20 April 2015

To:   Alexander Paramonov, Al Goshaw, Ayana Arce, Daniel Whiteson, Erich
      Varnes, Gabriella Scholla, Hong Ma, Jason Nielsen, John Butler, John
      Rutherfoord, Kevin Black, Chip Brock, Sabine Lammers, and Zachary
      Marshall

From: John R.,

Re:   Mailer 01: US ATLAS Analysis Support Centers Task Force 

Chip Brock has given us our charge.  Now we need to get started.  As
you will see from the charge we must collect a lot of information,
mostly from the managers of the Analysis Support Centers (ASCs) at
Brookhaven, Argonne, and LBNL.  These managers are members of our
committee.  For our first committee meeting it would be useful to
gather some background information on the Analysis Support Centers to
help orient us.  I'm starting my assignment to this committee knowing
almost nothing about the ASCs and I will assume that at least some of
you know as little as I.  I see some useful information at

http://www.usatlas.bnl.gov/twiki/bin/view/AtlasSoftware/BnlAsc.html

http://atlaswww.hep.anl.gov/group/index.php?id=analysis-support-center-asc

Also the previous ASC reviews, which Chip included with his charge,
have a lot of useful information.

For our first meeting I'd like to ask each of the three ASC managers
to give us the annual budget for their ASC with a breakdown.  Last
year's budget should suffice unless last year was somewhat anomalous,
in which event previous years would help to clarify.  We'd also need
the source(s) of these funds.

As you might guess with such a large committee it is not going to be
easy to arrange meetings.  I am hoping we can find a time we can meet
on a weekly basis.  To do this we should insist on limiting meetings
to one hour.  I've created a doodle poll at

http://doodle.com/63f3y945vmwdrs6v

You will notice that I've staggered the start times by 30 minutes and
provided lots of options.  Although the dates are the days of next
week, please chose times which should be ok for you in successive
weeks as well.  Also note that the time-zone option is in effect so
please check that your time zone is selected.

Al Goshaw will not be able to attend the first few meetings but I'll
keep him informed.

I'm looking forward to working with you.