Steering Group minutes 2024-08-26 (#1576)

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+title: "HSF Steering Group Meeting, 26 August 2024"
+layout: plain_toc
+---
+
+Present/Contributing: Graeme, Benedikt, Pere, Nicole, Andrea, Paul, Michel, Stefan, Eduardo
+
+Apologies: Torre, Mark, Liz
+
+## Steering Group Matters
+
+### Next Workshop
+
+Michel and IJCLab have offered to organise the next WLCG/HSF meeting in Orsay next May 5-9. WLCG think this is a good idea.
+
+Do we agree that we join the workshop as the HSF again?
+
+- **Yes!**
+
+*We will need also an HSF organising team for this.*
+
+We should try to find common themes where both communities can discuss common topics, e.g., GPUs. (As well as the separate discussion topics per community; the HSF software sessions were very good.)
+
+### European Strategy Update 2025
+
+Organisation of HSF inputs.
+
+Need to decide on the ambitions/scale of the updates. Involve the WGs is really important - the key ones are probably Generators, Reconstruction, Simulation and Analysis.
+
+Present this idea in coordination group meeting.
+
+Overlap with JENA WGs? Not completely clear. HSF can cover more HEP specific details, where as the JENA topics also have to deal with nuclear and astroparticle.
+
+### HSF and SFT reporting to WLCG/LHCC
+
+Since about 3 years WLCG has appointed 2 software liaisons, who are currently:
+
+- Eduardo Rodrigues, representing the HSF
+- Predrag Buncic, as the chair of the WLCG Architects Forum
+
+The AF chair reports on projects where CERN EP-SFT has a large stake (ROOT, Geant4, LCG releases). The HSF representative has dealt with projects mainly developed outside CERN. The motivation for this split is not technical, but organisational as SFT is a CERN support group that can be directed by the LHCC.
+
+There has been some recent discussion on "community vs. common software". We have argued that these things are not oppositional: common software = software used my more that one experiment; community software = projects that have a development community, not just a single person/team. Therefore almost everything we are concerned with the HSF fulfils both criteria. This is by-and-large accepted now.
+
+To help with the communication with non-SFT projects Eduardo, circulated an email with a list of important projects and developments. This list is not complete, but is a starting point.
+
+Ultimately the LHCC will care about the software that the experiments decide is critical to the LHC mission.
+
+For reporting to the LHCC, the plan is to propose more topical meetings that focus on a specific software area, rather than catch-all updates. e.g., Simulation, Generators, Analysis, I/O, etc.
+
+At the next LHCC points of contact between SFT and HSF will be presented.
+
+### Seminar Series
+
+We need to progress on organising the Seminar Series for the Autumn. Likely we could have 3 meetings this year at the start of October, November and December (for September it's rather late now).
+
+This will require perhaps 2 SG members to take on the seminar series as a task!
+
+- Benedikt, Michel, Andrea(?)
+
+N.B. The Software Trigger and Reco group had some ideas about 4-D reconstruction that would be an excellent first topic.
+
+This will be separate from the C&AF, which has an excellent focus on relevant non-HEP specific topics (vendor updates, languages). HSF-SS would be more domain specific topics.
+
+- Andrea: about the 'external' bit, I would also be interested in hearing more from other sciences where scientific software development is needed, rather than only vendors/languages and other 'technological' topics.
+
+### Working Group Discussions
+
+General topics: we want to still remove the distinction between WGs and Activities.
+
+- Suggest that "activities" is probably the most straight forward general description
+
+- Requires a bit of reorganising the presentation of things on the website
+    - [ ] Graeme will try this out
+
+#### Training
+
+Nicole and Graeme met with the Training WG coordinators before the summer break. Main conclusions where:
+
+- Training WG is working well, with regular events organised and a steady number of students paricipaing
+    - Mode is now very much as *online* events
+- Getting people to help present or tutor is difficult
+    - Training WG conveners fill in these gaps, but the number of trainers isn't really growing
+- Developing and maintaining material is difficult also
+    - Automated testing would be a help - some technology investment?
+- Organising in-person events could help to address this
+    - Developing deeper connections between the current trainers and the students
+    - Help to identify talented students who could help as mentors in the next events
+    - However, reward and motivating factors are not so clear c.f. LHCb's Starter Kit, which has excellent recognition in the experiment
+
+### HSF Affiliated Projects
+
+Update of the [document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Un1V21LdehQNwkNGeUZOl_GBQ8IdjUpDp5bi9g2YvLg/edit?usp=sharing) thanks to Eduardo.
+
+Main change is to remove the distinction of affiliated / non-affiliated projects.
+
+- [ ] Circulate to the Forum list (Thursday; N.B. this document was not previously circulated)
+    - We shall also ask projects to express early interest in becoming affiliates
+- [ ] Add the updated description of the HSF Affiliation to the website
+- [ ] Start to discuss with the projects
+    - [ ] Rucio
+    - [ ] dCache
+    - [ ] ROOT
+    - [ ] Geant4
+    - [ ] ACTS
+    - [ ] Scikit-HEP
+    - [ ] ...
+
+This will need some SG volunteering to discuss with the projects.
+
+Please also check the [document on Guidelines](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AiLcqyLA4c1y2Iq-YZyKP7DwN8m2AJb_J44cDuGGAXI/edit?usp=sharing), whose expanded version we need to finalise to then circulate to the HSF Forum.
+
+### Advisory Board
+
+No progress in the AB document (as far as I know). *There are quite a few points that need to be addressed.*
+
+## AOB
+
+### Coordination Meetings
+
+We have a [meeting this week](https://indico.cern.ch/event/1355755/), 29 August.
+
+No chair yet - who would like to volunteer?
+
+- Michel
+
+Please also sign up for later meetings this year.
+
+### Live Notes
+
+Currently moved to CERN's CodiMD - not accessible for non-CERN people :-(
+
+Comments: Andrea, maybe we can use md documents in cernbox instead? We should check the authorization model, but it is probably the same as <codimd.web.cern.ch>.
+
+### Website
+
+- Eduardo fixed a text duplication spotted by Zach <https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/pull/1571>
+- PR that replaces all mention of *Coordination Team* by *Steering Group* <https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/pull/1573> Merged
+- The link checker is now fixed <https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/pull/1574> (and we no longer need to maintain our own container for the workflow)
+
+### Domain
+
+Torre is still the owner of the hepsoftwarefoundation.org domain. Graeme has been trying to get CERN to adopt this for several years, but the SNOW ticket still languishes unanswered.
+
+We can either try again at CERN or can some other lab or institute take this on?
+
+Maybe IJCLab - Michel will ask.
+
+### Next Meeting
+
+Next SG meeting in 2 weeks time, 9 September: <https://indico.cern.ch/event/1449790/>.