Cluster Organization Meeting - 22 October 2025

[ktoddbrown]

Opening - 2 min [0:00]

• Review and consent to agenda
• Roll call ESIP SOI - RollCall
• Confirm notetaker (Debasish)
• Confirm next meeting 12 November [Tentative]

Check-ins - 3 min [0:02]

How are you showing up? [https://feelingswheel.com/ excited, sick, tired, distracted,...] No notes here please

Information - 5 min [0:05]

Anything new that you’ve heard related to this group that you would like to share?

Decision: Retrospective 2025 - 10 min [0:15]

In 2025 we moved to a monthly seminar format where we heard:

• Paper update
• GloSIS update
• Alaska Soil Data Bank
• Bulk density calculations/uncertainties from Forest Service FIA

Overall these meetings were very well structured and consistent. Notes and videos have made staying up to date easy. While things are very focused it has been hard to attract people beyond a core half dozen people. This may be do to multi-step registration and the fact that monthly meeting frequency makes it easy to forget.

Round: Is this a complete retrospective or recap of cluster activities?

Formulation -> Decision: Moving forward - 10 min [0:25]

Given the retrospective above we would like to:

• move back to a bi weekly frequency after the winter holidays
• expand the meeting format to include
  1. seminar presentations on soil semantics and their applications
  2. provide friendly reviews on manuscripts and other materials that cluster members are working on (may or may not warrant co-authorship)
  3. mixer-style meetings to encourage conversation and professional connections

Round: What is your first reaction?
Round: Is this good enough to move forward with?
Round: What is our immediate calendar?

Formulation: Review github - 15 min [0:35]

We have accumulated quite a few google docs over the years and are concerned about transparency and longevity. Moving over to a GitHub repository would be one way to track who contributes and ensure that ESIP has stewardship of the documents. We also love git!

We have a new GitHub repository! Check out the md files on the main directory and the Discussion for a possible agenda format.

Solo: Go through https://github.com/ESIPFed/soil-ontology-informatics-cluster and compare to our Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jIJmCYjIlsligLJd2VebeIU3tt_xN4oGrIGKCN8Vnlw
Round: What is your first reaction to this migration?
Round: What is in the google doc that needs to be moved over?

Check out - 5 min [0:50]

How are you leaving this meeting? [discovery, future work, feelings …]

[ktoddbrown]

Notes

Opening - 2 min [0:00]

• Review and consent to agenda
• Roll call ESIP SOI - RollCall
• Confirm notetaker (Vaasuki)
• Confirm next meeting 12 November [Tentative]

Check-ins - 3 min [0:02]

How are you showing up? [https://feelingswheel.com/ excited, sick, tired, distracted,...] No notes here please

Information - 5 min [0:05]

Anything new that you’ve heard related to this group that you would like to share?

• STEWARDS : a database out of a sewage water data; perhaps has some soil data too?! (Tanya will share more details in future) - https://www.nrrig.mwa.ars.usda.gov/stewards/stewards.html?
• https://github.com/ktoddbrown/SoilDRaH/wiki/Workflow-for-data-rescue
  • Current workflow in Todd-Brown lab!
  • Alignment of methodologies (Semantics!!)
  • Can do a cool citation network analysis
  • Curiosities:
    • Any insights on leveraging AI?
    • Transition to training models using AI
    • Old pdfs are weird to scrape text and figures compared to the newer ones
    • Jonathan Blythe (Discovery cluster) works on complex citations from ESIP. Could be a good resource to have a chat!
  • ESIP Announcements:
  • Registration open for the January meeting 2026
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oH-14sdb2cKimxSsqUMG_DTDVE1hVb1lFPzcUhL4NyY/edit?tab=t.0
  • Due Nov 13; perhaps could be extended
  • “SPARK” event @agu 2026 - call for lightning talks still open!
    • https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaQkenRP9T8fLBfzNFsvWpAchhpj340uhKdKB_oFaeFvFB6w/viewform

Decision: Retrospective 2025 - 10 min [0:15]

In 2025 we moved to a monthly seminar format where we heard:

• Paper update
• GloSIS update
• Alaska Soil Data Bank
• Bulk density calculations/uncertainties from Forest Service FIA

Overall these meetings were very well structured and consistent. Notes and videos have made staying up to date easy. While things are very focused it has been hard to attract people beyond a core half dozen people. This may be do to multi-step registration and the fact that monthly meeting frequency makes it easy to forget.

Round: Is this a complete retrospective or recap of cluster activities?

• Reduced frequency of the meetings during 2025.
• Monthly cadence for presentations
• The registration process could be confusing for folks
• Thoughts:
  • Potential whitelist for known members of the cluster (registry)
  • One time registration for all meeting invites
  • International collaborators clash with timezones?! Do a doodle poll to see audience response?
    - Consider alternating Europe and Pacific timezones

Formulation -> Decision: Moving forward - 10 min [0:25]

Given the retrospective above we would like to:

• move back to a bi weekly frequency after the winter holidays
• expand the meeting format to include
  • seminar presentations on soil semantics and their applications
  • provide friendly reviews on manuscripts and other materials that cluster members are working on (may or may not warrant co-authorship)
  • mixer-style meetings to encourage conversation and professional connections

Round: What is your first reaction?

• Steven: Like the format
  • If seminars only - months;y cadence is sufficient
  • Something more active to chew on
• Tanya: Build templates/data model to record workflow? ; like a intra-call activity
  • Leverage agency to support more work?
• Tim Bailey: A story of a product developed in the cluster will be definitely valued!
  • Have set milestones? (Short-term) to track product/research content development
• Aaron: Reach out to ESIP admin if need any help or suggestions!
• KTB: Long-term product can be challenging:
  • un-standardized manuscript lead (shaky!)
  • Open-community support
  • More of a network with shared interests than product-oriented approach
  • Use of semantic resources talks do that we can integrate it to soildrah data rescue
  • Governance in terms of sharing ownership
• Test working with git with the group (say a month or two) and see if folks are comfortable with GitHub or google doc?
• Folks were open to try Git although google doc is a favorite (ease of access!) - but no strong opinions/ oppositions as such

Round: Is this good enough to move forward with?
Round: What is our immediate calendar?

Formulation: Review github - 15 min [0:35]

We have accumulated quite a few google docs over the years and are concerned about transparency and longevity. Moving over to a GitHub repository would be one way to track who contributes and ensure that ESIP has stewardship of the documents. We also love git!
We have a new GitHub repository! Check out the md files on the main directory and the Discussion for a possible agenda format.

Solo: Go through https://github.com/ESIPFed/soil-ontology-informatics-cluster and compare to our Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jIJmCYjIlsligLJd2VebeIU3tt_xN4oGrIGKCN8Vnlw
Round: What is your first reaction to this migration?
Round: What is in the google doc that needs to be moved over?

We ran out of time here and are going to move forward with a test of a more github focused

Check out - 5 min [0:50]

How are you leaving this meeting? [discovery, future work, feelings …]