We will have another of our near-monthly GMT community meetings to discuss the current status of GMT and take stock of tasks that need action in anticipation of a 6.2.0 release and the NASA proposal [see minutes from Oct. 22 meeting for details]. This will also be the first meeting with our new GMT Post-Doctoral Scholar, Meghan Jones! The zoom meeting information is below. The meetings are recorded and archived on the GMT YouTube Channel
Just an idea that we could discuss next week (I will try to be). Maybe we can create an official GMT Instagram account to published nice figures/videos (from the gallery, developers, community, etc).
I think GMT can have a lot of advertising for free and very small effort. We could reach people that never see GMT from a lot of different orientations (not just Earth, Ocean, and Planetary sciences) that uses Instagram in his/her free time.
For example, I’ve publishing my figures/videos and I have more views on Instagram than on my blog.
On that note, we should consider a Twitter account. My own tweets with GMT news get a lot of engagement so I think this would be a nice to have. I wouldn’t creating the account and sharing passwords with others (or adding them as moderators on https://tweetdeck.twitter.com). We could even automate tweeting the releases with GitHub Actions, for example.
The major thing with these platforms is that we usually need an email to sign up. Twitter at least is limited to 1 account per email so I can’t easily create a GMT account without a GMT email. So we might want to make a GMT gmail or something like that multiple people can access and use as the email for these platforms.
1. Introduction of GMT PostDoc Meghan Jones
1. Brief bio by Meghan
2. Exploring all aspects of the GMT elephant
3. Will work remotely from NYC for at least 6 months, probably longer
2. GMT 6.2 status update
1. 3-D grids (GMT_CUBE) implemented, except for final netCDF writing
2. Ghostscript transparency upgrade underway, but I small a bug in gs
3. Lots of smaller items, SCM CPT cleanups,
4. Timeline for release?
3. NASA proposal timelines
1. Deadline is Jan. 19, 2021 [Optional notice of intent was due today...]
2. We should aim to have it retrofitted by end of 2020
4. GitHub Issues: We are falling behind
1. Currently 176 open issues – too many to keep track of
2. Encourage people to try one of them – I will prune old ones
5. GMT and social media: Twitter, Instagram, etc.
1. What should we add and who should do it? Accounts? I have [genericmappingtools@gmail.com](mailto:genericmappingtools@gmail.com) for YouTube use.
2. Slack needs to be set up for the core team.
6. Pushing themes forward [Help wanted]
1. If I am busy doing C and 170+ issues someone else need to help with exploring and displaying themes
7. Adding more CPTs?
1. Federico wants to add CPT for geological time scale
2. In general, think it is OK to add to cache but not to GMT core since it is not generic and not tied to data we provide
8. Data mirrors:
1. Recently added Australia, Brazil, Singapore, South Africa, NOAA (US East Coast), renamed Europe to Portugal.
2. Awaiting for UNAVCO to make a move
3. Other prospects?
9. Busfactors:
1. Thanks to Dongdong for creating that repo.
2. Low bus-factor items are (a) GMT ftp, (b) GMT RPM repo