Merge pull request #157 from jdswinbank/finance-ctte-update-2020-10

Finance ctte update October 2020

Author: jdswinbank

finance/community-updates/2020-08.txt

@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ with some updates on our work, and reminders about ongoing activities.
   and able to accept funding for this year.   We were then able to offer
   support of up to $11,000 to the following contributors: Kelle Cruz,
   Adrian Price-Whelan, Lia Corrales, Tom Robitaille, Stuart Mumford, Ole
-  Streicher, Derek Homer, Stuart Littlefair, Juan Luis Cano Rodrigues,
+  Streicher, Derek Homeier, Stuart Littlefair, Juan Luis Cano Rodrigues,
   and Miguel de Val-Barro.  Once finalized, the scopes of work will be
   posted to issue project/#113 [6].
 

finance/community-updates/2020-10.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+Dear Astropy Community,
+
+Once again, the Interim Finance Committee would like to give you some updates
+on our activities over the couple of months.
+
+- The process for selecting Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity in Astropy (IDEA)
+  proposals has been completed [1]. We were delighted with the high-quality of the
+  proposals received, and with the community discussion which resulted. Thanks
+  to everybody who took part!
+
+  Based on this process, two proposals have been funded: one to fund an
+  Astropy intern through Outreachy [2] and the other to develop a peer
+  mentoring network for women of color and other marginalized groups through
+  WoCCode [3]. We're really excited to see these projects make progress!
+
+  It's worth noting that two other proposals, which were focused on conference
+  attendance, were funded from the travel budget rather than the IDEA budget.
+
+  We very much hope to be able to issue further calls for proposals in this
+  area in the future. Further, we plan to use a development of the
+  collaborative selection process developed here for other funding decisions.
+  Given both of those, we'd love to hear feedback from the community on how
+  our process could be improved.
+
+  [1] https://groups.google.com/g/astropy-dev/c/NDU3dTDDsAc
+  [2] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/blob/master/finance/proposal-calls/2020-IDEA/IDEA_2020_outreachy.md
+  [3] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/blob/master/finance/proposal-calls/2020-IDEA/IDEA_2020_WoCCode.md
+
+- We're pleased to announce that a proposal entitled “Kicking Off Scientific
+  Software Engineering Learning Resources with the Astropy Learn Project” [4],
+  submitted by Marten van Kerkwijk, Erik Tollerud, and Kelle Cruz to the
+  Dunlap Seed Funding program at the University of Toronto, has been accepted.
+  This provides a total of $CAD 31,023 to develop a set of educational
+  resources around packaging scientific software and to make them available
+  through Learn Astropy [5]. We hope this marks the start of a long-term
+  collaboration between the Astropy Project and the Dunlap Institute.
+
+  [4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z-mV4YjkHyc6Xe645mO8kkjYlQC6rfgz/view
+  [5] https://learn.astropy.org
+
+- NASA has announced a call for proposals for “Support for Source Tools,
+  Frameworks, and Libraries” [6] as part of the ROSES-2020 [7] funding
+  programme. According to the call, they expect to award a total of $1.5M (US)
+  spread over 5–10 different projects. This is a fantastic opportunity for the
+  Astropy Project! Over the next few weeks, the Interim Finance Committee will
+  aim to coordinate a proposal. For now, we invite you to use astropy-project
+  #161 [8] to start brainstorming your ideas.
+
+  [6] https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?solId=%7b958CF134-D655-E512-B5AD-84501D14A0C1%7d&path=&method=init
+  [7] https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?solId=%7bBCEE336B-D550-CCBA-1C8C-7A866DB06F45%7d&path=&method=init
+  [8] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/issues/161
+
+- As previously announced [9], the bulk of our funds available for supporting
+  core developers this year have been allocated to the following core
+  contributors who were interested in and able to accept funding: Jan Luis
+  Cano, Lia Corrales, Kelle Cruz, Derek Homeier, Stuart Littlefair, Stuart
+  Mumford, Adrian Price-Whelan, Thomas Robitaille, and Ole Streicher.
+  Statements of work for of their positions have now been finalized, and are
+  available online [10]. They are hard at work, and the Finance Committee has
+  been processing and approving invoices and NumFocus has been issuing
+  payments.
+
+  [ 9] https://groups.google.com/g/astropy-dev/c/qlNMpLpnPXI
+  [10] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/issues/113
+
+- The next major project the Interim Finance Committee plans to undertake as
+  part of the Moore grant is to issue a broad call for proposals for projects
+  to make improvements to any part of the Astropy Project, including the core
+  repository, coordinated and affiliated packages, infrastructure, tutorials,
+  workshops, etc. In an effort to limit the burden on the community of
+  large-scale governance and planning discussions, we plan to release this
+  call after the ongoing discussion over APE0 [11] has concluded. Before we
+  release the call, the community will have the chance to discuss the process
+  we will use for selecting proposals.
+
+  [11] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-APEs/pull/61
+
+For more information on our activities, please see the issues labelled
+“finance” in the astropy-project repo [12], or read the notes from our weekly
+meetings [13]. You can make suggestions for things that need to be funded by
+opening an issue in https://github.com/astropy/project/, by emailing
+[email protected], or by joining us in the #finance-committee channel on
+Slack.
+
+[12] https://github.com/astropy/project/issues?q=is%3Aissue+label%3A%22finance+%3Amoneybag%3A%22
+[13] https://docs.google.com/document/d/193ERJ6wMNPaNjGSWbS94KHGnojpZ_zwXxWTi9L2etSo/edit?usp=sharing
+
+Cheers,
+
+John
+on behalf of the Interim Astropy Finance Committee