robinson & Lowndes 2022

Invest in learning and trust

• Role-modeling to build trust, growth mindset & psych safety via live notes, screensharing, making mistakes, sharing early
• Teach & learn technical collab skills w/ GitHub, 2i2c JupyterHub, Quarto, etc
• Teaching & mentoring skills w/ Carpentries, coaching

Welcome

• ESDSWG invite
• Nomination form; opt-in; sign up as pairs or trios
• Identify bright spots

Empower

Learning culture

Engage

A Future Us mindset

Amplify

Open leaders

Flywheel

Current:

Show & Tell

Each person please add 1 slide:

How does NASA Openscapes work show up at your DAAC and in your work?

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Ideas (if you are stuck, not inclusive)

• Are there ways that you or your DAAC use 2i2c?
• Have you contributed to or reused tutorials?
• Are there ways that you have used Carpentries instructor training?
• Have you incorporated shared google doc-ing or seaside chats?
• Do you use the Openscapes art in other talks?
• Have the ways that you work with your team changed?
• What else?

Catalina Taglialatela, Celia Ou, Cassie Nickles - PO.DAAC

Leverage 2i2c Jupyter Hub:

• internally to dev tutorials, test; externally at workshops
• Helps to de-bug with end users!
• Fast & Easy Cloud Workflows

PO.DAAC Cookbook - PO.DAAC specific resources inspired by the EDCC and process;

• Reusing common building blocks (How-To’s)
• Learning from & building upon EDC content for PO.DAAC resources
• Integrating earthacess in PODAAC core tutorials
• Using Quarto
• Capturing workflow for building/maintaining cookbook; sharing things earlier, open; Contributing Section/mindset (work in progress)

Efficient and fun collaborations (place & space)

• Not alone in learning & teaching new things, continuing to develop user tutorials; consistent user support done more collaboratively and in sync
• Cloud playground - based on built trust and community, as well as tech space (github, Cookbook) - faster way to collaborate
• cross-DAAC efforts & events (e.g. OPERA workshop DAAC presentations)

Openscapes Mindset & Culture

• Informs our approach to helping the end user, with empathy!
• Being more comfortable with iterative processes, slowing down to speed up
• Working openly, documentation
• Facilitating meetings - purposeful & open: e.g. Google docs and co-developing in the meeting! Helps share responsibilities

Alexis Hunzinger | Support Scientist

2i2c

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Development space for staff

Workshop hosting

UWG members

Select use cases

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Testing, learning

Coworking

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UWG member use case meetups

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Focused, time-sensitive work with coworkers (ESIP posters!)

Combats remote work fatigue

Openscapes Mindset

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Approach teaching and learning with vulnerability and empathy

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Mentoring With a Coach Approach program - being a better listener, colleague, leader

Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

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Share with UWG members, cloud-curious users

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Add tutorials, use tutorials

Contribute to sections

Cloud Playground integration

Incorporate more…

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Openscapes art! (Brush up on Star Wars references)

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Reusing slides

Can we centralize DAAC and EOSDIS presentations to draw from? Categorize? Make notes on notable content to use?

Chris Battisto | Support Scientist

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2i2c

• Standardized testing space for Cloud Python development
• Free AWS in-region experimentation, use-cases

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Coworking

• Getting in a room to solve problems/brainstorm together
• Useful for gathering opinions and fact-checking

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Openscapes Mindset

• Active listening, mindfulness
• You don’t always have to be the expert-you can lead and learn at the same time

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Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

• Opportunities to combine data between DAACs and collaborate
• Github repo and workflows have helped me learn about effective code development/collaboration

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Jess Welch | Technical Professional

2i2c

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• I doubt I would have been able to get into the cloud without this managed hub! TYVM
• I am excited to use this environment in the future.

Mentoring Support

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• Getting a “heads up” and instructions from other mentors was invaluable.
• Networking FTW!

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Openscapes Mindset

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• A commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion is critical!
• Carpentries training fit right in. I’m happy to have received it.

Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

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• I enjoyed contributing to this and hope to do more.
• Our DAAC will continue to recommend this resource to our users.

Michele Thornton | Geospatial Professional

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2i2c

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• WHAT?! I’m in “the hub”!!!
• Base images are so helpful
• AWS access w/o the pain
• ESA Short course hosting

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Mentoring Support

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• Kind learning from peers
• Shortens the learning curve to cloud-based work

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Openscapes Mindset

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• Open and inviting
• Collaborative
• Flexible

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Earthdata Cloud Cookbook

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• Collaborative contributions to content
• The go-to place for EDC help
• Maintains continuity across Mentors

Amy Steiker, NSIDC DAAC

• Tutorial contributions: Yes! Harmony, Earthdata Cloud Clinic, and earthaccess primarily
• Openscapes collaboration:
• Seeing the value in co-working and implementing across other teams, moving towards Github project management, moving all our data use and education work into GitHub
• “Cross-pollination” with Transformation train: Owen Littlejohns attending hackday and contributing to cookbook!, demoing tutorial to the train for feedback on how to make our services better, OPeNDAP tutorial integration (kudos to Cassie!)
• Openscapes culture:
• Knowing that I don’t have to go at it alone or start from scratch. The support network we’ve grown together is astounding.
• Working to create more space for innovation, creativity, discussion, growth, collaboration (i.e. more open, more kind)

Luis López

Software Engineer

Cloud

People

Mindset

Software

- 2i2c makes you forget we’re using Kubernetes

- Cloud is complex: Openscapes & 2i2c & Jupyter help us deliver a better experience.

- Working with the science champions was an eye-opener for how scientists approach the cloud.

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- I feel lucky to collaborate with so many smart people working on relevant scientific problems.

- Looks like ESDIS is noticing the amazing work that’s coming from Openscapes!

- Julie & Erin have been amazing facilitators and connectors for the DAACs

- earthaccess for the win!

- Hub base images pipelines

- Helped with some tutorials and organized a hackathon around the usability of EDL-protected data in the cloud.

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- There is never a “dumb” question.

- We work in a very flexible and agile way without the overheads (formalities and bureaucracy)

- We all help each other

ESIP 2023

Danny Kaufman, Makhan Virdi

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Utilize 2i2c Jupyter Hub:

• Could potentially be used for TEMPO and MAIA Early Adopters

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Code Contributions:

• Contributing to Earthdata Cloud Cookbook
• Contributing to existing and new Harmony data services
• ASDC User Services Github

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Openscapes Culture:

• “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
• Great collaboration and learning from one another

ESIP 2023

Geoffrey Stano | GHRC DAAC Scientist

• Collaboration between NASA MSFC and the University of Alabama in Huntsville
• Specialize in:
• Field campaigns
• Storm hazards (lightning, precip)
• Tropical systems
• Data exploration
• Cloud Activities
• DAAC Pathfinder - 2019
• First DAAC with all holdings in cloud - 2020
• All operations in cloud - 2024
• Field Campaign Explorer

Goals for the Meeting

• Introduce GHRC
• Learn from the Openscapes team
• Incorporate lessons at GHRC

Opportunities

• 2i2c Jupyter Hub
• GHRC cloud transition and Earthdata Cloud Notebook
• Incorporate lessons at GHRC