2025-10-14 - ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

Decisions made during the meeting:

Agenda

Additional Agenda Items

2. NSF Update - (0 minutes) Sharon and Ed - NSF in shutdown mode

3. Fall Virtual Quarterly Meeting - (10 minutes) Cindy, Shannon, Misha

   1. Will we be having this? yes and we should focus it more - maybe 1 day

      1. difficult to do a focus when everyone has so many conferences and holidays at that time

      2. John suggests use it to do shared planning for PY5

         1. It should be a smaller focused group

      3. Stephen

         1. each team brings a set of individuals who can contribute - only 3 or 4 people per team and they need to participate

         2. we need to be willing to deeply discuss

         3. make some kind of ground rules

      4. Make it an EC plus - like area leads from each area

   2. Who will make sure we have prepped what we need to bring to be able to have a good discussion on PY5

   3. Need to start planning within the next week to have a better agenda than what we did last year

      1. Shelley will prep an outline - will get email out to the team

      2. Her tenure ends Dec 31 2025 - we will need to get another chair

   4. Dates - in December - week of the 8th

      1. Amit cant do Mon Tues Wed

      2. Meet on a Thursday Dec 11, 2025 - 1 day - virtual

4. Spring Quarterly Meetings - (10 minutes) - Shelley

   1. Location Additional Discussion

      1. Bolder

         1. University at Bolder CO - 7.1 miles
            Hotels: https://www.buffalo.edu/administrative-services/managing-procurement/commonly-purchased-goods/hotels-for-ub-guests.html

         2. possible dates that are OK at Buffalo for booking space:

            • Week of Feb 23

            • Week of March 1

            • Week of March 16 is acceptable also

            • Last resort week of March 30

      2. San Diego Amit meant the suggestion last week in jest - but here is some info

         1. UCSD is 12.8 miles from the San Diego Airport
            It is a little farther - but very easy to get to
            Many hotels are within 5 miles of UCSD

         2. layout of rooms and networking services are less than favorable

         3. Cindy willing to discuss more details if needed

      3. Big 10 Center

         1. Big 10 Center is 2.3 miles from O'Hare.
            Hotels near the Big Ten Conference office and its B1G Conference Center in Rosemont, IL, include the Aloft Chicago O'Hare, Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel, The Rose Hotel Chicago O'Hare, DoubleTree O'Hare Hotel, Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel, and the Hilton Rosemont/Chicago O'Hare.
            Looks like all these are within 2 miles

         2. Audio Visual is very stable

         3. Booking Conference room is free

         4. Per Big 10 Center - these are the dates that work

            • Week of Feb 23

              • Monday February 23-25 – 3 days

            • Week of March 1

              • Unavailable

            • Week of March 16 

              • Tuesday March 17-Friday March 20 - 4 days

            • Last resort week of March 30

              • Unavailable

      4. Illini Center Downtown - everyone likes this idea

         1. Would need to take the L to get downtown - from the airport

         2. Shannon get possible dates

            1. look at February and March

         3. Misha will lead shared planning

         4. March 10-13 is out - NAIRR meeting

      5. Boulder - September - should we do the ACCESS - Paloosa in September for 4 days?

      6. Dates - ask for 4 days or 4 1/2

         1. Feb 16, 2025

         2. Mar 16, 2025

5. EAB Recommendations Discussion (10 mins to start) - Chuck

   1. Discussion docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WAr43P00MuvLkyC7WZsY_ElzBe7tBEl_rbQPu087d5o/edit?usp=sharing
      Identify and expand the outreach activities/interactions/coordination with the other regional computing working groups/conferences.

      1. The ACCESS program represents a significant NSF investment and has made important contributions to research computing across disciplines. At the same time, there is growing attention on NAIRR, another large NSF initiative that also relies heavily on high-performance computing expertise. Would it be worthwhile for ACCESS to anticipate questions about how these two programs relate, and to develop insights or recommendations on whether they should remain distinct or move toward integration?

      2. Identify key valuable capabilities developed through ACCESS that should be supported going forward. Include lessons learned - from both the ACCESS side and from the user experience side - from the XSEDE to ACCESS transition.

      3. New interventions/initiatives proposed by the PI’s help for phase 2 or whatever comes next after ACCESS? It will be great to see some planning FY 4 and 5 and beyond.

   2. Chuck will send around the document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WAr43P00MuvLkyC7WZsY_ElzBe7tBEl_rbQPu087d5o/edit?usp=sharing

      1. Discuss next week for 20 mins

6. User Audience - (15 Minutes Team Discussion)

   1. Part 2: about coordination: (2) creating a way to surface activities across ACCESS teams that may impact user support, with a check/coordination point built in

      1. Better process flow for SC and WG to get info up to EC - rep in meetings and regular updates to EC

   2. How to surface plans from our teams for the coming year - and factor in discussion of user impacts (15 mins)

      1. Will be doing coordinated planning - will do it in December virtual Quarterly Meeting

   3. For the rest of the questions - we will coordinate in a google doc

      1. start this way at least

7. Overview of Quarterly Meeting To Do Items/Follow Ups - Move to another meeting

   1. Meeting Summary - https://access-ci.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/1623326722

   2. Trend Analysis Information - past 20 years - https://access-ci.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/1623851010

   3. Data Informed Decisions List - https://access-ci.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ACP/pages/1623457796

   4. Lessons Learned (hand written notes)

      • it does work best to have a central computer with all the power points in one spot instead of swapping laptops at the presenter podium (would have been easier if we had access to our regular Google Drive)

      • Hosting center should provide either a spare laptop or have AV technicians who operate a primary computer and control the presentations

      • Aim for more interactive sessions and demos if we can

      Actions: (hand written notes) need target dates - EC will collate action items

      • Should we survey each institution and find out what is approved - and make a list of the approved tools and find out where we intersect and use that to make the policy.

      • How should we make the data we create (data exercise) and have on individual teams available to all teams

        • make a catalog of this data: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LMz6TBbTUsLnOzK5jkHYNZrDR0aS_d7eyrhX9O6XmO8/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.7xo6cly8tp8

      • make sure all action items are captured from the

      Cindy - agenda planning committee

      • Call for new members

      • Current team has been involved for many meetings - we need new people

      Laura H - starting new form of RAC

      • New people will be starting this fall

      • Looking for topics for the agenda - what would you like to know from the researcher perspective- you would have about 20 mins with Q&A

LINKS

Program Milestones

EC Meeting Task Tracking + Quarterly and Annual Meetings To Do Follow Ups

Misc Topics:

Next EC Meeting: Oct 21, 2025

Reference:

Risk Register:

Project Change Request: