Meet the Maintainers at ESIP Summer 2019

All of the talk about “big data” and “cloud computing,” about disruption and innovation, about metadata standards and technology reuse: about what most ESIP sessions have been arguing over for 20 years, mostly overlooks the realities of keeping silicon and steel operational across decades. Because they care about and for the infrastructure that houses every bit of data, every byte of the cloud, and every line of code, maintainers sustain the technology makes ESIP matter, that makes NASA, NOAA, and the USGS run. Recently, a group of them, sysadmins, techies, historians, anthropologists, makers, helpers (the ones on call to reboot the system when it’s down) started a conversation and created a group called The Maintainers . With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ESIP is bringing the Maintainer conversation to Tacoma. Join us to discover how ESIP’s goals of sustaining the Earth science data endeavor rely upon those who chose not to innovate today, but rather to navigate the problematics of keeping everything running most of the time. To NASA, NOAA, and USGS: there are maintainers on your teams, in your labs, somewhere on your floor, or perhaps in a basement server room who have never been invited to an ESIP meeting. Why not bring one to Tacoma? When maintainers work together everyone’s system runs better. ESIP will be represented at the Maintainer conference in DC in October. Come and find out about that too.