[CIG-SHORT] Short-Term Crustal Dynamics priorities

[Brad Aagaard]

Hi all:

The Science Steering Committee will be meeting in two weeks to update the CIG 
five-year rolling strategic plan. At this meeting, I will present our 
priorities for software development by CIG. I have created two pages on the 
CIG website to document our desires 
(http://www.geodynamics.org/cig/workinggroups/short/workarea/planning/priorities2008/). 
One page is devoted to development plans for PyLith while the other describes 
our priorities year-by-year over the next five years. All content posted on 
these pages is up for discussion.

Some questions to help organize your thoughts:

(1) What obstacles inhibit your abilities to create realistic models?
(2) What modeling tools would eliminate/reduce these obstacles?
(3) If you are using PyLith, what features do wish it had?
(4) If you are not using PyLith, why? Are you waiting for a particular set of 
features to be added? Is it too difficult to learn? Is it too slow? Is it too 
inefficient?
(5) Are you satisfied with the pace of PyLith development? Would you be 
willing to work on PyLith development? What sort of training (if any) would 
you need?
(6) What other types of modeling tools, besides PyLith, do we want developed?
(7) Are there useful semi-analytic codes that would be of great use if they 
were more portable? documented? open-source? more efficient? Should we divert 
resources from PyLith development to support this task?

Please help define our needs and prioritize them for the coming years by 
participating in this discussion. Send comments/suggestions to this mailing 
list or visit the pages at the link above and add comments. NOTE: If you 
respond directly to me with suggestions/comments, I will forward your 
comments to this mailing list!

If you are interested in participating in a 1 hour teleconference towards the 
end of next week (May 21-23) to finalize this list of priorities, please let 
me know what times on those days you are available.

Thanks,
Brad