2021-08-05 Meeting notes

1:01

Words from Randy

Randy

• Luca has officially ended his tenure at Keck.

  • Percy will be LRIS IS

  • For KCWI, Greg and Josh will co-IS (Greg emphasis on hardware, Josh on software). Plan is to have Rosalie take over in near future.

• Official call went out. KCWI off line early June.

• Carolyn: who will take over as Keck TAC representative?

  • Randy: TBD. If you’re interested in leading Team Keck time process, talk to Randy. TAC is officially John, Randy, Luca.

• Josh: Luca was Archive Scientist for KOA. Discussions on continuing that are ongoing.

• Randy on vacation next week. Jim is delegate (Marc knows what’s coming).

1:08

Words from John

John

• Thanks to all that helped with fire evacuees

• COVID update from Hilton came out yesterday

  • Note that today’s numbers for the state are bad

  • State will be adopting similar vaccination rules as Keck just adopted

  • Email from Rich coming later this afternoon

• Hilton is out the reminder of this week, back next week

• Keck Science Meeting (Sept 9-10)

  • As of right now is hybrid (in person at UCSD and virtual)

  • John will be final decision on in person status (by Aug 16)

  • SOC is considering talk proposals and breakout proposals

  • Splinter Session 1 (day before): IGNIS

  • Splinter Session 2 (day before): KAPA community outreach

• Jim: are we considering closing HQ to observers?

  • John (his perspective): we are requiring vaccinations, so observers held to higher standard than ourselves, but not his decision

  • Randy: upcoming observers are allowed, but going forward may reconsider

• Randy: Timeline: Wed evening had a “presumed positive” case (had symptoms). Went in to contact tracing and testing for those. One of those rapid tests came back positive the next day. That triggered the pause in operations. Extended contact tracing and testing. That second case turned out to be a false positive.

  • Back when resuming ops in June, groups went though tabletop exercises. Were “quite useful”

  • Randy encourages us to let him know what might have been better.

  • This event isn’t necessarily a precedent, may adjust strategy on subsequent similar events.

  • Now in return to operations mode

  • We may remain in a core ops mode …

  • Jim: what is definition of core ops? Are there limits on summit personnel?

Evaluating the last Return to Office in the COVID era , was it successful?

• Randy: some action happening on 2 fronts

• Network speed and reliability. Just made another big purchase.

• Was purchase for ops or visitor network? Uncertain.

• Kyle: Spectrum link was to get traffic from things like phones off network. The effect on those depending on WiFi for primary connectivity was not part of plan. There may be some upgrades to WM-HQ network (not to WiFi stations). Bottleneck is Spectrum performance.

• Randy: Fan noise in remote ops. Those UPSs will be replaced.

• Josh: any plans to work on Zoom meeting infrastructure?

• John: Yes, but no details. John will ask about this.

• Randy:Jeff and OAs have spec’d out thin client replacements. If that works well, can extend that to instrument seats.

1:39

Question

• Percy: What is “surveillance testing”?

• Randy: testing people on a 2 week period regardless of system. Also will be regular testing (1/week) of unvaccinated. Will also be more diligent accounting of unvaccinated.

• John: modeled after Parker School. They have red/yellow/green based on environment, color code indicates frequency of testing. Using batched testing (15 person batches). Our frequency will be strongly linked to situation in Hawaii. Observatory will pay for tests.

• Randy: will be self administered tests

1:43

Operations restart

Randy

Already covered

1:43

SA Hiring

Randy

• Randy: some discussion among leadership about Luca leaving. Randy submitted “position auth form” for entry level SA. promotions and recruitment committee (PRC) accepted and approved that position.

• Now in hiring mode for new entry level SA.

• Randy: hard to get replacement through PRC, but difficulty was getting entry level position instead of direct replacement of Luca (senior level position). Randy wants us to grow our senior level positions from within. That was the debate.

• John: We will be hiring someone to help lead things like DSI. Will be separate position. John will submit that position.

• Randy: 2 different funding sources (ops and DSI) are one reason for the two positions

1:51

Pau!