This morning we had our first Science Operations Working Group (SOWG) Meeting. Things started off rough. At 3:30 am, I discovered that my Internet access was down. This has only happened once in the past two years, so I was rather stunned by the turn of events. No amount of troubleshooting seemed to help and I soon discovered that calling the cable company at 4 am is not really a bright idea. Did I really believe somebody would be there to help me?

At 4:55 am, I called Stacy to get the telecom number, as I was still without service. This meant that I was about to hold our first "real" SOWG Meeting (we had done a test for the ORT) without first reviewing either the crew's EVA analysis or the meeting replay, and I was without the ability to even look at the data while we were discussing it. This was not good.

Simon and Al, our RST meeting facilitators, were already online. I explained my situation and discovered we had another problem-- we had no WebEx (the web tool which allows us to share desktops) meeting set up. While Simon and Al worked on that problem, I talked with Melissa and Stacy to see how far they had gotten with the preliminary analysis.

Stacy and Melissa both felt that they were approaching the analysis from very different perspectives. I asked each of them to explain why they thought this was the case. I think that two different perspectives can be good, because addressing a question from multiple angles can potentially give you more complete answers, but it was clear both of them were uncomfortable with the gap.

Melissa explained that Brent and Abby had specifically asked that the RST members at Buffalo to do the following two things:

1. Look for ways to improve the data received. For example, if a photo was discolored or the image of poor quality, let the crew know about it.
2. Look at the geology and ask the crew to go back and look again at things that the RST is unsure about in a geological context. For example, if a site has an area of possible geologic interest that the crew does not identify, identify it for the crew
3. While these were great suggestions, they had never been addressed in our bi-weekly planning telecons or via email to the RST as a whole, so the remaining members, including both Stacy and I, were completely unaware of them. This lack of communication may have been the reason each group approached the analysis differently.

We had worked on some methodology ideas of Stacy's during the planning telecons, so her approach was based on those discussions. These discussions were captured in Compendium maps and distributed to all of the RST. In the future, it will be critical to have all team members on the same page. This is a challenge because 1) the RST members are not in a single location and 2) other obligations often meant that some of the RST members were not in attendance at the telecons. One obvious answer to this is to have all RST members at a single location, much as the MER team is all at JPL. However, the MER team also has collaborators not on site. It would be interesting to apply some of the lessons they have learned while employing teams not in a single location to the RST concept.

A quick review of the two feedback maps-Melissa's in PowerPoint and Stacy's in Compendium, showed that both approaches to this first EVA contained valuable suggestions. Interestingly, each analysis gave the crew geologists more to do, rather than less. Using the two panoramic images, Melissa's team had suggested further evaluation of three areas not identified by the crew, while Stacy had defined two additional areas that she wanted the crew to investigate using an RST proposed methodology that had been stored in SO.

Not only were their approaches different, their timing for completion was, out of necessity, different. Stacy needed to complete her preliminary analysis the night before our meeting, because of computer availability and the time zone she is in. She did it without benefit of the crew's analysis. Melissa, on the other, created her preliminary analysis right before the SOWG meeting, because it is later in the day for her. She was able to review the crew's analysis before creating her own.

The RST has a dual role-- to support the crew and to direct the crew. It is up to the crew and RST to determine which or both of these roles are appropriate with a given crew. In the case of this field season, we made no decision, because there are pros and cons to both and we were open to experimentation.

At about 5:30 am, Al announced a meeting had been set up in WebEx. We were ready to begin. I gave my computer and cable company each one last chance. Surprisingly, after one more restart, everything worked.

I quickly surveyed the team to determine what tools each of us had used prior to the meeting. All of us-Stacy, Melissa, Brett, Shannon and I-- had viewed the images. Melissa had seen 20 minutes of the meeting replay and the Compendium map the crew had created. The rest of us hadn't seen the meeting replay or the Compendium map. We were definitely starting disadvantaged for our first meeting.

We began by looking at the crew's Compendium map for their analysis. Immediately we realized that without having viewed the meeting replay, we were unable to identify the locations named by the crew. Fortunately Melissa had seen the part of the meeting replay where the crew identified locations. It is possible to view the meeting replay as a group, however, this function was not operational for our meeting. That capability would have been ideal in this instant. We turned the meeting over to Melissa, but soon discovered that her computer, while it has a Compendium icon on the desktop, didn't actually have Compendium. So we went into Science Organizer, called up the panoramas, and Melissa took us on a tour.

At about 6:15 am, we had identified Red Hill, Little Red Hill and possibly Rocky Hill, all sites from the crew's preliminary analysis. We used Maarten's hand drawn map for clarification. It was very helpful. We also viewed the sites discussed in the RST's preliminary analyses. Finally, we had a good enough grasp of the situation to begin our analysis as a team.

From this point on, things went very well. In about 45 minutes, we created a feedback map for the crew. We weren't able to be as detailed as we would have liked, but considering how the meeting had started, what we had was commendable. Interestingly, only one point from the preliminary analyses was incorporated into the final analysis-the request that the crew follow the stratigraphic methodology when investigating a layered area they had identified from Panorama 1. This could have been a product of running out of time for the meeting, however, and we will see in future meetings how much of our preliminary analysis makes it to the final cut.

We will surely get better at this with experience. Still, I am amazed that we completed it in time to send to the Hab, given all our challenges.

After the meeting, we were waiting for the data from today's EVA. Early in the afternoon, however, Maarten sent an email stating that high winds and an approaching storm front had forced the cancellation of the day's planned EVA. This was a disappointment, but also allowed us to catch up by viewing, after the fact, the meeting replay. In addition, we received the maps created by Frank Crossman of the EVA site.

I have identified a problem with email communication. Any RST communication needs to be sent to the entire team, and CCed to Maarten and me. However, there is some confusion about this. For example, Melissa, Shannon and Brett worked on their preliminary analysis together via email, but they did not use the comms protocol while they did this. Those emails would have given the rest of the RST more understanding of what Melissa's group wanted, before the meeting began. Melissa will be forwarding those emails to the RST, so we will have them for future analysis.

I found it really ironic that most of the complex technical processes at MDRS, the ones that we were worried about, went well during yesterday's EVA, and then the RST encountered technical difficulties for our meeting. Still, at 7 am, when the meeting concluded, I was thrilled. We had held our first SOWG Meeting and sent our analysis to the crew on time.

RST Summary for today:

Meeting Replay was delivered to the RST on time and could be viewed by all RST members.

SOWG meeting was successfully executed and feedback was sent to the crew according to schedule.

Communication protocols are still not completely in place by all RST members. This is being rectified.

My favorite moment in the meeting today was when we were discussing stratigraphy and Melissa described it as a way to get a "relative sense of time" from a geologic formation. I thought that was quite elegant.