Thank you all for participating in the recent Future of BESSIG survey (and thank you, Lynn, for putting it together). We had a great discussion at the January meeting and a good response to the survey.

For those that missed it, we talked about three areas: the scope of the group, the name of the group, and a possible funding approach. A number of BESSIG members learned through the AGU ESSI group that the ESSI acronym isn’t well-known or well-understood in the larger geoscience community. Locally, the question came up - do we face the same issues with the BESSIG brand and what would be potential alternatives. As we considered a potential name change, we also discussed expanding or changing the scope of the group to include data science and informatics beyond the current ESSI scope.

Finally, Anne once again raised the question of community funding support, brought to the forefront by the new requirements put forth by our previous meeting place and the difficulties in finding an acceptable meeting space in Boulder.

On to the results!*

BESSIG Scope

Response Count Percent
Yes, BESSIG should expand to include anyone local interested in data issues, including all scientific domains as well as industry 16 47
Yes, BESSIG should expand to include anyone local interested in academic science data issues, including all scientific domains but not industry 7 20
No, BESSIG should remain an Earth Space Science-focused group 5 15
Other 6 17

This is a pretty solid vote in favor of expanding the scope of the group, although we may want to refine the nature of that expansion somewhat.

BESSIG Name

Response Count Percent
Yes 3 9
No 5 15
Depends on how awesome the new name is 24 70
I don’t care either way, I am just in it for the beer 2 6

So we’re not sure about the name change. Some of the suggestions:

  • Boulder Planetary Data or Boulder Earth Data
  • BDIG (Boulder Data on the Ground)
  • BADTAP (Boulder Area Data in Theory and Practice)
  • B DISH (Boulder Data Interoperability Starts Here; or flipped as DISH B)
  • BADCOP (Boulder Area Data Community-of-Practice)
  • Boulder Data Masters
  • Boulder Data Group
  • Boulder Data Whisperers
  • FREDS (Front Range Earth Data Society)
  • FREIDA (Front Range Informatics and Data Association)
  • BADS Group (Boulder Area Data Science Group)
  • BAFOD (Boulder Area Friends of Data)
  • DIGBA (Data Interest Group, Boulder Area)
  • BESDIG (Boulder Earth Science Data Interest Group)
  • BAD ASS (Boulder Area Data Art and Sciences Society)

A word of caution here - there are a number of existing data science meetups in Boulder and we need to take into consideration the names of those groups before selecting a new name here. BESSIG is pretty unique; Boulder Data Science is not.

And another valid comment - it depends on the outcome of the scope question. If we expand beyond Earth and Space Sciences, shouldn’t the name reflect that?

BESSIG Support

Response Count Percent
$20/year 17 50
$30/year 5 15
$40/year 5 15
Not interested in donating 3 9
Other 4 12

Here, a majority of the respondents are willing to contribute some funds to support BESSIG. (This is voluntary and in no way reflects a desire to impose dues.)

Finally, from the set of additional comments space, we see a couple of trends. First, the meeting time is an issue for some folks. And second, there’s a hesitation in expanding the scope outside of academics or the sciences, i.e. what do we lose if the scope is too broad?

We’ve learned a lot from just the three questions. The most important takeaway is that there’s a lot of support to keep this community going and growing. And thank you, Anne, for keeping it going for the past five years!

(For anyone interested in the complete survey results, they’re available as a Google sheet.)

/* Since we are, at heart, a bunch of data geeks, the percents in the tables and in the charts vary due to Fun With Rounding across the two visualization options. The bins are big enough not to quibble, yes?