A final reminder to the nominated working group technical chairs to review the 2013 action plans and make any final changes as soon as possible. We plan to launch the new working groups the week commencing January 14th so this is your last chance to fine-tune the plans for the new working groups before we formally start signing up the new members.

If you are satisfied with the output from the ESDSWG meeting then there is no need to make any changes but some groups may benefit from a bit more detail (Earth Science Collaboratory?) and others may be a bit ambitious about what can be achieved in one year (Open Source?). We want to ensure that the new working groups have clearly defined objectives, activities, and deliverables for the current year before they start working. The standards interest area TWGs authoring or reviewing RFCs already have fairly well defined tasks within the standards process and do not need to update their action plans.

The technical chairs have been nominated based on preferences expressed in the ESDSWG meeting proposal assessment survey and follow-up discussions. If your circumstances have changed since the ESDSWG meeting and you are no longer able to take a leadership role in one of the working groups please let me know so that we can make appropriate changes. ESDSWG membership is open to ACCESS and MEaSUREs funded participants and volunteers from the NASA Earth science community - there is no additional specific funding available for participation in ESDSWG (with a few previously agreed exceptions for subject matter experts). I am assuming that everyone already has any necessary approval from their supervisor to participate in ESDSWG. Again, please let Jeff and me know if there are any issues that we need to be aware of.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.

--Steve