Hydra-in-a-Box Project Team

The core team for Hydra-in-a-Box draws from the three funded partners: DPLA, DuraSpace and Stanford. If you have a general inquiry about Hydra-in-a-Box, or aren't sure who to talk to, email hybox-contact@googlegroups.com and one of us will get back to you. 

Brief descriptions of each role as originally conceived in the IMLS proposal are below. 

Project Directors. DPLA, as the lead institution on the grant, will take overall responsibility for the grant. Among the three organizations, the Directors will track finances, agree to timeframes and deliverables, and assign local resources. They are ultimately accountable for success of individual components from each institution, as well as overall success of the joint effort.

The Project Manager will help create and manage the project plan, produce a work breakdown structure; coordinate across functional, technical, and delivery teams; track progress against timelines, and drive project goals to completion. He will also provide general project administration and support.

The Product Manager will determine the application’s feature set and roadmap based on user interviews, personas, landscape surveys, and knowledge of marketplace, and will take a lead role in coordinating across functional, technical, and delivery teams. She will produce and groom a feature backlog for the developers, and perform acceptance-testing of features; help produce documentation and marketing material; and help deliver training and outreach. She will work with early adopters to test the application, and work with community leads to expand the installed base.

The Technical Manager will serve as technical lead for development of Hydra components and architecture; ensure alignment of development with existing Hydra community code base, development practices, and directions; drive diffusion and adoption of the project’s development into the wider Hydra community; and ensure incorporation of innovations and development into the project’s development plan.

User Experience (UX) Designers & Specialists will conduct user-centered design for requirements gathering and to help determine feature needs; generate personas to guide development, and create UI specifications based on best practices in human-computer interactions. They will also generally perform analysis, technical writing, support, training, outreach, and metrics tracking and reporting.

Data Modelers / Metadata Architects will define data models and patterns that support current and emerging needs for digital objects and metadata; ensure compatibility with DPLA metadata best practices and standards; incorporate linked data practices into the Hydra model, and help ensure alignment of model needs with code and supporting systems (Fedora and Hydra).

Software Engineers will perform software engineering to realize the project’s feature backlog, functional and non-functional requirements. Principally working in Ruby on Rails, they will employ test-driven development and make use of and contribute to the existing Hydra code base to the greatest extent possible. Note that 1-2 developers will focus on enhancing and packaging Fedora 4 (based in Java) to optimize its compatibility with the project, and on the devOps features of Hydra, ensuring it is “cloud-ready” and can easily be deployed and run in a multi-tenant, virtual environment on commodity hosting services.

Community Managers / Liaisons will serve as the primary contacts for outreach to communities such as DPLA hubs and their contributors, DSpace and Fedora users; gather feedback to inform development priorities; help deliver training and disseminate information about the project; and work with early adopters to test and to establish an install base for the application.

The Documentation Specialist will undertake writing and production of documentation, training materials, and possible workshop content aimed at users of the systems developed within this project.

The Business Development Manager will be responsible for identifying and pursuing opportunities for cross-sector partnership, adoption and enhancements with both commercial and cultural heritage entities. She will work to identify potential vendors, service providers and contractors who can assist DPLA hubs and Hydra adopters with implementation services. She will also help explore tie-ins for online services that will further enrich the solution’s utility.

The Marketing & Communication Specialist will help support broadcast communication and build a public profile for the project. She will also be responsible for two-way communication with the larger repository community, helping to gather requirements and disseminating news and updates about the development progress.