Gulf of Maine Environmental Information Exchange
Action Committee Session of Tuesday, December 7, 1999

Pease Development Authority, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA

Present: Paul Boudreau (DFO), Paul Schroeder (Umaine), ), Warren Gash (GOMC), Patrice Farrey (NEAq), Joe Pelczarski (MA CZM), Andy Boyce & Chris Wentzell-Brehme (Island Institute), Tom North (UNH Seaweed), Jeannie Meggison (GOMMEA), Will Hopkins (Cobscook Bay Resource Center), Dave Lincoln (MA Fishermen’s Partnership), Norvall Collins (CEF Consultants)

Tom North, a first time participant who is a graduate student at University of New Hampshire working on seaweed harvesting technologies in cooperation with the Maine Seaweed Council (20-30 members) and a company that is involved in harvesting. He had an opportunity to describe his involvements during the meeting.

About the Minutes: Participants in the GOMINFOEX Action Committee come together for exchange, support and direction. Though decisions are sometimes made, the substance of the meetings often are reflected in the tenor of the discussions. The minutes are intended to bring the flavor of the discussion as well as the more specific outcomes of the meeting. Topics in the minutes will not always be presented in the exact time sequence of the meeting’s discussions.

Introductions and Review: The meeting began with introductions and review of the agenda. A summary of the previous day’s session was presented, including overview of the e-Atlas, Common Coordinates, and Sustainable Community Indicators projects (see minutes from Technical Session).

Other discussions were summarized including the quest for the "Holy Grail" (what is the overall objective that this group is trying to achieve?), and the relations between present projects and long range goals. Can we implement access to remote servers for data to display on the interactive e-Atlas? Should we assume that communities already exist, to be identified and served by these projects? Or are should ongoing community capacity building become part of the project's goals? The sense of the group seemed to be that clarity about where we are heading will help in defining the appropriate steps that are open to us now.

Paul Boudreau and Chris Brehme will make a presentation to the Gulf of Maine Council on Thursday, Dec. 9, with Paul giving an overview of the GOMINFOEX process, and Chris outlining the e-Atlas and Common Coordinates projects. Relevant web addresses are:
GOMINFOEX Terms of Reference: http://www.gulfofmaine.org/gominfoex/index.html,
Island Institute e-Atlas of the Gulf of Maine: http://www.islandinstitute.org/gis/e-atlas.htm,
Common Coordinates: http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~schroedr/diagrams/cch.html.

Community Indicators for GOMINFOEX: The topic of sustainable community indicators led to discussion of finding appropriate indicators to track the progress or success of GOMINFOEX, which is itself a community-building effort. Use of the “silly word” in websites, contributions from school groups, participation in the e-Atlas were names, while caution was raised about “easy but bad” indicators such as hits on websites and, of all things, sizes of data files. The indicators must be simple useful over time.

Web-Based Discussions: Continuing discussion of the group’s Holy Grail led to the issue of structuring ongoing discussion among partners via web-based services. Use of bulletin boards works well. The Gulf of Maine Council has one that is available to the group, at: http://www.gulfofmaine.org/cgibin/forum.cgi. The issue of various implementations of threaded bulletin boards was discussed. Paul Schroeder said that some allow automatic forwarding of posted messages to members’ e-mails, while requiring visiting the site to post a message. An examples is WebBBS; an archived example is at: http://www.spatial.maine.edu/informe/webbbs. That site used version 2.24; the application is now up to 3.4. It runs on UNIX platforms. Details at: http://awsd.com/scripts/webbbs/. At least for now, online discussions will be encouraged via postings to the Council’s discussion forum site.

Fishermen’s Links: Dave Lincoln reported on the progress of his links website which is focused on issues relevant to the fishing community. He explained the topical organization of the links, and said that the entire site is now somewhat above 2 mb in size. Discussion followed on finding an appropriate site for his links, including the compatibility of FrontPage management of the site with the UNIX-based server maintained by the Council (not compatible), and other long-term site management issues. A possibility of negotiating a home on the Island Institute’s web server was discussed, as well as housing the site in a location now available to Dave. Some urgency about finding at least a temporary home for the links was expressed, due to imminent publication of site details in the Gulf of Maine Times.

Gulf of Maine Educators: Jeanne Meggison presented the preliminary results of the new survey being circulated to Gulf of Maine Educators, beginning with distribution at the recent GOMMEA annual meeting in South Portland, ME. Summarizing the results, the most surprising was lack of access to web pages by the educators, and lack of Internet access in some schools. Discussion centered around further distribution of the questionnaires, with several participants volunteering to distribute to their local educator communities. Putting a version on the GOMINFOEX web site was also discussed.

Jeanne also noted that the watershed concept is central to many of the activities among the Gulf of Maine educators. Organizing data in terms of watershed activities seemed to be an approach that could be facilitated by the GOMINFOEX. Perhaps this group could help bridge the gap between water monitoring projects and web pages by providing a standard template or table suitable for posting to a web site, and perhaps an appropriate web site could be located or developed that would host the results of multiple projects. Online access to student-generated data would be an option for further development of the e-Atlas.

The “circuit-rider” project of the Gulf of Maine Aquarium was named as an avenue for some of these developments. A person to fulfill a variety of support and development roles will soon be hired. We “should be talking to that person,” who will be visiting schools, providing technical support. In addition, Christie Dyer of the Coastal Network of the Gulf of Maine might have relevant information linking similar projects around the Gulf.

Online Documentation: These discussions led to comments about using the Council’s Supporting Actions Matrix as a model for identification of group activities around the Gulf. Perhaps some agreement could be in place to list project there, or in another version tailored to GOMINFOEX goals. Using this facility, as well as the Council’s Contact Address Database, http://www.gulfofmaine.org/cdb/index.html as an integrated part of (for instance) registration and directory information for Common Coordinates was discussed. A search performed 12/9/99 of the Contact Address Database showed that only 6 persons have listed themselves as “gominfoex” while 1 person listed “common coordinates” as a keyword. Directory listing in this database will become part of the Common Coordinates registration process.

Proposed Logo: The proposed logos were discussed. Concerns were raised about lighthouses being an overused symbol, along with the need to include some representation of the Gulf in the image, if there is to be one. The proposed logos received so far, by Aviva Rahmani and Warren Gash, may be viewed online at: http://www.gulfofmaine.org/gominfoex/logos.htm.

Web Site Advance: The newly operational GOMINFOEX web site was noted with great relief and thanks to Warren Gash (http://www.gulfofmaine.org/gominfoex/index.html). Among the documents available there are minutes of all previous Action Committee meetings as well as the proceedings of the Out of the Fog conference, all in .pdf format.

Institutional Leader: Discussion of an “institutional leader” was advanced by Paul Boudreau’s discovery of a GOM Council document that mandated their support of activities such as are being undertaken by GOMINFOEX participants, the Protocol on the Exchange of Information, approved July, 1994. This would give the group what it needs, especially when read in terms of other commitments the Council has made.

The need of all of the proposed projects to have access to willing cooperation from governmental units would be advanced by making the relations between GOMINFOEX and the Council more clear, and the sense of the meeting was that this was appropriate. Some reference to these precedents will probably be part of the presentation scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 9.

Silly Word: A chart of silly word search results cumulative to Nov. 29, 1999 was distributed by Paul Boudreau. The problems with this approach were noted, including the many inconsistencies of search engine results. A special problem is being found, then not found, then found again, etc. As a primary means of identification of related projects this seems to have been a good possibility that is not working in practice. There is no reason to discontinue the concept and it will go on, with results tracked over time.

Policies of Inclusion: An issue related to silly word was the attachment of the silly word by a group member who was providing technical support to a marine-issues advocacy group that had not taken active role in support of GOMINFOEX. As a means of identifying information sources related to the Gulf, a practice of open inclusion seemed appropriate, with no further meaning attached that “this group agrees to be found through GOMINFOEX web searches.” The character of that agreement (a form of informed consent) was discussed, along with the higher levels of commitment expected from participants in the Common Coordinates and other more proactive related projects.

Missing Partners: Discussion centered on participants from US National Ocean Service / NOAA, with positive expression of their previous interest and contributions. The general feeling of the group was that they are very interested in the approach of this group. They were not able to attend this meeting due to scheduling conflicts. To date, they have not been able to make a direct link or match between their priorities and those of the GOMINFOEX, but they will continue to monitor the progress of our group and are open to ideas for collaboration. A question was raised as to whether this group was product-oriented enough to satisfy the direction of the NOAA people. After thorough discussion, the sense of the group was that projects and directions are getting clarified, but it is a slow process. When they are able, NOAA will rejoin the effort. In any case, NOAA participants have expressed their willingness to help with technical assistance and data discovery as these are needed. E-atlas people should stay in touch with NOAA/NOS for technical support.

New Proposals for Action Items: The main new action item is planning for Out of the Fog II conference, slated for Fall, 2000. In addition, three grant and award programs were announced:

1. NOAA/NESDIS -- National Envi satellite information service Office of Research –Ocean Remote Sensing Service http://www.rdc.noaa.gov/~grants tel: 301-763-8127 -- proposals due to Jan 17, 2000/selection March 3;
2. Stockholm Challenge: www.challenge.stockholm.se;
3. National Ocean Partnership Program BAA99-027, proposals due dec 14 and feb 29 “virtual ocean data hub”.

Out of the Fog II: The major topic of discussion was the planning process and goals of the follow-up to last year’s conference. Many issues were discussed, both singly and in their relations with each other. These included dates, numbers of participants, relations with regional or preliminary meetings, relation to Coastal 2000, local hosting arrangements, transportation, inclusion of local group programs and participants, overall goals, demonstration of ongoing projects, uses of telecommunications for conference activities, availability of technical facilities, accommodations, and continuing planning process.

The notion of holding a distributed meeting in up to five locations was raised, with some basic questions about “resources and gaps” being raised at each, with a process for further synthesis. How OOTFII would be distinct from the Action Committee meetings was also discussed. Overall, a long-term process which builds capacity, often in ways not imagined before the process begins, is the aim, rather than a process that identifies known problems and then sets about to address them. The emergence of the new, of community capacity-building and self-discovery should be encouraged through the structure of the network.

OOTFII Outcome: There will be an OOTFII meeting, probably in mid-late Fall 2000, St. John NB, including approximately 80 people. A preliminary meeting will be held as part of an Action Committee meeting scheduled for [???] in St. John. Active collaboration of projects now working in St. John will be solicited. An online outreach component will be considered as part of the meeting, as well as demonstration and evaluation of the projects underway at that time.

Partial funding for the OOTFII is available as part of the project budget of Gulf of Maine Council's Information Management Committee.