Skip to content
Open
Changes from 1 commit
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
44 changes: 44 additions & 0 deletions esip-funding-friday-song-lyrics.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
# FUNding Friday Song Lyrics, 2025

At the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Summer Meeting, [FUNding Friday](https://wiki.esipfed.org/FUNding_Friday_Projects) is a way to pitch an idea and win $5K for an idea. Participants from the conference make posters the evening before at a social hour.

In 2025 Seattle, we won $5K for our idea! This is a short way to document what we did, and to credit non-traditional contributors and contributions.

## Brief timeline

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

a visual timeline might be powerful to show just how short a time this took place in .... after the years of work and community that led to this

Wed July 23 at 10am, Julie types in NASA Openscapes Mentors doc:

What’s a small something/Earthaccess feature to pitch at ESIP :) Julie thinking of proposing: “piloting earthaccess with NOAA data”. Or other ideas?

Synchronous discussion ensued in Julie's absence and was quite technical focusing on datasets that could be used. Amy opened an earthaccess GitHub Discussion.

Thursday night poster-making. "lets's do a song". Powerful pivot to simplicity in the pitch song lyrics: we want to have NASA, NOAA, USGS, Copernicus data in our hands! (implicit: open science for all!).

Friday 15mins before Friday pitch time, Kate Wing, affiliation and singer, notices the stanzas of the song aren't quite right and she marks up the sheet and re-writes on bigger paper so all the "performers" can see.

Who is singing/ pitching? Boom!: 4 people, each from NASA, NOAA, Intertidal Agency, and Openscapes. Reflecting: this would absolutely not have happened without hours and years of prior connections, collaborations, trust- and community-building, and sync and async social interactions among these 4 and our collective web of humans. ("Want to build community? Go to other peoples' parties!" Analagous to: learn to understand and contribute to someone else's software before creating your own from scratch)

The Pitch (see what we did there?). Kate gives a "hummmmm" to start everyone on the right note then uses her finger like a bouncing lyric ball to guide the group. The fun song transitions to a crystal clear and emphatic ask from Julie: "We will use FUNDing Friday award to ....".

We win!

**July 23: Scoping ideas**

- Aaron Friesz reminds Julie Lowndes of FUNding Friday, Julie thinks of earthaccess. Wonders a low-key way to get input from the NASA Openscapes Mentors. Ah, they are meeting in 5 minutes at a regular Mentors Call, Julie writes a note in the agenda doc.
- Stef Butland (Openscapes), Danny Kaufman (ASDC), Amy Steiker (NSIDC DAAC), Liz Neeley (Openscapes), Mikala Beig (NSIDC DAAC), Michele Thornton (ORNL DAAC) meet during the Mentors Call and scope ideas in https://github.com/nsidc/earthaccess/discussions/1054; other contributors including Matt Fisher (UC Berkeley) and Eli Holmes (NOAA Fisheries) weigh in

**July 24: Poster-making**

- Eli Holmes arrives first, grabs some pens, starts drawing earthaccess logo as a first step. Others join, decide minimal text. Max Jones suggests "Growing the Family", helps with taping the word "access" with Kate Wing's white tape. Thumbs up from from Brianna Pagán, Miguel Jimenez-Urias.
- Eli Holmes has to leave. Before she does, suggests we sing a song. "We've got the whole world in our hands"
- User testing: what does the poster say? "access". Ah, we need to redo "earth" so it reads "earthaccess"
- Joe Kennedy and Julie Lowndes start writing lyrics. Steve Young (retired EPA) comes by, asks questions that establish what we'll use the funding for, timeline, and outcomes.

**July 25: The pitch**

- Julie Lowndes shows Kate Wing the lyrics at breakfast, with 15 mins to go. Kate, who actually sings, notices immediately we're missing a line in verse 1. Suggest an addition, and rewrites in larger font for the group
- Joe Kennedy, Julie Lowndes, Kate Wing, Eli Holmes sing. Kate Wing hums the note to get us started, and is a pro at helping us read the actual lines we are supposed to read, and hiding papers shaking from nervousness.
- The votes are in, we have won $5K!

## Lyrics

v0.1

Hello. We are earthaccess. We are growing the family.

We're seeing the whole world in separate catalogs
We'd like the whole world in our hands
We've got NASA CMR in our hands
We want NOAA CMR in our hands
We want USGS STAC in our hands
We want Copernicus STAC in our hands
We want the whole world in our hands

We want a hackday at AGU in our plans
We want a prototype in an afternoon in our plans
We want a roadmap in an afternoon in our plans
We want the whole world in our hands