SGC general assembly 2023

by Ludovic Räss, Marj Tonini

On Thursday 16 November will be held the general assembly of the Swiss Geocomputing Centre.

Items to discuss

We will discuss the following items:

1. Coffee meetings - Organization of regular coffee meetings (once to twice a month) mainly addressed to PhD and Postdoc of our Faculty, about main topics in the domain of geocomputing (e.g., Open science and reproducibility - FAIR Principles; GitHub - version control and collaborative development; comparison of different program languages - R vs Python vs Julia).

2. Budget – Settle a yearly budget, ideally financed by the Institutes or the Faculty (via FINV), to support the activities of the Centre, such as seminars (possibility of inviting external speakers), workshops, infrastructures.

3. SGC event – Organization of a one- or two-day main event (seminars and workshops) to promote the activities related to the Centre.

4. SGC direction - The Director's term of office is 2 years, renewable for 3 consecutive terms. I propose the renewal of my mandate, and to add Ludovic (in addition to Christian) as vice-directors. These proposals must be approved by the Scientific Committee (SC).

5. SGC reorganization - According to the « Guidelines », any member of the Faculty can ask to be affiliated to the Centre, while the SC has a more active role in the management of the Centre. I propose to invite more researchers to be affiliated and, for you, to confirm if you wish remaining a member of the SC or to change your position as affiliated member.

Meeting summary

Attendees

Present: Guillaume Jouvet, Tom Beucler, Beatriz Quintal, György Hetény, Stefan Schmalholz, Romain Pilon, Grégoire Mariéthoz, Céline Rosenblat, Christian Kaiser, Marj Tonini, Ludovic Räss

Absent: -

Agenda

1. Coffee meeting propositions
   • Open science (repos, publications, reproducible workflows)
     • FAIR principles
     • Geodata handling
     • Present about UN-GGM activities (Céline):
       • Common geodata platform: GEO AI, geology, remote sensing
         • Make SGC visible there?
         • See if one could position SGC within expert groups in such target entities
     • Each interested FGSE research group presents methods and challenges respective to their research
     • Include MSc student as well in the meetings (promote it for them as well)
     • Possibly enable finding synergies between MSc students and research groups
     • TODO: Settle a series of seminar alternating between FGSE research groups in Jan – Feb 24

2. Budget
   • FINV24 b to acquire some annual budget for the centre
     • See if institutes could take over some financing in a later stage
     • Check out as international relations Unil may help financing Summer schools
     • TODO: draft a 2024 budget and ask institutes

3. Events
   • Plan 1 or 2 larger events for 2024 (workshop)

4. Elections
   • The assembly re-elected Marj Tonini as SGC director for a second term
     • The assembly re-elected Christian Kaiser as SGC co-director for a second term
     • The assembly elected Ludovic Räss as SGC co-director

5. SGC reorgainsation
   • All members accepted the proposed re-organisation of the SGC