2023-04-27 Meeting notes

1:03

Words from John

Jim

Jim: he is at JWST TAC, back next Monday

1:04

Words from Jim

Jim

Slew of Engineering starting tonight

1:06

SA Shifts on the PP

Maylyn

• Do we want default to be night shifts?

• Can only have one primary location

• Jim: We are not a one size fits all group

• LOARs are for vacation an sick leave only

• Jim: Why is there not a primary location on a per-employee basis?

• Carlos' default behavior differs from Josh’s are groups handled consistently

1:18

Director Change

Jim

• Any questions?

• Rich is going to set up meetings with departments

  • John will also attend

• What should Rich pay attention to?

• Send comments along to Jim

• Greg: are we “fully staffed” given new instrument(s)?

  • Jim: if hours in support (pre and post, instrument maint, etc.) increase, we can argue for this

• Jim: hours per AO night from SA group have doubled in recent years

  • Jim has made leadership aware

• Jim: on night support hours, we’re not too far out of line

• Jim: budget has not tracked “services” provided

  • split nights

  • more instruments and maintenance

• Percy: we’re training more users

  • Broader community, more modes offered

• Grant: things are more complicated now

  • e.g. Software before was a bit of unix shell and that’s it

  • Similar on hardware, just crates

• Jim: summary = “SAs are doing a lot”

• Kyle: don’t give up on fight for simplicity and reuse of component types

  • Requires retrofits to avoid maintaining old systems

  • Increased diversity of off the shelf components makes development easier but maintenance harder

• Grant: recognize the job its complex

• Josh: is specialization within the group useful?

  • Carlos: doesn’t affect the amount of work

• How to coordinate feedback? Send to Carolyn, Randy, and Jim

1:49

FY Planning

Jim

• Right now in planning process

• “Repair and Prepare” is not CI

  • but is like supersized CI

  • Will have labor and procurements

  • Jim: encourage CI idea to be phrased as repair and prepare

  • RaP goes through ELM (Huber, Peter, Jason, Randy)

  • CIs often at bottom of priority list

• Jim: Probably going to be software available in FY24

• Next CI call will be in May

• RaP projects will be defined before CIs

2:04

KVSP

Josh

• Trying to move forward quickly

• Number of awards depends on costs, which depends on if scholars line up and can share resources, so it is iterative process

2:05

Pau!