August 10, 2020

Owned by Hannah Frost
Last updated: Aug 11, 2020 by Richard Green
3 min read


8-9 AM Pacific | 10-11 AM Central | 11 AM - 12 PM Eastern | 4-5 PM BST

Standing Zoom link: https://stanford.zoom.us/s/393158590?pwd=NTBFc3cwbDc3K1NKWGRxN1Ryb2p0QT09


Attendees:

  • Carolyn Caizzi (Northwestern University)
  • Jon Dunn (Indiana University)
  • Hannah Frost (Stanford University) (facilitator)
  • Richard Green (Samvera Operations Adviser, co-facilitator)
  • Kevin Kochanski (Notch8)
  • Simeon Warner (Cornell University) 



Agenda and notes -

  • Review to-do's from July meeting
    • Fundraising follow-ups 
      RG will follow up with those institutions who have not yet paid and where he has a personal contact; will ask others on the team to deal with the rest.
       Follow-ups have revealed some $31,500 'in progress' which would bring this years income to $158,625 (of $192,625 we are hoping for).  No information for Virginia Tech, Oregon State, Ubiquity Press, CoSector (U o London) or Yale yet.

  • Discussion of other funding sources and funding targets
    • Idea: Propose a funded project to deal with the gaps in feature development and maintenance.
      Extensive discussion - notes can be found here (requires team login) on JD's draft - led to updates by JD and additions/comments by others.
      HF gathered input from KK, added to the latest draft
    • Need then to get some consensus around the proposal and get 'others on board' by the end of August.  First half of September to write up a formal proposal, second half to get subcontractors signed up. Submission deadline (for IMLS) 10/2.

    • Further extensive discussion of the proposal especially around how to structure the proposal and who should advise and who should be formally involved in the grant.

    • Seems like the grant work might be led by a 'Technical Project Manager' (perhaps taking some ideas from our potential Tech Coordinator work).

    • We should emphasize that users lead the direction of technical development.  This funding would help further that process which contrasts with commercial products whose development tends to be led by a company and sometimes do not reflect customer needs so well.  The work would "supplement existing community structures".

    • Lead institution needs to be identified PDQ - needs to be someone heavily invested in Hyrax (Indiana?  Notre Dame?  Michigan?)  Need to get buy-in from other grant partners quickly, although some placeholders might be enough for the initial application (as opposed to the full proposal two months later).  The initial document is two sides including budget details.

    • What are the incentives for others to get involved?  Is "a better Hyrax" enough?  Finishing Valkyrie would be a big motivator. "Easier maintenance and upgrade" would also be a big draw - but can we actually promise that?

    • Might help to know why IMLS did not fund a HyBox follow-on.  This was a 100% DuraSpace proposal - Erin Tripp might have useful feedback. JD to contact and ask.

    • Need a small number of people to consult (Tom Johnson, Julie Hardesty) who might rope in a couple of others.  They should do a sanity check on what is proposed. JD will email them.  After the check we should contact potential partners in the grant.
    • ALL to review the current draft asap.  JD will work on it Wednesday afternoon.  Doesn't need ITAV language at this stage.
    • The document should talk about gathering code from the community as well as about new code.  What is the balance?  The former may be more attractive "amplifying contributions already made" - making functionality as successful and available as possible.
    • A grant of more than $249k requires matched funding - should be possible.

  • Next meeting
    Tuesday 18th August, usual time slot.