"Straw man" proposals from SG
- Bill Branan
On Wednesday, June 5, 2013, one track of the Hydra Partner meeting in Boston was to discuss and document the community expansion strategy. This wide ranging discussion touched on making the most of the Hydra face-to-face meetings, as well as "Hydra for Managers" and articulating / documenting the Hydra Way. All of these are on the agenda for Penn State but the rest of this email relates specifically to meetings.
The discussion around meetings grew out of a feeling expressed that “cracks were beginning to show” in the way we do things, that we need to address the issues that an expanding partnership brings, that Partner Meetings are growing in size and that the approach that worked well for 5-10 partners maybe doesn’t work so well for 20. When project was less mature and partners fewer, the planful approach (formal agendas, strict timekeeping, lots of advance planning) didn't work particularly well but now with the strategic plan, we have a sense of what can happen on the community / project infrastructure side and we have the opportunity to be more deliberate, do more prep. The tech side is still emergent and will demand some flexibility in meeting structure and approach – it’s probably too early to even discuss doing something similar there.
The discussion followed two major themes: how to manage face-to-face meetings more usefully; and how to organise the annual cycle of Partner Meetings. SG decided to try out the format of at least the first two suggested meetings in 2013/14 and so preliminary ideas for these are quite well developed, for the March and June meetings much less so.
Face-to-face suggestions
· a timed agenda (some plenary, some breakout), part of the content of which is published well in advance; this would facilitate
o evaluation of the potential usefulness of attending (especially where Partners have not the funds to attend all Partner meetings)
o decision making around who best to send (critical for travel planning and budgeting especially from overseas)
o contributions prior to the meeting from folks who can’t attend
o arranging diaries to be able to Skype in for some sessions (especially where time zones are a long way apart – people won’t want to spend a lot of their own family time waiting for a session to gather and begin)
o developers attending being able to schedule their own sub-meetings and development time more efficaciously
- naming session leaders, topic champions, to frame discussion and do any necessary prep work
- ‘unconference’ or ‘unstructured’ sessions bounded in known time-slots with a timer on each topic - check in with group at end of time with option to extend or change topic
· a 15 minute “new Partners welcome” session a standing item at the head of each agenda
o although possibly repetitious, this – if short – is useful to remind the rest of us what we do and, in a sense, why we’re at the meeting!
o possible “new Partners” track for some of the meeting – an induction track?
· deciding some priority agenda topics for the following Partner Meeting prior to leaving
Annual cycle
[NB because of prior arrangements and priorities, the September and December meetings have been reversed for 2013/14. The text below represents a proposed “normal” year.]
September – Worldwide “Hydra Connect” meeting: a chance for all Hydra Project participants to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. As the community expands, it is becoming clear that not every Partner will make every meeting, but there is value in ensuring cross-connections across the community and we'd be well served to have at least one meeting where everyone shows up. Put another way, if a Partner could attend only one meeting out of the year, this would be it. It is envisioned to include...
· demonstrations & lightning talks
· introductions & matchmaking
· (lots of) unstructured times / open room format (à la posters) for...
o coordinated development
o taking action on the strategic plan items
o doc updates
o investigating patterns
· developing and delivering training
o tutorials
o training
o train the trainers
December - Strategic/dev congress meeting:
· Developers’ Congress will involve developers from institutions interested in code exchange, and the focus [2013] will be specifically on feature extraction, gemification and reintegration of IR-type functions across heads & institutions.
· a complementary & parallel "Strategic Retreat" will review progress against the Hydra strategic plan, identify new needs and opportunities, and address the action items in the plan. This meeting … will primarily be of interest to managers and others at Partner institutions who want to further the project at a level beyond the code.
· The plan is that the two groups may meet together for social events in the evening, but in general this will follow the multi-tracked structure of 2012’s UCSD meeting.
March/April – “Pull it all together”: A meeting alongside LibDevConX in Stanford, also possible “regional meetings” in Europe and elsewhere
June – “Getting it done”
Not discussed in Boston were Partner calls. There is a suggestion to supplement the “main” call with regional ones – trying to ensure that each regional call has at least one SG member who can make sure that relevant ideas get to the right places. Effectively we are starting to have European calls (Hull, LSE, Royal Library) around possible “local” activities.