2025-09-19 Board Meeting Agenda & Minutes

Attendees

@Karen Cariani

@Aaron Collier

@Kirsten Leonard

@Kate Lynch

@elynema

@Alicia Morris - regrets

@Robin Ruggaber

@david.schober - regrets

@Paul Walk

Ex-officio:

@Heather Greer Klein

Jon Cameron

Randall Floyd

Nick Homenda

Rob Kaufman

Nic Don Stanton-Rourk

Agenda

• Changes to the agenda?
  
  

• Welcome to Product Owners and Tech Leads!

  • Invited to join us a few times a year to ensure better Board and community leader communication
    
    

• Samvera Connect pivot to online conference

  • Conference content October 28 - 30

  • Workshops October 24, 27, 31 – well-spaced so someone could attend all, and they build on each other

  • Space for 10 (or more) 7 minute repository showcases, group updates, or lightning talks; can shorten days if volume is too low

  • 34 registrations in the first 24 hours, well on track to meet or exceed a regular virtual Connect
    
    

• Preliminary 2026 budget and options

  • Cathie didn’t provide the spreadsheets in time for this meeting

  • Expected revenue from Partners in 2026

  • Down $31,500 from loss of Duke, UVA, and Emory

  • Estimate from Cathie for savings from Heather moving to 32 hours schedule was around $25,000

  • Looking at how we can increase our Partnerships from smaller/Hyku institutions; how we can adjust the model to speak to the way they evaluate Partnership; will be on next Board agenda. IOI report will relate to this as well.
    
    

• Proposal for reallocation of staff time

  • We have no Hyrax tech lead lined up for 2026

    • Draft of a 20 hr per week Technical Coordinator contract position to take the place of Hyrax and Hyku tech leads for 2026

    • This would need funding

    • This is not the perfect world situation; this is a strategic, forseeable future role to consolidate some decision making and expertise in to one role, and make it appealing to stakeholders to show that Samvera Partners/contributions is a good deal, doing important things for places with low staffing, and cross institutional benefits.

    • Need someone who can lead sprints and build energy, can do work funded by other sources (features work). Hard to measure success for maintenance fundraising, much easier for feature work to be a fundraising ask. Framing this role to something that prevents burnout, focuses on coordination.

    • Would expectation be to continue certain maintenance cadence? This draft doesn’t address the 2 weeks on/2 weeks off maintenance working group.

    • Will have increased participation for attendees of the October training camp. That will supply at least some of the missing development contributors. This is already improving in the latter half of this year, but lots of room to grow. There are junior developers Paul works with on Hyrax who are not currently contributing back, and would benefit from one-on-one engagement to help make them comfortable.

    • Indiana’s approach which is focusing on improving Hyrax when their repository has a need. I wonder how we could sell that approach more widely.

    • New features really will require new developers to contribute (vs maintenance, or moving features from Hyku to Hyrax)

    • Randall: would be excited to be a developer hands-on doing work and have someone filling this role as described to do the coordination work instead of spreading out developer and coordination work at the same time.

    • Next steps: a round of edits, a price tag, and figure out how we can budget for it

  • Notes from last meeting:

    • Need to fund technical expertise that is currently missing or will be in 2026

    • Heather proposed cutting her time and salary, could be done proactively and while it is by choice, down to 4 days per week. Would mitigate burnout to have technical coordination issues addressed.

      • Need to determine exactly what would be the highest priorities, to find the best approach to fill those needs. Contractors vs shared staff.

      • Front end development: websites suffering, and a modern Hyku homepage design is in demand

      • Hyrax Tech Lead role will be vacant; Hyku positions will need a funding plan beyond the grant

      • Other community-level technical coordination would be valuable to nail down the best strategy for alignment over a specific course of time

        • Can we show value with technical support and coordination that will help everyone can’t be offered without adopter support
          
          
          

• Board Election and nominations

  • Nomination form is open!

  • Goal to open voting in first week of Nov if possible
    
    

• Other updates

  • $500 reimbursement for scholarship recipients who bought plane tickets

  • Poll ready for 2026 event information. Launch next week and keep open through Connect

  • Partner invoicing

  • Potential Partners check-in
    
    

• Agenda items for next month’s call

  • Remodeling Partners dues

  • Next steps for the technical coordinator role
    
    

• Date of next Board meeting: October 17th