TIPS Bi-Weekly Meeting
February 15, 2007
09:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. (CDT)

Participants

AR- Harry Morris & Bill Winters
MCR - Bill Joseph, Paul Behum, Debbie Dale, Min Kim, and Kale Horton
WR- Mary Greene, Bruce Swartz, Karyn Evans, Lou Hamm, Dianne Osborne, Paul Clark, Janine Ferarese, & Jessica Villanueva

Jennifer Shawe is finalizing the TIPS newsletter today.  It will be out very soon.  Jennifer’s original plan was to get this letter out quarterly.  It should go out in two months again (this first newsletter was to go out in January).  No draft will go out for review for this current newsletter.  Debbie D. has information to be included in the April newsletter and will get that information to Lou next week.

Review action/pending items from last meeting
Training Rosters: Karyn – at the last meeting Bruce Swartz offered to assist Karyn with the project of converting the training roster that is generated out of DOI Learn to look similar to the roster that is generated from the DNS.  Bruce has created a merge document and is working with the CAD Application for Permitting and Reclamation Course in Alton, IL (LaVonne Zibridia – training contact).  Karyn is testing this merge function and will provide the team with feedback on how it works.  Bruce has provided the instructions to Karyn.  Karyn will let Barbara Evans (data steward for DOI Learn) know that we are using a work around and that DOI Learn still needs to fix the problem.

FY2008 Conference/Forum – Geospatial or TIPS in general?  Bill Winters has NO information at this time.  Will have to table this again and wait for Bill Card’s feedback. 

Status Reports
Software Deployment: Aqtesolve and ERDAS will be out for deployment this week, AutoDESK and Carlson products will be out in the next couple of weeks.  Cathy will be sending out the letter next week, be prepared for the letter.

Steering Committee Meeting:
Hardware issues - Cathy has been working on this.  The emergency fund was established and we currently have the funds of $50,000.  None of the money has been spent yet.  Basically the money is used to for hardware issues, not software issues.  Paul C. – what happens to the equipment that was sent to the states that is now obsolete?  Lou – they keep it or throw it away.  A congressional act was passed regarding this. 

Service Manager defining roles - Len Meier is working on this.  A team has worked through the existing charter and are having a meeting on the 8th of March.
 
Training – the instructor advisory council is working on the career tracks.  For the GPS Garmin eTrex Vista C course in West Virginia there are 8 students from Virginia registered.  Harry will be contacted by Karyn to discuss this courses options for having the class in Virginia.

Web resources – Veronika is heading that up.  There is not a representative on that team from AR.

TIPS road show – Billie and Lou are hoping to get to go along with other managers.  Lou is interested in knowing if there are any comments from the service managers about this.  Managers do plan on going with their SM’s when they are going to visit their areas.  Lou does not want this to be a formal meeting.  Something more informal, i.e. just a visit.  Paul C – thinks that if a manger shows up, then they should have a group meeting that is more formal.  There are certain sites that think the managers should be there.  Bill J – TDT (technical development transfer) road shows were done last year and three will be done this year.  NTTT is trying to make this universal across the regions.  Min and Stefanie have made a slide show regarding TIPS.  Lou thinks that how you set up the meeting is your digression and set it up however you feel.  Mary – when she was going out visiting sites, she had them set up a meeting to meet with all of the staff.

Marketing TIPS – meeting regularly and working with the tech transfer folks in all of the region.  Trying to get information about TIPS for meetings and conferences, Tonya is working on this.  Bruce – have had discussions with the team about the service catalog.

Team Goals – IT Bruce has a service letter agreement that he put out months ago.  Lou will send it to Susan Stoyek for her review.  This will be sent to Mick as well (per Bill J).  The plan was to draft it up in Denver and provide it to the WR managers for feedback before sending it out to the rest of the team.

Lou wants to reissue the spreadsheet with the assignments from the Steering Committee and TIPS team meeting but he needs the information updated.  Karyn will be putting the spreadsheet on the SharePoint site so it can be checked out and updated.

Other Issues

Next Meeting Thursday, March 1st, 2007