All Hands – 3/1/2013

Meeting Purpose:  demo and test recent VISTAS updates for Susan and Denise, in preparation for March 8 “delivery” to Bob/Allen, and John.

3-4pm, via GoToMeeting.  Present:  Mike Bailey, Judy Cushing, Denise Lach, Viriya Ratanasangpunth, Kirsten Winters,  Nik Stevenson-Molnar, Susan Stafford.

Agenda and Notes (updated:  3/2/2013  by Judy)

1. Vir. demo VISTAS exe with the test files we have.  Let’s all try to think of both the technical and scientific content  of what we see, as well as the  details of the user interface to load a file into VISTAS and visualize it.   VISTAS Quick Start Guide is currently posted both on Bitbucket and Google Subversion.   Vir did an excellent job of navigating VISTAS  and showing it to Susan and Denise.  Denise and Susan asked probing questions:  a) Q: what are we looking at? It became clear that we    A:  need to select several specific files to demo and  Judy and (Kirsten?) need to better understand the scientific content to give effective VISTAS demo’s .  Q: have either Bob or John experienced “ah-ha” moments when using VISTAS?  A:  John hasn’t yet had the software in his hands; Bob attested to this (details are in the proposal), but hasn’t yet had the VISTAS rewrite in his hands.   Q: What about legends and labels?  A:  We’ve been thinking about this, but want to talk with the collaborators first about what they want before we decide what to do.
   
2. Lee.  (and/or Kirsten?) demo the OpenGL 2.0 version of VISTAS, using at least one of the test files we have (preferably both John’s and Bob’s).  Deferred – Lee not there. 
3. All.  Discuss if/how we want to manage two versions of VISTAS (an Open GL 2.0 and 3.o+).  Nonissue – Judy misunderstood how this was done.   There is ONE version of VISTAS.  The OpenGL3.0 functionality is in the plugins – so if one has only OpenGL 2.0 one will not be able to use the plugins that use OpenGL 3.0.  Need a list of which plugins use OpenGL 3.0!
4. All.  Was GoToMeeting preferable to Skype?  So far:  YES.
5. Review/refine meeting schedule and objectives for Friday March 8.   Ran out of time;  We did decide that VISTAS Developers’ group will meet 3-4 (not 2-3) to debrief sessions with Bob and John.  Judy will work on this and send to all.
6. All.  Decide whether we should submit a poster/demo proposal to SciVis 2013.  Deadline is March 21, and who will write and submit, and then comment on, the proposal.  See IEEE Vis for more info.  Ran out of time;  deferred until devlopers’ meeting next week. 
7. All.  discuss what should be posted on VISTAS Software page and freely available and editable on the bitbucket repository.  Ran out of time;  deferred until devlopers’ meeting next week.