Agenda Items:

• Minutes George has some ideas to make our note taking better and more clear/concise.

Membership and Rotation:

• Opening Comments by Jen:
• Welcome Cindy Brown
• I would like to introduce Cindy Brown to the the STED team, Cindy is the Assistant Branch Chief for NRP and is located in Menlo Park, CA. She has a Masters in Geology, with a BS in Biology and has been with the USGS for over 30 years! Cindy is excited about the opportunity to serve on the STED committee and will be a great asset to the team. Please help me welcome Cindy to the team.
• I also want to thank Peter Griffiths for your services and recommending Cindy to the STED.
• See https://profile.usgs.gov/clbrown 1984 isotope geology , NRP in Menlo research availability of metals in SF, assistant branch chief 1989
• Pat Lambert- 9/14 will stay on
• Rod Sheets- 10/14 will get back to us
• Mike needs to rotate off and make sure web site can be taken care of
• Franceska Working with Donna Myers and Jerad Bales on replacement.

Data conference (workshop)- week of Sept 8-12, 2014 in Kansas City, Kansas
National data workshop hosted by CRACD - They are working on approval.
Deadline to register is June 10, 2014 at https://obis.usgs.gov/SitePages/Reservations.aspx

• JEN asking the STED team to think about…
  • STEDs presence at the conference?
  • Keynote speaker during plenary session ?
  • STED Booth at the conference ?
• Face2face @ data conf ? Feasibility?
• Regional Water Data Workshop has 433 attendees registered on obis.usgs.gov right now.

Jerad has approved some funding ($750) for the non-headquarters representatives towards travel
(So, that would be $750 for each for: You, George, Greg, Pat, and Joe., however,
I have been talking to the CRACD and WSFT Mark Smith to figure out a strategy:

• (Would Jim Cornwall be considered a headquarters person? Duty station out in Tacoma WA, tenant in WSC, falls under OWI/NWIS…) Yes, IMO. :-( NWIS is already over the annual travel budget. Apr 15 (2 days ago)

Jen, The committee discussed this on our call yesterday. There would be space at the hotel for you to have a STED meeting, but the committee feels it can't free up 4­5 slots for STED attendees who won't participate in the conference. We're already about 25 over our registration limit (although that's tentative until people actually pay the registration fee).

That leaves two options:

• 1.) Those 4­5 STED members stand by to see if actual attendance (when folks reserve a room and pay the registration fee) drops below the cap. If it does, the additional STED members could register as conference attendees; if it doesn't, those not attending the conference could consider participating in the STED meeting remotely.
• 2.) STED applies for a separate meeting authorization (I'm not sure what the requirements are for a total of 14). That would avoid additional conference registrations, and I suspect the conference hotel could still provide you with meeting space.

We'll keep you posted on actual registration numbers. We hope to get meeting approval in the next month or so ­ at that point we'll start to get some firm attendance numbers.

Mark:

Mark Smith how will STED will fit in (and not bump hydrotechs) ?
• Jim: See what happens for separate meeting authorization,
• Mark says hotel still has room & meeting rooms. 350 people DOI imposed number not USGS, instructors & attendees
• Last face2face = 2011,
• Brainstorming, long standing issues, networking, and increasing STED presence
• Yes, pre-register for conference on sharepoint (14 people on STED, <15 people = no authorization needed but gets Jared’s approval too and your direct supervisor)

Jared to NM next week, only 4 other USGS HQ people (Mike Norris, Suzette Kimball,Robert Mason , )*
What is the event called???
125th Anniversary of Streamgaging Embudo, NM ONE NATIONAL DATA COMMITTEE update

Jen, You might want to add discussion of STED coordination with this new HDAC committee to our agenda for Thursday. My suggestion is that after the HDAC is named that we add a member from HDAC to the STED as our point of contact for coordination. I know that you have sort of served as liaison with the data committees in the past. We might want to make that position more formal.
my thoughts,
Jim

­­­­­­­­­­ Forwarded message ­­­­­­­­­­
From: Bales, Jerad
Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:13 AM
Subject: Formation of a Single National Hydrologic Data Advisory Committee
To: GS­W WSC Directors
Cc: GS­W CD , GS RD , GS Water Senior Staff , GS­W WSFT

Colleagues:

For many years there have been three Hydrologic Data Committees whose goals have been to improve aspects of hydrologic data operations. In part, the committees originated out of an effort to give Hydrologic Technicians a voice to the Offices of the Regional Hydrologist, and as such the committees were structurally organized around the former regional structure (East, Central and West). The committees have been very successful in providing a forum for sharing information, experiences, and solutions to specific problems, which have then been communicated to Water Science Center personnel and bureau leadership. These committees also have been responsible for planning and conducting the very successful Data Conferences held around the country.

Since the creation of the committees, the USGS has gone through realignment including the abolishment of the Office of the Regional Hydrologist. A desire to create consistency among the three regional Data Committees and to improve communication with the Water Mission Area prompted a review of the committee charters and structure. A Review Team consisting of current Data Committee Chairs and the Water Science Field Team, with input from the Chief of Hydrologic Instrumentation Facility (HIF), Office of Groundwater, Office of Surface Water, and the Office of Water Quality, evaluated options to update the committees' charters and structure.

The Review Team determined that a single National Hydrologic Data Advisory Committee (HDAC), with representation based on geography, demographics, and expertise, and reporting to the Associate Director for Water, will best meet the future needs of the USGS. A charter for the HDAC (attached) also was developed by the Review Team and was designed to enhance National consistency and communication between the field and Headquarters. HDAC replaces the three current regional data committees. The current regional committees are in the process of structurally realigning to become HDAC and will be in place by the beginning of FY15. HDAC will have 10 members with additional representation by the Water Science Field Team. Full representation of USGS demographics is a goal of the committee. The WMA, primarily through the HIF, will provide administrative support to the HDAC for conference planning. The HDAC alread has developed a single portal for national hydrologic data and information.


We anticiapte that the Regional Data Conferences will continue, within funding and other constraints. The HDAC will develop a separate subgroup to plan each conference. The existing Central Region Advisory Committee on Hydrologic Data, which has been planning the upcoming Data Conference will continue in that role until after the conference in September.
The WMA values the past successes of the regional data committees and we recognize the need for renewed engagement with the HDAC. We are very excited about the National focus of HDAC and look forward to working them to help advance all aspects of hydrologic data collection.

Please share this message with your staff.
=================================
Dr. Jerad Bales
Acting Associate Director for Wate

PLEASE CONTINUE TO REVIEW Updated website- course list on right side of page automatically updates:

Stream gage blog, post Q&A …
STED website proper place? …
old Usenet now defunct, due to lack of use?
Facebook group/page for gaging, but not much use there either.
Not really a good fit with STED’s training promotion goal?

COURSE CATALOG AND STED EMAIL- REVISITED:

• JimK- can we put course catalog on the STED page?
• Action: Alan will see if the old “course catalog” can be found and then updated by the Technical Offices.
• Alan will look for old catalog and get rolling on this by March. WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THIS?

Dear Sted­isists
Just passing this course list along one more time to
1) ensure these 75 classes are still being taught
2) we are not missing any new ones
3) each belongs on the list that you indicated will be served off the STED website to assist WMA personnel in their Individual Development Plans etc. We will add course descriptions and get the list to Mike if you are good to go with it.

• Alan - Class list in STED google drive- We need to review
• Action- Need to address course list, send out. Missed the Mid-March goal.
• Alan: good responses from STED’ers, vet one more time worthwhile Have a list of course that are available but necessary scheduled
• George Sechen- working on other teleconferencing technology beside WebEx. Working with Ralph to try using Adobe Connect next meeting. George: to post STED notes to SharePoint
• Update of previous round robin -->
• Joe- Data chiefs meeting in Reston- National meeting Data chiefs will be working on CARP stuff in future. Notes: Meeting was in December 3-6… ADR hard copy to be possibly going away….
• GW- working on internal training page. New training page is done. See http://water.usgs.gov/usgs/ogw/training.html
• Alan- 42% reduction. 7 WMA classes for 2014. Still need to get approval for classes from Jerad. Streaming. Annual report is done. Update on classes?? Improving, 8-9 courses approved by Jared, how to push to remotely held classes (streaming, as proof of concept) February Paul Barlow “Groundwater Surface Water interactions”; 6-7 remote students, ask questions, whiteboard, blended approach, TJ Lane work with, provide stream no additional costs (folks that do not get approval), “Pilot”
• Greg- Dollars are tight and need to get word out on online, streaming, saving time. What are other ideas to ‘get the word out?’

NATIONAL TRAINING CENTER (NTC):

• Alan- update on RFP process (pending now approved, within next 2 weeks from

Bill Werkheiser
Hi. The STED committee has earned a total on $20,593.00 in TEL course tuition fees. Alan and I would like to suggest that the STED invests some money into a future TEL course development for the Water Mission Area. We have collected this money from QW1022 (Water Quality Principles) and SW1749 (Intro to Streamgaging). As you may recall these are the only tuition fee courses in our WMA TEL course arsenal. The STED needs to keep $5000 in the TEL account to maintain and update the QW1022 class yearly, so that leaves about $15,000 that the STED can contribute to a SME (subject matter expert) to develop a new WMA TEL course.

The STED could provide up $15,000 of the selected SME's time in developing an online TEL course. The funding could also ensure they get a license and take the OED (blended) cert class to develop in Adobe Presenter.

We can either put some or all the money towards the NTC RFP that was recently approved (attached is more information on the RFP). OR We can save some or all and put it towards the CARP (Aquarius) TEL course training project.

A quick update on the TEL RFP run in past years by OED, looks to be approved. At best it will likely only provide about $40k or so and since they are targeting courses for multiple mission areas its hard to say how many WMA courses would be selected. However, it would be no problem setting aside the $15k from STED to be directed towards a WMA TEL course.

I would also like to note that I am working with Jerad Bales to get some (not much but some) funding for us to meet face to face in Kansas City at the Data Conference in September (more info to come). If that is the case, I will be coordinating some F2F time with the CARP folks and Aquarius to aid in their training development and assist in anyway possible. It might be good to leverage some money towards their project, but we can weigh pros and cons of each. The link about CARP is listed below.

Please let me know your thoughts on this as we may need an official vote prior to April 17th.

I look forward to speaking with you all next month on our STED call, April 17th. Thanks for your time,
Jen

CARP: Commercial ADAPS Replacement Project - Sharepoint Site

• The USGS is now switching to AQUARIUS instead of ADAPS to store, process, and publish hydrologic time-series data.
• What does it mean for you and your work?
• This website is here to help.
  https://collaboration.usgs.gov/project/carp/SitePages/Home.aspx

OLD NEWS: But Still Important

• Think about other TEL development? What classes need to be re-developed in TEL… revisit top 5 or 10 classes?
• Streaming Memo- Sent by Jared to Water Mission Area leads (technical office chiefs, NRP, etc). Sent May 9, 2013 and resent 9/25/13. What has been the response?
• Streaming option will be tracked…. with 2 different sessions. Tuition is the same. Two different classes: classroom vs streaming version
• Water Quality Principles is 80 hour course, $300, have a month to finish, course is full x3, chat boards, live instructor lead, 100% completion rate, produces revenue $ reused for additional online training, big time commitment, highest needs for http://www.usgs.gov/humancapital/doilearn/viewCourse.php? course_code=US GS-OED-QW1022-Blended approval process: in DTS system,
• Karen Baker has put a hold on it, ready to roll; funding comes from OED, dozen courses, panel of impartial folks to determine worthiness, due by Sept 30th,

Top 5-10 COURSES FOR REDEVELOPMENT?
(Possible Tele Component);
Training Needs Analysis 70 Water Mission Areas:

• Hands on sampling course: hard to do via tele-conf/streaming … certain modules could be (2 week class) very expensive,
• As we move into Aquarius classes going to need to be redeveloped, Surface Water Records Computation: well suited for blended (after Aquarius roll out ~2016), webcast/podcast during curricula development release date May/June 2015
• SME : no cap for RFP

CARP TRAINING:

• STED'S ROLE
• Update- CARP is going to have on-line prerequisites.
• CARP is still considering TEL for the on-line classes and will likely be making a decision by the end of February.
• 4/17/14­ phone call update
• CARP is using TEL for about 5­6 levels of users.
• Decisions to use TEL on 3 things has been made.
• 1­ Pre­req for core users (hydrotechs, etc)­ 4 modules and then participate in In­person training.
• 2­AQ Lite­ people who only need to look at data (hydrologists, etc)­ All Training for this group is done online
• 3­DBAs and LDMs­ will likely take in­ person core users training and have some post on­line TEL training.
• They have created a TEL TEAM consisting of 4 members and I recommended that they include Tj in this process. I spoke with Tj and she is calling Chuck today.

CARP: Very rough timeline (which will be refined and added to the Plan):

• Revised timelines (still in draft):
• Last AQ build for USGS release: December 2014. (This reflects the addition of 1 more quarter of development.) Testing for the release build: through early Jan 2015.
• 2nd pilot installation: later January 2015.
• Supertrainer train­the­trainer class ­ About the same time as 2nd pilot, or a little later. My team will be working hard to finalize the curriculum before then, but we'll train what we have and ask you all to assimilate tweaks as we need to make them.
• 3rd pilot installation: March 2015.
• Release starts: May or June 2015
• Local expert training classes: for early deployment WSCs, just before roll­out; for later deployment WSCs, about halfway through roll­out.
• NOTE that this is all still conjecture, but at least we are sure that deployment won't be in January 2015, as once stated.
• 36 super trainers, learning curve with new lingo/terminology, quality of video and audio very good, Aquarius speak to tech speak, lot to do in next year

AQUARIUS:

• Bulk of $ to Aquarius and like training ~15k (specify toward TEL development, licensing, SME’s time to work on TEL).
• Would need to figure out (and document) how the accounting would work on transferring $
• Already started (according to Chuck) meeting and discussions, STED money can be used this year AND next year, Francesca's course generates $14k / session stream gauging $1,800/this summer ($100 / student)
• Think about and upcoming vote on how to spend $
• TEAM- Need input as far as continued webpage promotion and other ideas to promote new technology and learning.

STED WEBSITE: http://water.usgs.gov/usgs/STED

• Promotion -
  • Email to Director and IT groups has been sent 10/18.
  • Email to all techs and hydrologists to use the STED page for finding training sent 11/15/13. (with course catalog)
  • Web pages-
  • Suggestion: Go through the website every few weeks and click on links to ensure quality.
  • If you find any mistakes or outdated information, please send an email to Mike and Jen

ROUND ROBIN:-

• Committee:
• Please share ideas.
• OSW (Jim)
• OWQ (Franceska)
• OGW (David)
• OWI/NWIS (JimC) -
• Pat
• Cindy (NRP)-
• George
• Rod
• Joe
• Jen
• Alan
• Mike Ierardi

Funding for one OED person to go (open to suggestions) … TJ and I couple years ago (TJ our honorary TEL member)

CURRENT ACTION ITEMS:

• ACTION ITEMS
• RESEND web page promotion - mid March (with course catalog)
• CARP updates, Alan keep us up to date on RFP process
• Need to evaluate courses that would be be good for redevelopment using blended learning (TEL and/or ILT)
• Action: Alan will see if the old “course catalog” can be found and then updated by the Technical Offices.
• George to talk to Joe N about advanced WebEx.
• Possible Face to Face at Data Conference?? Available funding $750 each
• TEAM to review website weekly- check links especially since new STED page with auto-updating course list on right side of page.
• ✲ Next meeting: June 12th, 10 AM Mountain Time