Agenda Virtual ESMValTool Workshop 18-20 November

[bettina-gier]

Heyo @ESMValGroup/esmvaltool-developmentteam,

our next virtual Workshop is approaching fast, and it is time to collect topics for the agenda! While the main focus of the Workshop will be on the Documentation, any recent updates or other developments are welcome! If you have anything you would like to discuss in the workshop, drop a comment down below. Please also let us know whether you would be fine organizing and chairing a session and/or preparing a contribution for a session. We hope to see many of you there!

It will be taking place on zoom, same link for the full period:
https://uni-bremen.zoom-x.de/j/65712901292?pwd=jrQWh5l7Fwagl1gaa2IidafQipRJJO.1

Project Board for the Issues to work on:
ESMValTool Workshop 2025

Breakout rooms will be available based on demand.

For reference, if you are planning to attend, it will be nice to react to this post with the following emojis:
👀 - attending morning sessions
🚀 - attending afternoon sessions
We might shift around sessions according to demand.

All times in CET (Berlin Time)

Agenda:

Tuesday 18th November

09:30 - 09:45 Introduction, welcome and workshop agenda (Tina/Lukas)
09:45 - 10:30 Diátaxis and documentation responsibilities using the Release Documentation as example (Emma, Julien)
10:30 - 10:45 Coffee break
10:45 - 11:30 Discussion of documentation structure (Tina/Lukas)
11:30 - 12:15 Introduction of coding tasks

12:15 - 13:15 Lunch break
(Optional 13:15) How to: Build documentation and website locally (Lukas)
13:15 - 16:00 Coding session
16:00 - 16:45 Summary/Questions/Discussion
16:45 - 17:00 Wrap up

Wednesday 19th November

09:30 - 09:45 Get together
09:45 - 10:30 Configuring ESMValTool (Bouwe)

• New way of configuring the tool
• Recipe optimization with dask

10:30 - 10:45 Coffee break
10:45 - 12:15 Tutorial

• Moving away from Software Carpentry for the ESMValTool tutorial (Emma)
• Update from UET
• Discuss ideas for advanced tutorials

12:15 - 13:15 Lunch break
13:15 - 16:00 Coding session
16:00 - 16:45 Follow up on documentation discussion
16:45 - 17:00 Wrap up

Thursday 20th November

09:30 - 09:45 Get together, questions
09:45 - 12:15 Coding Session

12:15 - 13:15 Lunch break
13:15 - 14:30 Coding Session
14:30 - 15:30 Discussion cont: Ref/IPCC Training, User Retention, Dissemination of larger changes
15:30 - 16:30 General discussions and outlook

• Technical advancements (V)
• Future Roadmap (Birgit/Alistair)
• 10-year anniversary

16:30 - 17:00 Wrap up

[jlenh]

I would offer as a topic the update of the release documentation and maybe the centralisation of the information regarding the joint releases of ESMValCore and ESMValTool. Some great efforts were already put into that from @ehogan and @chrisbillowsMO I think (including a wonderful flow chart!). It would be great to continue in this direction to make it easier for new release managers 🤓

[ehogan]

Following the October monthly meeting, I offered to give an update on moving away from using Software Carpentry for the ESMValTool tutorial.

[ehogan]

Would it be possible for me to present something about Diátaxis and documentation responsibilities? Following @jlenh's suggestion above I would love to use the release documentation as a potential use case for discussion 🥳

[bettina-gier]

Certainly! I'd even go so far as to put that as one of the first sessions before a coding session. Did you then want to combine it with the release documentation or kind of "set it up" as a task?

[ehogan]

Ooooh, that's a great idea! 🎉 It would be good to get input from the community about how the release documentation might fit into the Diátaxis framework, then actually start making some changes! 🥳

[bouweandela]

I could present something about the new way of configuring the tool: I'm currently working on introducing a new way to configure how we find and load data in ESMValGroup/ESMValCore#2765 and hope to have that merged before the workshop, and @schlunma has introduced configuring extra facets and dask in a new way in the past year.

[lukruh]

sounds good!

[bouweandela]

If there is interest, I could give some advice on how to configure the tool so your recipe runs as quickly as possible without running out of memory. E.g. answer questions like:

• how do I configure Dask for my system and recipe
• what value do I choose for max_parallel_tasks
• how do the two settings above interact
• how do I avoid running out of memory or too much parallism?

[lukruh]

I think this would be really helpful to many users. Also for developers it could be beneficial to have it in mind when writing diagnostics.
DKRZ provides a web interface to monitor resources of running jobs: https://docs.dkrz.de/doc/software%26services/clustercockpit/clustercockpit.html not sure if there are similar thinks for other clusters but maybe worth mentioning in this context?

[bouweandela]

Has it been useful for you when running ESMValTool? Looking back at my recent profiles, it mostly confirms what I already know: speed is limited by lack of parallelism and IO. It would be nice to improve that, but for the typical user of the tool, these graphs aren't very actionable.

[valeriupredoi]

I'd very much appreciate it if you'd pen me down for a talk titled: ESMValTool 2 is a Super Hornet, we should make ESMValTool 3 an F-35 🍺

[bettina-gier]

@ESMValGroup/userengagementteam Lukas and me drafted a preliminary agenda, we added a block for the tutorial discussion if you want it. Let us know if you're ok with that, otherwise we'll turn that block into another coding session!

[rswamina]

@bettina-gier - we don't need a full group discussion. We usually use on of the coding sessions for a discussion on what to update in the tutorial. That would work best I think unless @LisaBock or @hb326 think otherwise.

[bettina-gier]

So the talks we had put in for that part:

• Moving away from Software Carpentry for the ESMValTool tutorial (Emma)
• Update from UET
• Discuss ideas for advanced tutorials

should we move them somewhere else or just leave them out?

[malininae]

Hi all, I'm planning on attending and as I'm more of an owl, I would do only the morning sessions. A question, are the times CET?

[bettina-gier]

Yes, all times in CEST (Berlin time), added that! Let me know if you want anything moved further into the morning then, we wanted to alternate mornings and afternoons for discussion to consider all timezones.

[flicj191]

I'll also join the morning sessions 🌞😴

[bouweandela]

Is it still summertime in Berlin? ;-)

[bettina-gier]

fair point, I default to saying CEST instead of saying CET

[alistairsellar]

Hi all, for the "Future Roadmap" item on the agenda, we would again like to get the community's input, to a long-term strategy for ESMValTool. This is a strategy that the steering group has developed with input from the community and others. It is important because it will help us to:

• Align development efforts between partners
• Inform developers and others about our shared priorities
• Give support to funding proposals that align with the strategy

Here is the latest draft of the strategy: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l87wfUmyQxpKJPF8x1jOX_hcfxkSv0hkgGx2VZO1JOg/edit?usp=sharing. If you have one, please log in with a google/gmail account to make any comments.

We would like to get your feedback before and during the workshop so that we can finalise and publish it shortly after. Please review this google doc and add your comments before next Wednesday (19th). We'll structure the discussion around the comments in the document, so if you want to make a point it's gotta be in the doc!