LSST Science Advisory Committee
                           Phonecon minutes, March 5, 2014

Attending:
 David Kirkby (UC Irvine), Mansi Kasliwal (Carnegie Observatories),
Lisa Hunter (UC Santa Cruz), Beth Willman (Haverford), Renu Malhotra
(U. Arizona), Niel Brandt (Penn State), Bhuvnesh Jain (U. Penn),
Lucianne Walkowicz (Princeton), Rachel Mandelbaum (Carnegie Mellon),
Ricardo Munoz (U. Chile), Michael Wood-Vasey (U. Pitt), Michael
Strauss (Princeton; SAC chair), Suzanne Jacoby (LSST), Victor
Krabbendam (LSST), Zeljko Ivezic (U. Washington; LSST Project
Scientist).  Apologies if I missed your name!

 Congratulations to Jason Kalirai and his family, for the birth of
 Jahan Singh Kalirai!

Action items:
 -Everybody: suggest agenda items for face-to-face meeting in
 Princeton next month.
 -Everybody: read through Suzanne Jacoby's posted document on
 communications, and send thoughts/suggestions to her and to this
 group.
 -Michael Strauss to send an update on science collaboration
 membership rules to science collaboration chairs.
 -Michael to work with Suzanne to have a regular brief column about
 SAC activities in the newsletter.  Also, prepare a description of
 the SAC for the AAS Electronic Newsletter.
 -Everybody to think about what sort of electronic presence we want
 the SAC to have.

*******LSST update
 The President's proposed 2015 budget is being revealed in two
 stages: a broad overview now, and details next week.  The NSF budget
 shows no surprises, but the DOE budget was cut 6% (fusion research
 was hit particularly hard).  It is not year clear what the impact on
 LSST will be.

 The Project Office is proceeding under the assumption that we
formally start construction in July 2014.  There is a lot of on-going
work planning for the August community/project workshop (the meeting
formerly known as the All-Hands Meeting) to be held in Phoenix.

 Among the technical issues of immediate interest to this group that
 the project is working hard on are:
   -Discussion of cadences
   -Putting out the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the filters, and
   getting the technical specifications set.

******
 Our main topic for this phonecon was communications.  This is
 a multi-faceted question; we focused today mostly on communications
 of LSST to the outside world.   Suzanne led the discussion; her LSST
 role is split between being the Project Manager for the EPO effort,
 and director of communications.  She had sent a document to all of
 us a few days ago, "LSST Project Office Communication Handbook", and
 talked us through Section 4, "External Project Communications".

 In particular:
   The LSST currently operates two main websites: lsst.org (mostly
   oriented to the outside world) and lsstcorp.org (mostly for
   internal use, where "Docushare", the LSST document archive is
   kept).  There is a major overhaul to bring these to a
   common back-end based on Drupal, and to recognize the distinction
   between the LSST Corporation and the LSST Project.  (It is the
   latter that is responsible for Construction).   The plan is to
   release this new website in April or May.

  The different audiences for the website include:
     -the public
     -people working on LSST infrastructure
     -science collaboration members
  and they will have separate ways to get to the LSST website.

 One problem now is that different parts of the website are protected
 with different passwords, and we all have multiple LSST passwords.
 It would be nice if they could be unified, such that a single login
 gets us access to all parts of the website.  SDSS took the approach
 of having a single, universal password that everyone shared, but
 they have since moved away from that: it is not very secure!

 We also need to give permission for appropriate people to edit and
 update parts of this website.

 A related question is deciding who *should* have access to what, and
 how to control this.  For example, there will be materials that each
 of the science collaborations will produce; do they want to have
 this readable by members of other science collaborations?  By LSST
 Project people?  By the world?

*******
  E-News is a quarterly newsletter, written for a broad audience,
  that is distributed to 3000 e-mail addresses.  A substantial
  fraction of the recipients click on 'read more' from the e-mail,
  which suggests that people are paying attention.

  LSST has a significant presence at AAS meetings: including a booth,
  splinter meetings, special sessions, poster sessions, usually
  concentrated at the Winter meeting.

 We also have a social media presence, including Facebook, Twitter
  (477 followers), and Linkedin.  There followed an extended
  discussion of how to make this aspect of outreach more effective.
  Anecdotally, people respond much more, and are more interested in
  following, a person (Tony Tyson?), rather than an entity (LSST).
  We need to understand exactly what we're trying to achieve with the
  social media.  Twitter and other tools are being used more not just
  to communicate with the outside world, but also within the
  astronomical community.

  We haven't done as much as we could about communicating to the
  outside world what the best way, now to get involved with LSST is.
  In particular, there is a sense among many that LSST is now a
  closed shop, and that if you're not already involved, it is too
  late.  This would be a self-defeating attitude 8 years before the
  survey starts!   We have to let people know that it is OK to join
  the project now, or 3 or 5 years from now.

  This led to a discussion of membership in the science
  collaborations.  It is open to people with LSST data rights (i.e.,
  people working at US and Chilean institutions, plus a small but
  growing number of international institutions that have signed MOA
  (Memoranda of Agreement) with LSST.  The process of applying for
  membership is to be set by each science collaboration separately,
  but the default is to write a one-page description of your interest
  and the specific ways that you will contribute to the activities of
  the science collaboration.
    I will reiterate this to the science collaboration chairs.

 We have not yet communicated to the world about the SAC itself.  We
 want the activities of this group to be open, so that people know
 who to approach if they wish to give scientific input to LSST.   We
 should include a regular column in the LSST E-News about the SAC,
 and also include an item in the AAS electronic newsletter.

*************Next meeting
 We will be meeting face-to-face (and via skype, telephone, and/or
 polycom) in Princeton on April 7.  Now is the time to prepare the
 agenda; we would like to ask various people from the Project to
 present various topics to us, and we need to give them advance
 warning!  Victor said that he'd like to save money and not have too
 many people fly out for the meeting, but of course we can have some
 people present from afar.  (Steve Kahn and Zeljko Ivezic are both
 currently planning to attend the meeting).

 Here are my thoughts on agenda items (order to be determined), based
 on our discussion thus far:

 -LSST Status update.
 -Discussion of the role of the SAC.
 -Continuing the communications question.
 -Diversity and workforce development.  It is important to remember
   that this is distinct from E/PO.  Perhaps Suzanne could give a
   presentation.
 -Discussion on cadence.  (Zeljko).
 -LSST Commissioning and Operations plans, and how the data will be
    made available to the community. (Zeljko again).
 -Plans for the August community/project workshop, and what our
   presence there should be.

 We certainly could fill up a full day with the above, but do suggest
 additional items!