Fall 2020 Partner Meeting

Wednesday 14th - Thursday 15th October, online  11:00am ET - 2:30pm ET

Connection information:

https://emory.zoom.us/j/94336359975?pwd=N2prN0p1ZTRrUUV2Y2JXZU1hZGJUUT09

Attendees

@Richard Green (Samvera)

@Heather Greer Klein (Samvera)

@Chris Awre (Hull)

@Rosalyn Metz (Emory)

@Alicia M. Morris (Tufts)

@Jon Dunn (Indiana University) - Wednesday 14th only

@Robin Lindley Ruggaber (UVA)

Carla Arton (UVA)

@John Weise (University of Michigan)

@Maria Whitaker  (Indiana University)

@Jim Halliday (Indiana University)

@Hannah Frost (Stanford University)

@Carolyn Caizzi (Northwestern University)

@Simeon Warner (Cornell)

@Stuart Kenny (Digital Repository of Ireland)

@Nabeela Jaffer (University of Michigan)

@Karen Cariani (WGBH) (need to leave at 1:00 each day)

@Margaret Mellinger  (Oregon State University)

@tamsin woo (UC Santa Barbara)

@Tim Lepczyk (WGBH)

@Jeremy Friesen (University of Notre Dame)

@Esmé Cowles (Princeton)

@Rick Johnson (University of Notre Dame)

@Nora Zimmerman (Lafayette College)

@Harriett Green (WUSTL) - Wed. 10/14 only

@Glen Horton (University of Cincinnati)

@Chrissy Rissmeyer (she/her) (UC Santa Barbara)

@Anna Headley (Princeton)

@Juliet Hardesty (Indiana University)

@Kevin Kochanski (Notch8)

@Trey Pendragon (Princeton)

@Rob Kaufman (Notch8)

@Moira Downey (Deactivated) (Duke University)

@Daniel Coughlin (Penn State)

@Tina Baich (IUPUI)

@Rachel Lynn (Data Curation Experts)

Norm Orstad (Data Curation Experts)

@Tim Marconi (UC San Diego)

@Jessica Hilt (UC San Diego)

@Sebastian Palucha (University of York)

@James Griffin (Princeton)

@Abigail Bordeaux (WashU)

@Charlotte Nunes

@Kate Lynch (Princeton)

Please add your name here





Wednesday

14th October





Wednesday

14th October





11:00 am  EDT

Housekeeping

OK to record the meeting? (Just for the purpose of retrospective note-taking)

Robin introduced Carla Arton, the new Manager of the Technology Solutions Group at UVA, who is interested in getting involved in the Community and who will be attending partner meetings and Connect On-Line. Welcome Carla!

Richard Green

11:10

Report back on the Community Manager appointment process:
Jeremy will explain the rigorous approach taken (slides, PDF)

  • See slides for an excellent overview of the process, including the Committee members, frameworks used, hiring timeline review, and some of Jeremy's personal observations on the process that could be useful for future hiring decisions.

  • 15 Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) were developed from the job description and were part of a weighted matrix. The KSAs were used to guide question development at each stage of the interview process.

  • JF will make templates of the spreadsheets and tools used as part of the process and share them with the Community.

Jeremy Friesen

11:20

Introducing Samvera's new Community Manager, Heather Greer Klein

  • Everyone gave a very warm welcome to Heather, and there was a fun Q&A question session. Heather previously served in several roles at LYRASIS and DuraSpace including as the Outreach & Engagement Coordinator for Digital Technology Services, the DSpace 7 Release Manager, and the DuraSpace Services Coordinator.  Prior to working at DuraSpace and LYRASIS, Heather was the Member Services Coordinator at the NC LIVE consortium. She received her MLIS from Simmons College. She lives and works in Durham, North Carolina in the Eastern time zone. 

  • Her first weeks will be focused on knowledge transfer from RG, the Interest and Working Groups, and Steering as well as communications planning and other organizational work. Heather will be reaching out to partners and others as well to hear about your experiences and thoughts.

  • Anyone in the Community is also encouraged to reach out and set a time to chat, Heather dot Klein at Emory dot edu

Carolyn Caizzi
Heather Greer Klein

11:35

Samvera Connect 2020 On-line - update

  • 200+ registrants for Connect On-line (attendees and speakers), 20 Presentations in addition to the plenary, 6 workshops, all with 10+ attendees, 10 poster sessions with Q&A slots scheduled

  • Torsten Reimer from the British library will provide the keynote address

  • Community building events are scheduled before and after the sessions 

  • Registrants on Sched will get messages providing the link to register for the Zoom webinar registration link for the 5 days of presentations

  • Presenters will get an invitation with a link that will give them presentation privileges; that link will work for the whole event

  • Workshop organizers and community building events will go directly from organizers to those who added those events to their Sched

  • Please let Heather and Richard know if there are questions, issues, things that need clarification, things that are going wrong, etc.

Brian McBride &
Program Committee

11:45

Fall Dev Congress - update

  • Held this year a few weeks after Connect, November 16th-18th. Please sign up to participate: Developer Congress - November 16-18 2020

  • Please spread the word in your organization and to colleagues to invite developers, designers, anyone with technical interest and interest in technical documentation. This event will help build connections as well as awareness of the shared codebase.

  • The main purpose and way to work together is in small groups based on topics and work, and those groups will determine their own schedules.

Anna Headley

11:50

Updating Samvera's Code of Conduct  - update: (slides, PDF)

Samvera is moving ahead with a review of the CoC with the assistance of a specialist organization.  See the slides for an explanation of the process so far and an overview of what is to come.

Hannah asked for Partners to share any innovative approaches to virtual Code of Conduct "helpers" at other events this year. No one had any examples to share, but expect to see creative approaches from Code4Lib and the DLF Forum. Dev4Lib did use the Code4Lib CoC for their meeting, and it brought forward the issue that hosts, technical helpers, and CoC helpers should not be the same person as all these roles require full attention. 

Hannah Frost & Jessica Hilt

12:00 pm

Governance review #1:

The Governance Review Group surveyed the broad Community to see how well they thought the governance changes were progressing.  This will be a brief report back.

See Governance Review Group Report for an overview.

Esmé Cowles

12:10

Governance review #2:

What the review group did not do was to ask if the governance changes were achieving the goals that the Community had for them.  This discussion will explore this second question.

  • The Partner's list was sent a feedback survey on the goals and if changes or improvements need to be made now that were are 2-3 years into the process. There were 13 respondents with a variety of opinions, but three themes stood out:

    • Improvements to community engagement

    • Questions about aligning goals across the Community, and how we can do a better job of that

    • Questions and comments about hiring the Technical Coordinator role --asked in the form if we still need one

  • Opened the floor to this larger group to ask, are there changes or improvements that can be made around each of these recommendations:

  • Elected Steering

    • No comments on this area

  • Centralized staff/Technical Coordinator

    • Whether this is relevant is dependent on what the job description would be. Are there things that the Community feels we would need from this role? Where is it documented?

    • Coordinate and help tie development threads together would be important for the technical role

    • Will the proposed IMLS grant, if we get it, affect this role? There is a position in that grant that has some overlap and could transition to this role.

    • Is the goal someone who can contribute code back to the repositories, or more of a project manager? More of a technical advocate for Samvera solutions?

    • There is a gap in the Community of having someone dedicated to documentation and technical onboarding so that people are ready and able practically to ramp up and work in the time they are committed without many weeks of ramp-up. Takes a dedicated person to alleviate that. 

    • Current funding from the Contribution model is working as expected and fully funding Community Manager role – always with two years salary in the bank. We can't rely on the funding model to also pay for a Technical Coordinator. There could be other ways to fund the position, raising funds separate from the model. Some OSS projects will hire out a main contributor as a consultant for an institution trying to set something up. Is there something we could do around hosting, something that service providers aren't doing? Need an approach that isn't asking institutions for $10k a year, that is not sustainable.

    • Could we have a Priorities Alignment Group, to see if we do have some shared priorities and focus resources on those shared priorities?

    • A big win to have the Community Manager in place

  • Contribution Model

    • Have yet to prove the sustainability of the funding model  – but so far, implemented it one year and it is working well even in this chaotic year. 

    • If changes to the model are to be made, we would need to start talking about that now

    • Only way to fund Technical Coordinator role with contribution model funds would be expanding the partnership. Don't want to do that just to get additional funds. 

    • Expansion brings its own problems 

    • Until everyone recovers from this pandemic (at least to a degree)- money is going to be tight and also marketing to grow membership is going to be harder.

    • Reasonable to expect next year's fundraising to be more difficult

  • Roadmaps Alignment Group

    • There have already been changes, including the name change, and changing their work in response to feedback

    • Seems like there was feedback on the institutional level but not clear what is shared

    • The Charter is missing from the wiki page for the group – Roadmap Alignment Group will fix this and clean up the wiki pages in light of the renaming

    • Roadmaps Alignment Group isn't about dictating a roadmap or creating a Samvera roadmap. Want to take these disparate institutions and see where they align and what we will gain from rearranging and finding opportunities to coordinate across institution and solution/component group on features needed by more than one institution.

    • Want to ensure that core components maintenance is part of this

    • There was an idea about a central roadmap when the group was formed, but that was very difficult. Aligning roadmaps and finding overlap is something the group can more easily achieve. 

    • Partners, please add your information to this page Roadmaps Alignment

Rosalyn Metz &
Carolyn Caizzi

12:30

Break



12:45

The Julie Allinson Award

It is proposed that we should remember the enormous contribution that Julie made to the Hydra/Samvera Community by creating an annual award in her name.  What should this be, and how should it be funded?

  • Looked at some existing models such as the Code4Lib Angel Fund for conference scholarships.

  • Scholarships have been offered to Connect in the past, but these have not had a large number of applicants.

  • Should select criteria for this award that relates to Julie's areas of interest, for example travel expenses, registrations, or training Scholarships for underrepresented communities in technology.

  • Suggestion of research/surveying to know what the need actually is – and decide who would be surveyed.

  • Several partners liked a suggestion that a cash award, which trusts the recipient(s) to spend it as most benefits them, should be considered as an approach that reduces administrative overhead and conveys trust. Could also encourage themes and ask applicants to make proposals for what they would like to do --a small scale grant with a group that makes allocations. 

  • Agreement that a diverse approach to ongoing funding, which includes an option for direct funding from individuals/corporations/institutions, should be used for the Award/Scholarship.

  • Funding needed can vary based on what funding is available each year

  • Steering will propose Scholarship/Award ideas at their next meeting, with flexibility and a low bar for participation, and criteria and structure for making award decisions.

Rosalyn Metz & Steering Group

1:00

Fundraising Team - report on its work 

  •  

    • Discussion of its work in 2020 and proposal from Steering to re-charter before 2021 (slides, PDF)

    • IMLS National Leadership Grant application - status check (slides, PDF)

See slides

Hannah Frost & Jon Dunn



Reports back #1



1:20

Avalon (slides, PDF)

See slides

Jon Dunn

1:30

Parking lot and wrap-up



Thursday

15th October





11:00 am EDT

Housekeeping

These reports will differ from Connect in that Connect will be a more general audience, including many people who will need background and explanation of the Products and Groups.

Heather Greer Klein



Reports back #2



11:10

Hyrax (slides, PDF)

  • See slides 

  • JH will have the equivalent of one day per week for Hyrax PO work and will work closely with all the Hyrax Groups, Community Manager, and Roadmap Alignment Group. Partners expressed support for the goals presented and gratitude to have JH in this role.

  • Hyrax Interest Group will be helpful to understand what is happening in the Hyrax user community and to engage those users with each other and the PO. 

  • A lot of work was done to scope the PO role for Hyrax to make it more manageable and to prioritize the most important work. 

Julie Hardesty

11:30

Valkyrie (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

  • Looking for the next Valkyrie Product Owner

  • Need folks engaged in trying to use the Valkyrie interfaces that exist in Hyrax. 

Trey Pendragon

11:40

Hyku (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

Kevin Kochanski

12:00 pm

Roadmaps Alignment Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides. Partners found this overview very helpful in understanding the name change and next steps for this Group.

Kate Lynch

12:15

Component Maintenance Working Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

James Griffin

12:30

Break



12:45

European update - Samvera/Fedora user groups (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

  • Partners asked about the opportunity for expansion of Samvera in Europe. CA shared that especially in the UK, there is a tendency for institutions to stick with the same repository. The opportunities are for new initiatives that are not necessarily institution-specific. It is also an opportunity to showcase the possibilities of Samvera for those who are ready to move to something new. The British Library chose Hyku because they were looking to bring together multiple research organizations. 

  • Some countries work together at a national scale, for example Ireland. It is a mixed picture but we should be aware of opportunities.

Chris Awre

12:50

Marketing Working Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

Chris Awre

1:00

UX Interest Group

  • Since the last Connect, the UXIG has had monthly meetings and organized demos of anything UX or UI related that the Community is working on. 

  • It seems like the interest has not been great, with 3-5 people in each meeting.

  • In thinking about this, AA feels the topic is very broad and it can be difficult to focus conversations each month. Some of the most productive work was two years ago when the Group worked on accessibility for Hyrax, which got a lot of interest and involvement from users in many communities and roles. 

  • AA proposes changing the UX interest Group to the UI Interest Group. There seems to be interest in this transition from others in the Community. This would allow for a more narrow focus on UI trends in the Community and activities of interest like static site generators, or UI component architecture, or building reusable design systems, and open source JavaScript development. There are many roles in the Community who would be interested in learning about these activities, discussing ways to share components, and discussing accessibility for UIs generally.

  • AA will propose a UI Interest Group. The Partners were very supportive of this and many expressed interest in joining.

Adam Arling

1:10

Metadata Interest Group
Hyrax 3 Metadata Application Profile Documentation Working Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

Nora Egloff

1:20

Controlled Vocabulary Decision Tree Working Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

Julie Hardesty

1:30

Repository Managers' Interest Group (slides, PDF)

  • See slides

Moira Downey

1:40

Parking lot and wrap-up



Unordered agenda items

All in the above somewhere!

  • Report back on the Community Manager appointment process  Jeremy Friesen - 10 mins

    • A representative of the search committee will explain the rigorous approach taken

  • Status check - updating Samvera's Code of Conduct  (Hannah Frost & Jessica Hilt)

    • Samvera is moving ahead with a review of the CoC with the assistance of a specialist organization.  This will be an explanation of the process so far and an overview of what is to come

  • Introducing Samvera's new Community Manager, Heather Greer Klein

  • Governance review group report  

    • The Governance Review Group surveyed the broad Community to see how well they thought the governance changes were progressing.  This will be a brief report back.  (Esmé Cowles)

    • What the review group did not do was to ask if the governance changes were achieving the goals that the Community had for them.  This discussion will explore this second question. (Rosalyn Metz & Carolyn Caizzi)

  • Connect 2020 - update  (Brian McBride and the Program Committee)

  • Fall Dev Congress - update  -  Anna Headley  5mins

  • Julie Allinson Award  (Steering)

  • European update - Samvera/Fedora user groups (Chris Awre)

  • Fundraising Team  (Hannah Frost)

    • Discussion of its work in 2020 and proposal to re-charter before 2021 (Steering)

    • IMLS National Leadership Grant application - status check (Jon Dunn - would need to do Wed because I am unavailable Thu)

  • Reports

    • Hyrax  Juliet Hardesty - 20 mins

    • Avalon - Jon Dunn (Wednesday)

    • Valkyrie - 10 minutes Trey Pendragon

    • Hyku  Rob Kaufman, Kevin Kochanski 20 minutes

    • Roadmaps alignment group

    • Hyrax Interest Group & Maintenance WG (see Hyrax above)

    • Hyku Interest Group

    • Component Maintenance Working Group  - James Griffin

    • Marketing WG Chris Awre

    • UX WG  Adam Arling

    • Metadata IG  Nora Egloff

    • Controlled Vocabulary Decision Tree WG - Juliet Hardesty

    • Repository Managers' Interest Group - Moira Downey

    • ...

  • Please add further items here...