Steering Committee:11-9-06 minutes

From OasisNYC

OASIS STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

Thursday, November 9, 2006; 10:00 am – 12:00 noon; CUNY Graduate Center, Room 9204

1. Welcome & introductions: Participants (listed alphabetically by last name):

Jochen Albrecht (Hunter/CUNY - Geography)

Bob Alpern

Matt Arnn (US Forest Service)

Daniel Arroyo (NYS Department of Environmental Conservation)

Caroline Bhalla (NYU Furman Center)

Jessie Braden (NYC Parks)

Shelly Burrell (NYC Parks)

Peter Carlo (NYC Parks)

Teresa Crimmens (Bronx River Alliance)

Veniesha DaCosta (Open Road of NY)

Brooke DuBose (Transportation Alternatives)

Jack Eichenbaum (OASIS)

Paula Hewitt (Open Road of NY)

Cheryl Huber (New Yorkers for Parks)

Jane Jackson (New York Restoration Project)

Jacqueline Lu (NYC Parks)

Craig Mandel (NYC Parks - Natural Resources Group)

Jed Reinitz (NYC Parks)

Nando Rodriguez (Open Road of NY)

Steven Romalewski (CUNY Graduate Center)

Megan Sheremata (NYS Department of Environmental Conservation)

Bill Shore (Nature Network)

Jane Sokolow (OASIS)

Christy Spielman (OASIS)

Erika Svendsen (US Forest Service)

Joshua Wiese (NYC Soil and Water Conservation District)

Nancy Wolf (Magnolia Tree Earth Center)

Cathy Yuhas (NJ Sea Grant/Harbor Estuary Program)

2. Planning activities since May 2006 meeting

• OASISnyc wiki – what’s there, how it can be used, and future possibilities
• Steve handed out the OASIS partnership flow chart
• Subcommittee updates
• Paula summarized the education activities page of the wiki and encouraged people to add to the list of schools and community boards using OASIS (email her directly)
• Parks feedback: Parks would like to use the wiki to post parks definitions such as "what is a handball court?"
• Minutes from Sept 2006 executive committee meeting

3. Website updates & discussion

• SurveyMonkey survey results
  • Review of how and who uses website (Steve handed out a summary of the survey results, along with an overview of website usage)
  • Should think about who we need to reach out to
  • OASIS used most for property searches - so can that be used to leverage funding from real estate e.g.?
  • Lots of maps being made, more than 1 million per year, by a lot of different people
• Review of new DoITT NYC mapping project
  • How relevant is OASIS now?
  • Review of what the new site will do, does a lot and will be quicker (uses newer technology) than OASIS
    • BUT, doesn't have community information or the capability to incorporate community collected information
    • AND, DoITT application is only for NYC, no regional data
    • AND, city data doesn't always represent what's happening on the ground
    • AND, OASIS does a better job of communicating with people involved and users thereby helping to ensure that the application is relevant--importance of "self-reported" data
    • AND, OASIS can demonstrate that there is a need for things that OASIS is providing, emphasizing importance of both projects
    • AND OASIS has capability of uploading information quickly
    • DoITT may not provide informaton outside of City agency data (for example, OASIS includes data from state and federal agencies, as well as nonprofit community groups and businesses)
    • This could help OASIS focus on the needs of the community based planning organizations that it was established to serve in the beginning
  • Once it's available to the public we should play with it and then come back to discuss the similarities and differences with OASIS. For the similarities/overlap, should we continue providing what DoITT provides? For the differences, how can we best highlight the value that OASIS adds?
  • DoITT's goal is to be a service oriented "architecture" with ultimate goal of sites/resources like OASIS being able to layer on the maps--Google inspired. Perhaps OASIS can work with DoITT to leverage this approach for benefit of OASIS's community-based constituency.
  • OASIS does communication well and DoITT has information--could be a great partnership
  • Next steps:
    • Set up meeting with DoITT to discuss ways to work together
    • Jack, Craig, Jed Reinitz & Erika, Jane and Steve expressed interest in participating
• New OASIS website features – links to the wiki, open space access data, Harbor Estuary Program search page & data, new property data
  • New Home Page-Simple
  • New Community Board data from NYCEJA, also add some NYCHANIS profiles
  • Send feedback to oasisnyc@gc.cuny.edu
  • Air quality info?

4. Ongoing planning activities

• Discussion of proposed sustainable funding plans, including:
  • online sponsorship (see draft guidelines) & registration
    • Sponsor list would go on "Partners Page"
    • Suggestion to review list of responsible corporations (from Center forInterfaith Responsibility) before approaching them for support
    • NYCHANIS has foundation sponsors but the resource is freely available
    • What about targeting 'repeat' users, at least for registration?
    • Idea of cultivating frequent users on an anual basis versus a tiered sponsorship
    • Organize annual fundraising support event a la NPR or Channel 13?
    • Optional registration (like Snapfish)
    • Go back to original partners for funding?
    • Need to try something, maybe things will change, and let things play out
    • Steve will put together guidelines for moving ahead on registration
    • Keep OASIS free and open as long as possible
  • City Council funding - didn't discuss

5. Partnership activities

• Google Earth project: Paula Hewitt Amram, Nando Rodriguez, Veniesha DaCosta (Open Road)
  • demonstration of school projects to survey local greening and youth activities and display geographically via Google Earth; emphasis was on educational component of data collection/surveys plus ease of integrating data and showing others via Google Earth
  • Open Road presentation (PDF file - 4MB)
• Living Memorials exhibit: Erika Svendsen (US Forest Service) -- distributed guide about the exhibit, noted that LMP data is example of integrating multiple sources and displaying this via OASIS in a way that no single local government agency would do
• NYC Watershed: Martina Barnes (US Forest Service) discussed Forest to Faucet project; funding available from Watershed Ag Council to support educational efforts using OASIS partnership to highlight connection between watershed and NYC drinking water. Email Martina with feedback, ideas.
• NYC Parks Department new interactive online maps: Peter Carlo & Jed Reinitz
  • demonstration -- see new Parks Locator at nyc.gov/parks
  • Newer version of Parks Locator
  • AJAX based, so it's faster
  • Simple with some layers, but not many
  • Keyed off Property I.d. of each park
  • 1700 properties in database
  • Partnership for Parks brochures are online
  • DoITT is busy with lots of projects, so updating is not timely
  • Peter Carlo's park boundary and inventory mapping work is reflected on new maps
  • Connects all PArks data with links on Map page
  • Capability of some nightly updats outside of DoITT

6. New business

• Presentations from today's meeting will be available on wiki
• Collaborative project ideas with NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection
• CUNY/New Media Lab
• Other announcements - GISMO meeting Nov. 15 at Fund for City of New York, 12noon-2:30pm
• Next meeting time, place - to be announced