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‎organization/_posts/2025/2025-02-11-steering.md

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---
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title: "HSF Steering Group Meeting, 11 February 2025"
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layout: plain_toc
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---
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## Attending
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Present/Contributing: Graeme, Liz, Stefan, Torre, Paul, Eduardo, Claire, Pere, Mark
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Apologies: Michel
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## Advisory Group Meeting Report
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The slides we presented to the AG are attached to the agenda (as per our agreement with the AG the minutes themselves are not public).
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The meeting was fairly well attended, with most communities and experiments present. There is still no AG chair at the moment, we need to follow-up on that.
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The major points for us are below.
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### Advertising the HSF
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We discussed the lack of visibility of the HSF for people coming into the field. There was agreement that the AG would help to raise the HSF's profile if we can provide them with the details we'd like to advertise.
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- We should certainly advertise the HSF Website, the main mailing list (HSF Forum) and the HSF's activities; can ask for the HSF to be visible as a link on their pages and in their onboarding documentation.
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- Should we advertise or deprecate the activity mailing lists? They seem quite moribund.
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- We should consolidate (mostly) onto the forum
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- A few activities also have conveners lists - are these useful?
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- Also try to push HSF at major events like CHEP and ACAT.
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### HSF Funding Opportunities and Collaboration
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This is particularly to target support for 1 or 2 people to spend more time on HSF work (30-50% level), which helps the organisation to function and successfully utilise the many 5-10% contributions.
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On the issue of HSF funding, the AG were not optimistic about the HSF receiving direct funds (it was pointed out that even WLCG only receives in-kind contributions).
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- There was some discussion about funding sources that would not compete with other HEP projects (which was why we had decided not to apply for *classic* HEP funding lines)
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- Foundations and charitable institutes, for example
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- NumFOCUS provide support to specific software projects (and also do GSoC)
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- Simons Foundation mainly provide grants to individuals AFAICS (there are some institute level grants, but nothing open at the moment), however they have funded NGT - not clear how one would approach that
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- [EU COST](https://www.cost.eu) actions are used specifically to target community building
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- Would need to see if the HSF could be proposed as a valid topic
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- Need many participants - money spread thin. More focused on event funding.
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- To hold a grant the HSF could be registered as a Swiss Association
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- This is (Paul says) quite a lightweight process
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- CAGI offers help, there are some instructions [online](https://www.cagi.ch/en/practical-infos/creating-an-association/)
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- and the Swiss SME page [here](https://www.kmu.admin.ch/kmu/en/home/concrete-know-how/setting-up-sme/starting-business/choosing-legal-structure/associations.html) provides a brief overview
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- TLDR is there must be an annual general assembly, association statutes (templates available at the above sites) and a minimum of two people to constitute the association board. An annual account summary needs to be submitted after presentation at the general assembly
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An alternative is to get more official recognition for the HSF: this could unlock more significant in-kind contributions.
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- Can we get the HSF recognised as an official *Collaboration/Consortium*?
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- Various institutes could agree to support the HSF's mission
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- With or (more likely) without a commitment to provide specific effort
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- Graeme discussed with Liz and André Sailer (DIRAC Consortium)
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- General feeling is that yes, this is possible. Note it's a very *legal* process, has to go up to high level and will cost significant effort to push through. Also, expect a long timescale, 1-2 years. For the US, such agreements need to go to the state department, so it's even more political capital needed to make this work.
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- an addendum to existing agreements are easier (e.g., a CERN-Fermilab agreement)
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- ACTION: Graeme to discuss this with CERN management to sound out
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### Activity Areas
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Generally there was agreement that HSF Activity Areas are useful... we had a specific query re. the generators group, now that the LHC MCWG exists (the relative inactivity of the group in recent years is perhaps a cautionary tale). We specifically followed up with MCnet and the feeling was that there was a role for this group to exchange best practice and coordinate standards, particularly for the neutrino community and the future collider community.
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### HSF Goals
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Paul and I presented an overview of where we thought the HSF had been successful and less successful re. original aims:
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- Share expertise
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- Raise awareness of existing software and solutions
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- *Catalyse new common projects?*
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- *Promote commonality and collaboration in new developments to make the most of limited resources?*
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- Aid developers and users in creating, discovering, using and sustaining common software
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- Support training and career development for software and computing specialists
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- *Provide a framework for attracting effort and support to S&C common projects?*
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- *Provide a structure for the community to set priorities and goals for the work?*
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- Facilitate wider connections; while the HSF is a HEP community effort, it should be open enough to form the basis for collaboration with other sciences
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The items in *italics* were areas where achievements were felt to be at best partial.
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As well as continuing to do the things are doing well, the AG was very encouraging that we actively address the 4th bullet, **Promote commonality and collaboration**. This was felt to be essential for the HSF to really play a *significant* role.
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ACTION: Make these goals more visible on the website.
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### Project Affiliation
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We raised the issue with lack of cycles/interest in project affiliation. The AG's suggestion was to try to bring on board larger software projects as a way to demonstrate the value of the process.
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ACTION: Approach projects to discuss affiliation.
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ROOT, Dirac - Eduardo, Rucio - Paul, ACTS - Graeme, CondDB - Torre, HLS4ML - Mark?, XrootD
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## Steering Group Jobs
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See the [summary spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Zu-QKEeB_EiRzXHF5Bk5so2Q_TZ57umUTRcLmKB6Mo/edit?usp=sharing).
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### IRIS-HEP Steering Board
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Caterina will take on this role.
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### AA Coordinators 2025
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Few people have filled in requests to change roles.
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{:.table .table-hover .table-condensed .table-striped}
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| Activity | SG Responsible | Met? |
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| ------------------------------------ | --------------- | ------------ |
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| Data Analysis | Eduardo + Mark | |
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| Detector Simulation | Torre | |
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| Physics Generators | Liz + Stefan | |
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| JuliaHEP | Pere | |
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| PyHEP | Eduardo | |
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| Reconstruction and Software Triggers | Paul + Claire | |
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| Tools and Packaging | Liz | |
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| Training | Graeme + Nicole | |
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## SG Chair Role
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Graeme will need to step down as SG Chair when at the end of June (after 1 year mandate). Vital for the HSF that this continues.
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Time for one person to do this role is estimated as minimum 20%, with peaks or 30-40% (e.g., in January with the convener renewal and AG meeting it has been more).
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Can this continue incarnated in a single person? Or will it require a couple of co-chairs?
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Any ideas on other ways to support this position? CERN project associateship might fly if the experiments supported it?
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## European Strategy Update 2025
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[Public draft](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTUBTlerXHjrKO37hAuK1MednfukOxvkCSnq0HrnPOM/edit?usp=sharing) released last week. Nothing *too* controversial... Did an editing/resolving pass yesterday and bumped some items back to the AA editors. Hope to conclude on this stage by 18 February.
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We did give a heads-up to the experiments about endorsement - it's good idea to follow up on that rather soon.
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## HSF/WLCG Workshop
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We met within HSF organisers and also together with our WLCG friends. Both sides of the programme are now drafted, and in reasonable shape. The agenda in Indico is not yet public, though.
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The focus of the HSF sessions will be *Software Sustainability, Community Software and Training*.
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The announcement email will go out soon once the registration process gets finalised. The call for abstracts will be made in the same email.
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Details on the [workshop Indico page](https://indico.cern.ch/e/wlcg-hsf-2025).
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## Seminar Series and C&AF
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We have agreed to merge the *organisation* of the HSF Seminars and the CAF, but to keep their separate identities for now. The Indico category is now...
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Organisers from the HSF: Stefan, Claire, Nicole, Michel
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## AOB
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### Coordination Meetings
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As ever... [Chairing sign up document](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z1Z4payCpieOLiVFcC6y9j-KCj71u6xX232LHUgIHfI/edit).
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### Domain
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This was blocked at BNL, their IT refused. Other solutions? (Not discussed for lack of time.)
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### Next Meeting
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In about a month.

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