January 2023 virtual winter meeting SB notes

Attendees

@Esmé Cowles

@Jeremy Friesen

@Harriett Green

@Jessica Hilt

@Kirsten Leonard

@Brian McBride

@Rosalyn Metz

@Alicia M. Morris

@david.schober

Ex-officio:

@Heather Greer Klein

@Carolyn Caizzi January 26th

Agenda 

Day 1 - Thursday, January 26th, 3PM - 5PM ET

Day 2 - Friday, January 27th, 11AM - 12:30PM ET

Notes

Day 1

• Vice-Chair election - contact Esme if interested, no minimum reqs

• Kirsten will join the Budget committee

• Proposed Dec. 1, 2023 in place of November-December meetings that conflict with the holidays

  • Heather will send a new calendar invites

• Connect 2023 planning and Concentra

  • Samvera Connect is lot of work to ask the host

  • It is a large financial risk for a host - resolved. Financing from us.

  • Concentra works with Code for Lib - going very well for C4L 2023 per Esme.

    • Jen from Concentra

    • Works with similar community

    • Bid for hourly/flat rate

    • Potential for Philadelphia - Jen has a good relationship with event contact there.

  • Sponsors? - we would handle those, Concentra wouldn’t have to get involved

    • EBSCO and RedHat were among the sponsors for Connect 2019 in St. Louis

    • Github? Starbucks?

  • Venue and food are a major chunk of the costs.

    • Do we need all of the Concentra services? - we would trial it this year as is, and then see what isn’t needed.

  • Attendance is estimated in bid at 150, is that doable?

    • Reasonable based on past years, and we could cover if attendance falls short.

    • Consider what 200 attendees would look like; or how this would change compared to the 150 - ask for added estimates.

  • Bid indicates that they would ask for volunteers - we should make sure to line up ‘helpers’ ahead of time

    • What kind of support will they need from the community? - won’t have a local host committee

    • Will have a designated Planning committee - can focus more on the program, rather than logistics

    • Have event helpers too

  • Keynote speaker - usually rely on the local host

    • Would we need to budget more to bring in someone?

    • Could ask local Partner institutions - e.g. PALNI, Princeton - to help recruit a keynote speaker in the area

  • Conference fee would be $400 max - aiming for that…

  • Any other event companies we should consider? - there are others, but Concentra is very familiar with our ecosystem and the types of smaller conferences we do

• Spring 2023 Partners Meeting

  • RSVP form open for another month (https://forms.gle/CjN1eQVM1BUjFRUq7 )

  • Heather has received a couple requests for a preliminary agenda to help decide who to send

  • What kinds of activities would make this valuable to Partners?

    • In past: vision statement exercises, Community funding model, structuring Heather’s position

    • Organizational structure and funding

    • ITAV?

    • Frame in terms of outcomes to help Partners determine who to send

    • Granting options

  • In past, the Partners meeting would be co-located with another conference

  • Have candid conversations about what is next - tech, collaboration strategies

    • Haven’t been able to get together in a room for a long time to talk

    • What are the gaps and concerns? How do we work to address those?

    • Think forward and plan ahead - are there things on the landscape not being addressed at all, things we could collaborate on?

    • Look at ITAV exercises and ideas generated - anything that could be brought forward as proposals

    • 2023 goals

  • Connect to Sloan around their call for Open Source Program Offices?: https://sloan.org/programs/digital-technology/ospo-loi

    • Are they willing to also support open source software itself

    • CNI: https://www.cni.org/topics/ci/guide-to-set-up-university-open-source-programs-office-ospo

    • Have the Sloan researchers who did open source software research talk to us?

    • Sustaining open source

  • Ford Foundation:

  • Have a Samvera community meeting at Code4Lib - break-out session at least

  • Talk about what is the key direction, There are things that would be good to discuss in person

  • Put out the initial unordered agenda, ask for ideas and feedback

  • Next steps:

    • Get a preliminary agenda out soon to Partners by February meeting - Jeremy will work on agenda, recruit others in community to help, Rosalyn will send an email call

      • Do we need the volunteer to also help facilitate?

• Updates

  • Tomorrow’s discussion:

    • Tech Lead reimbursement - Jeremy will facilitate

    • ITAV activities - Heather will facilitate

  • Nurax transition - will be after Dev Congress, Daniel will need help from David and Michael Klein, follow up in Feb.

  • Dev Congress going well

    • Posted Hyrax Valkyrization overview recording by Juliet in Slack - 22% failing mostly 1 section

  • Outreach and Engagement group - PALNI reps joined this week, brainstorming motto

  • Website almost ready to be moved over to Github, then will modernize (IIIF site as a model)

  • Call for Virtual Connect committee went out

  • 1600 hours pledged so far for maintenance hours

  • Getting Partner demos scheduled

  • Copying YouTube demos to Avalon demos site

• LDCX - was a useful conference; became a UC internal conference; could be revived?

Day 2

• Tech lead discussion

  • We’re well above what is required for funds in reserve

  • Having someone in the role is critical and Daniel has done well; it has been worth funding

  • Question that has come up about funding is about the gender equity of reimbursing Hyrax tech lead vs product owner role. Want to make sure we value non-developers in the community.

  • We hired the community manager instead of a community tech lead.

  • We were looking for and pursuing a community level tech lead, but Hyrax was the urgent need. We’re intending to do a Samvera tech lead, but this was what was deemed the most needed.

  • This is a discussion point for how we sustain the community going forward: what is our budget, what are our priorities, what do we have for volunteers.

  • Get feedback from the product owners as well.

  • A bigger conversation for partners to say what it looks like for a product owner as well. Equity for the labor for this.

  • How we framed the discussion for the community: “The intention of this Partner dues-funded role is a proof of concept that funding technical leadership will generally have a positive impact on the community’s sustainability. If this proof of concept is successful, then Partners will decide how to proceed raising funds to sustain technical leadership in the community and what type of leadership is needed, whether a broader technical leadership role or ones that are specific to certain Samvera components.”

  • If we want things to move forward we need to fund positions. It has become clear over the last few years that we had heroic volunteers burning out. How do we grow the community so that we can find those positions.

  • Comment: I don’t see a Samvera tech lead as a feasible role. I can see someone being a Director of Products, to find some ways for the products to work together.

  • can we break roles down to ask for 10% of time instead of 25-33%

  • maybe a white paper of all the models of contributions, where it is being contributed, what is the need going forward and what has the potential to move the community forward. Amount of time that is volunteer viable versus core functionality that needs dedicated staff

  • This comes back to how do we raise money. To hire as part of samvera to hire a product director or tech lead, we don’t have a way to make that happen in 5-7 years and no ideas on how to increase the $$ we bring in

  • Amount of time that is volunteer viable versus core functionality that needs dedicated staff

  • in our Hyku watercooler we are exploring jointly hiring a position to move the project forward. jointly hiring to meet shared needs of a group. part of our concern is about core - kind of boring work - that doesn't necessary attract volunteers since it isn't a portfolio grower

  • A short lived working group could be helpful, analyzing what time is needed and what we need to fund to be sustainable product development

  • works well with goal of being a framework that helps other things happen that not all the partners use

  • also gives a natural life cycle to products

  • This group affirmed that we’re unique in the ecosystem in that we can provide a home for smaller infrastructure projects and grow in that was as well

  • Want to ask Daniel for a present at virtual connect about managing the work

  • All on board to make an arrangement for another year (to July 2024) with Daniel if he and IU are interested. This gives time for the working group around sustainability of the model, changes to the model. What are we missing? What’s working? What should we change.

  • january conversation deadline for the board next year to decide for the following year.

  • Want to charter a six month working group with connect presentation as the goal

  • Who will lead the working group charter writing? Then we need a few Partners to join, then that group selects a chair. Can also target individuals to work on things with a chair in mind. Kirsten wants to participate, volunteered to help write the charge. Heather will follow up next week.

• Goals and list of dreams

  • Review of Does the Shoe Still fit, 3 Goals outlined in State of Samvera 2022.

    • Hyrax Technical Analysis Goal: Working Group? Technical Lead needs to be involved. So does Product Owner. SoftServ has interest here. No Working Group necessarily. Daniel to do this as part of his time, and does the synthesis of the opinions and decides about the direction. If he wants to charter a WG, that is fine, we want report by end of his term (if possible, prioritize this after Valkyrization. Heather to talk to Daniel about this Board request for his time.

    • Implementer institutions, not contributing, asking about why. And interviewing some people who left community. David and Heather to work together to brainstorm who to reach out to, and design the interview questions and have discussions.

    • Needs for Tech documentation and End User Guides. Some of this being done by Developer OnBoarding working group. Starting with Hyrax (developer facing documentation). End User may be the biggest question here, b/c so much of Samvera is customized. Goal more about about Templates for End User Guides. How to streamline docs updating when there are changes in the code. Best Practices for Documentation is another way to look at this. What does Community want for end user documentation? Is it Hyku, is it not needed for Hyrax? What about other products, like Avalon? Jessica is happy to take this work on, will get charter going for End User documentation. Idea: Technical/Content Editor for a large repository could be a good resume builder for faculty? Bring in an assessment piece and is there Communication/Marketing WG connection?

    • List of Dreams Activity: 4 Dreams--Partners, these are dreams, help us think forward.

      • Cloud deployment Working Group

      • Finding someone to investigate performance side

      • IIIF components moved out of Labs to Samvera Core. Ensure the right people are talking like SoftServ and IIIF manifest gem PO. IIIF is going to be huge part of Surfliner. Carolyn on IIIF Exec Comm now, can help bridge conversations between 2 communities ( CC to look for Jenny from British Library). IIIF manifest generation is one to promote widely, is the best in class. Samvera can test the edges for IIIF.

      • Roadmaps Alignment group has capacity for next 2 dreams (Tech Strategy and Easy Upgrades). Updated White Paper once valkyrization is done maybe be a vehicle. Roadmaps Alignment and Daniel’s work for Hyrax needs to be in communication.

      • Connect all of the committees and task forces to this list - help to guide their work. Also could be used by Communications committee to share as outreach on the direction of Samvera with current and potential Partners. Do a blog post featuring it?