2025-09-02 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

(v) indicates a voting member

Decisions made during the meeting:

Agenda

Additional Agenda Items

2. NSF takeaway #2:  Who is ACCESS? (20-30 minutes)

   1. Notes from last meeting, we discussed who are users could and should be.  

   2. Some takeaways to reflect on and perhaps solidify if we are able:

      1. EC seems in agreement on the following.  We should discuss first whether we agree on these items:

         • Users are first and foremost those who are consuming ACSS supported resources

           • Others who are approved/already part of ecosystem

         • Segmentation of users (novice, intermediate, advanced) seems most appropriate

           • While splitting by institution type (R1, non-R1) could be conceivable, probably not beneficial because all have to face the same processes

           • Depending on their experience level, they may need to engage or have the material presented in a different way

           • John - when looking at who the users are - it is not an exclusive set? - these are who we focus on - there are others we should consider

           • Shelley - yes - it does include them

             • Do we all agree that ACSS users are on the list - and can be segmented

             • Then we need to determine who else are users - what are priority - and what type of outreach should we do

           • Amit - is novice the correct describer?

           • Shelley - new user - but that doesn’t mean they don’t have experience in HPC somewhere else

             • novice - means no experience with ACCESS processes as well as using an HPC system

             • intermediate - you have used your own HPC but not ACCESS

             • this can be abstract - we only have 1 way of presenting the allocations process

           • John - someone who has come off El Capitan- probably could be an advanced user - these classifications are orthogonal - and if we have too many bins it could get really confusing

           • Shelley - agrees - saying the same thing just in different words

           • Sharon - the for example is just an example - free to use as is or segment as we need

   3. What is not yet clear, and currently up for discussion:

   4. How much investment should we be putting into outreach to communities who are not currently part of our specified user base (ACSS resource consumers)?

      1. Jeremy - the people who know about us - know about us – but how do we get to those who have not heard about us?

      2. Shelley - outreach and user support target the same people but are from a different perspective

      3. Stephen - didn’t think we would be going out to get more ACSS users - are we only serving the people who already know about us now? Someone who is not using an ACCESS resource might find value in what we are doing - we should find more ACSS users, but what we produce is an ACCESS resource and more people may be interested in our products

      4. Shelley - where is the line when more can be targeted

      5. John - suggest language: there is a definition of who our users are and some priorities - as for outreach we should use term Prospective users - and we don't' have guidance on who we should be prioritizing

      6. Jeremy - we all note that we find many researchers who don’t know there are resources they could have access to - we want everyone to benefit from this but there are finite resources - are we providing to all who are a permissible resource/user

      7. Sharon - go back to how she defined things for the RPs - active and passive users - about the effort you have to put in - lots of things can be used passively by many people and we don't need to put in any more effort into it - outreach could be to people who can use passively our products

      8. Shelley - if we go to AGU - that is an active effort to get people who are ACSS resources - is that not allowed?

      9. Sharon - the access user audience does not mean only current users - audience includes perspective users - AGU is useful to get perspective users

      10. Stephen - people who are allowed to request a

      11. Who are the people who are allowed to request a resource

      12. Shelley - limiting resources but not people who could be users?

      13. Sharon - you can have a high schooler using resources but cannot request resources

      14. Jeremy - reaching out to people who could possibly end up PIs is beneficial - outreach done well becomes user support

      15. Shelley - this is outreach - but when we have to support that person can we support them?

      16. Jeremy - we do have high schoolers doing genomics - and they do support them when they call in as a user - but do we end up prioritizing them in any way?

      17. Tom - can we just keep it broad - and then we decide to focus efforts since we have limited resources - separate audience from users who use our resources

      18. Sharon - do we have to develop special things for someone who wants to be a user? if they are not part of ACCS and approved groups - then no --- look to broader impacts/passive use of what has already been developed - determine what is too much of an active effort

      19. Dave - ask more about why this came up on this list - why did NSF determine this needs to be addressed - we need to make sure we are doing this in a coordinated fashion vs 5 different awards doing 5 different things

          1. Sharon - this is accurate - the reason the segmentation ties in well - if support were to decide that from here on they are only supporting people who are power users while another award is busy focusing on things for novice users - this is not coordinated

      20. Shelley - usually RPs are the ones on the ground - and Support is focused on the whole ecosystem - the coordination of how we are all doing things is most important so things don’t just appear for things that impact users

      21. John - if there is a goal for 1 group to reach out to community colleges - what is a reasonable divide an conquer approach so all teams know what their effort is to support this goal

      22. Stephen - what is sharing the PY4 goals doing - are all teams taking into account this is going on? - we do need to coordinate across all teams for these goals

      23. John - while the plans were independently developed - we have not had the conversation on how there can be collaboration on the efforts across the program

          1. Dave - we should do this ahead of the PY5 plan

      24. Shelley - we also need to make sure the working groups are aware and this should be shared and actively focused on by the Working Groups

      25. John - CB&E - which is what this falls into - has not been active for 18 months - and nothing has been presented to fill its place - so these efforts are spread across the teams now and we need to make sure it is a collaborative effort with the limited funds and resources

   5. Amit - I see this on NSF front page https://www.nsf.gov/focus-areas/workforce

   6. How do we coordinate new projects and initiatives between the five ACCESS tracks and the RPs so that we ensure we stick to our mission?

      1. Everything we do impacts users.  Often these initiatives come up without coordination or communication

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