Those in attendance: Ralph Ferraro, Jeff Hawkins, Chris Velden, Frank Monaldo, John Zapotocny, Ken Holmlund, Gerald Dittberner, Robbie Hood, Marshall Shepherd, Elaine Prins, Jeff Puschell, Jaime Daniels, Arlene Laing, Joe Turk, Yale Schiffman (AMS), Eric Smith (NASA/GSFC)
Ralph Ferraro opened the meeting at 11:45 and introduced Jeff Hawkins.
Jeff Hawkins mentioned that 80% of the papers at this conference were in a poster format with the remaining 20% presented as plenary-type _-hour talks. He expressed great displeasure with the format and venue of the poster presentations, which was downstairs in one room with posters for all conferences, rather than having the posters in the same room as where the talks are being presented. He suggested that we express our great displeasure with this format to the AMS so that it is not replicated again in the future, especially for the September 2004 conference in Norfolk, Virginia. He also proposed that consider alternate conference locations, apart from the AMS annual meetings, even if it is slightly more expensive for the registration fee.
John Zapotocny suggested that it is the joint session posters that might be better placed in a separate venue, rather than all SatMet posters.
Gerald Dittberner suggested that the SatMet conference that coincides with the annual meeting could have talks only, and make the meetings that don't coincide with the annual meeting more poster-oriented.
Yale Schiffman mentioned at this point that the AMS annual meeting program committee wanted all posters (from all conferences) in one room, whereas the satellite meteorology (SATMET) committee had requested that their posters be in the same room as the SATMET talks. The Long Beach venue couldn;t accommodate this (670 posters total at this annual meeting). He apologized for the arrangement and suggested that we mention the poster issue to the annual meeting program committee prior to the 2006 conference (which would be the next time that the SATMET conference would intersect with the annual meeting).
Ralph Ferraro mentioned that SATMET loses attendees to the Hydrology and IIPS conferences, since those conferences offer more talks and the presenters get 15 minutes to speak.
Eric Smith mentioned that in this case, that the posters not be up for the entire week so that the attendees make a better point of being near the posters and not focusing only on attending oral presentations. Chris Velden disagreed, saying that he preferred the posters up for a longer period of time.
At this point, the discussion was shifted to Brad Colman from the AMS. He mentioned that a new target for the AMS is less "specialty" at the annual meeting conferences since AMS lost about $500K on meetings last year. The annual meeting industry exhibitors provide needed revenue to the AMS and therefore AMS needs to keep as many attendees as they can to the annual meeting.
A general discussion followed. The general consensus of the SATMET committee was that if the poster format was to be preserved, then the poster presenters need to be placed on equal footing with the oral presenters. Eric Smith mentioned that the SATMET committee addressed this 10 years ago to the AMS headquarters. The suggestion was made to have our opinion/recommendations made to the annual meeting oversight committee, which was meeting the following morning (February 13).
Ralph Ferraro brought up the rest of the items on the meeting agenda. The next SATMET conference date is the week of September 20, 2004, in Norfolk, Virginia. Elaine Prins is chairing the meeting. He suggested that we have some short courses at the 2004 annual meeting in Seattle (January 2004). Suggestions were made by Joe Turk (data assimilation) and Arlene Laing (quantitative use of new satellite/sensors). Joe and Marshall Shepherd agreed to coordinate and poll members for their input on this.
Joe Turk and Jeff Puschell presented the revised AMS policy statement on use of satellite data for meteorology. It had some changes to highlight new technologies and additional users of the data. They passed around copies for everyone including copies for Brad Colman and Melissa Weston.
Marshall Shepherd asked if it was within the SATMET committee's jurisdiction to show support for international satellite programs. Brad Colman said that any such show of support would have to go to the "COMPUB" (Commission on Public Policy) of the AMS.
Ralph Ferraro mentioned that the SATMET website needs to be moved to a new location now that Frank Monaldo is no longer supporting it. A suggestion was made to move it to NRL-Monterey, although Brad Colman mentioned that the AMS is in the process of adopting new information technology structures and that these may impact the SATMET website hosting and location.
Award nominations are due on May 1st, as well as nominations for new AMS fellows. Also the AMS is looking for the Walter Orr Roberts lecture for the annual meeting in Seattle, which is then published in the AMS Bulletin afterwards. Pres.-elect Avery is centering the 2005 meeting about "grand challenges"- they are open to suggestions.
On a final note, Ken Holmlund (EUMETSAT) suggested that AMS SATMET and EUMETSAT host a joint meeting in 2006, in a European venue. The last time the AMS SATMET meeting was overseas was in 1998 in Paris.
Meeting adjourned shortly after 1:30 PM.