Time/Place

Time: 12:00pm Eastern Time (US)

URL: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/my/fedora

Meeting ID: 812 835 3771

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Attendees

1. Tammy Allgood Wolf
2. Melissa Anez
3. Chris Awre 
4. Thomas Bernhart
5. Danny Bernstein 
6. Robert Cartolano 
7. Sayeed Choudhury
8. Stefano Cossu
9. Dan Coughlin
10. Jon Dunn 
11. Dan Field
12. Raman Ganguly
13. Jennifer Gilbert
14. Babak Hamidzadeh
15. Neil Jefferies
16. Mark Jordan
17. Danny Lamb
18. Rosalyn Metz 
19. Este Pope 
20. Scott Prater
21. Robin Ruggaber 
22. Tim Shearer
23. Erin Tripp 
24. Andrew Woods 
25. Dustin Slater 
26. Jennifer Vinopal 
27. David Wilcox
28. Wei Xuan
29. Maurice York 
30. Laurie Arp
31. Robert Miller

Agenda

Previous Action Items

Notes

First meeting in the new format. David would like feedback after the meeting about how it went.

Reminder of report which was sent out in advance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TGFv57RRHZFVHVlKvfel2wPRHNPyRm9nGm7-D6Es3hs

1. Christine DiBella, Program Manager for ArchivesSpace - giving presentation on ArchivesSpace membership program 

Overview of ArchivesSpace

Archival management information application. Can work with repositories. Can create metadata. Record actions taken on archival materials. Meets need that has few vendor solutions. Active user community. Governance, spec writing, tech, peer support, financial support.

ArchivesSpace is based off of Archivists' Toolkit and Archon open source - didn't have membership, mostly funders and parent institutions to start. ArchivesSpace required to demonstrate financial sustainability from the start.

Application free to download and use. Membership – 5 levels, institutional only. $300 - $7500. Levels tied to institutional capacity - such as JSTOR or Artstor class and number of FTE. All members get access to same benefits. Benefits include - governance participation, listservs, events, tech support in deploying ArchivesSpace. Different benefits appeal to the spectrum of people using ArchivesSpace.

Launched in 2013 - initial membership drive for charter members, and then continued to regular membership. Charter members recruited directly by leadership and public call to archives community. Charter included R1s, liberal arts, museums, non profits - and they continue to have a full spectrum of kinds of members. Membership has grown every year over past 7 years, at 413 members currently. Heavy on US membership, but 2 dozen countries outside US included. Also institutions who use ArchivesSpace without a membership. 95% annual revenue from membership and covers operating expenses.

Lessons Learned

Do research to figure out what community will accept. Archivists Toolkit had worked with Ithaka and they did significant research. 

Don't undervalue membership to get people in the door - maintaining and improving "free" open source software has significant costs.

Not everyone wants to be a member. A model that gives those who are genuinely interested an option to show commitment is important. Having many small contributors sends a strong message that ArchivesSpace is for everyone. Applying member model consistently is important.

Cultivating members - get leadership involved in beginning - was really successful in charter. Identify influencer institutions - from the spectrum of institutions - helpful strategy. Tie membership drive to a significant milestone. 

Retaining members - keep members that doesn't require a ton of resources beyond what you do to run program. Invoice a renewal rather than request it. Get leaders involved when institution of certain status/size seems shaky about continuing. 

Showing value of membership - demo the value to wider community. Connect membership to what is possible because of members. Make is clear the distinction between member and non-member, but don't make people feel bad if not members (want non-members to aspire to membership).

Keep membership relevant - do membership projections when prepping budget. Evaluate regularly if membership is meeting the needs of the program and community. Identify gaps - parts of archival community not serving that would like to serve?

Questions

Q: Governance - and how you engage members through this? What are your groups and how do you engage?

A: Governance board of directors - rep elected from each of 5 member levels, rep from org home, 3 reps from founding members. Approves budget, talks through strategic directions, engages on behalf of wider membership.

Also Tech Advisory Council and User Advisory Council - appointed by votes of membership. Engage on more day to day activities that impact ArchivesSpace. And there are other more informal activities.

Q: How do you share about the groups? who ends up on these groups and how?

A: Wiki with information. Yearly nominating process - communicate opportunities for people to run for or be appointed to. Communicating criteria for getting onto groups is less clear. Also ideally people doing the work communicate out to their peers.

Q: Can you talk about the board structure - and the founding organizations, their role?

A: Founding institutions surviving strong parent institutions - decided to continue on in that role. Permanent rep on board. Increasingly elected board members are fully engaged.

Q: Have you discussed breaking into non-research institution markets?

A: From the start - program not just for academic institutions. Intentional that it is a program founded around archives. Part of why ArchivesSpace is not a digital asset management system - because it keeps the focus on archival functions. Discussing expanding geographically.

2. Membership Renewals and Outreach

Anything we want to do for membership renewals need to be done in the next month or two. On a tactical level we need to reach out to members soon. We've got an outreach script in development. We also have the list of current Fedora members. Would like Leaders to add their names next to institutions who have connections. Steering group go through list and ask people to do some outreach where appropriate. Will be asking if renewing and planning on upgrading. Want to take note of this sooner rather than later so we can plan accordingly.

Q: should we start curating a list of new members that we want to address?

A: prospecting is important, but do have a need to shore up current membership. If anyone has leads on membership, we want to do some outreach, taking care of renewals first. David will share a list of prospects. 

3. ITAV Fedora Summary and Next Steps

Laurie Arp presenting on ITAV (It Takes a Village). Phase 1 built a framework for assessing sustainability, Phase 2 will allow for development of toolkit. LYRASIS/DURASPACE merger allowed for review of all community-supported open source projects brought in. Ranking governance, technology, community engagement. Fedora is in a mature state - some parts are in the Phase 2 critical phase, particularly with the technology. Fedora is pretty clear that we are in a technology phase - which will help with long-term sustainability. Happy to continue to work with Fedora on thinking about next steps. One option is an in-person meeting with the team. Any specific way that they can help with sustainability they can be available for that. 

Q: If we could come together for a workshop - would it be generalized review of the assessment, or focused on particular moving forward objectives. 

A: can customize. With Fulcrum, the identified key areas for their in-person meeting. 

Q: Interested in finding out more about the Resource - revenue streams, particularly in light of our membership renewals. Fedora has competition, which makes the membership issues a bit messier. If we could focus on this area, that would be helpful.

A: Membership fatigue - always good to be more diverse. Particularly with dependencies from other communities - creative ways to work together that we can discuss further.

Q: Jennifer - question about the CNI spring meeting

A: David - if we can get a critical mass (currently have 6, could use a few more yes responses) we can get a meeting together. 

Comment: Some of the points in the ITAV report would be helpful in the script for the membership drive.

Q: Could we talk about 3 resourcing "moving forward objectives" - expand on these? Conversations with David, or from when interviewing others. 

A: these are ITAV definitions for any program. And how these can be applied are unique to the program - different from every community. But no program feels like they have enough money. 

Comment: Fedora 6 is a milestone, and is not dissimilar from what ArchivesSpace is doing with version 7. Either now or when Fedora 6 is ready - opportunity to fundraise around that. 

Follow up after meeting via email to see about interest in doing an ITAV session in person. 

4. IMLS Fedora grant Summary and Feedback

Sandy Nyberg at LYRASIS wrote the preproposal - will begin working on full proposal next week. Real benefit to work with a grant-writing person. Proposal is to do work we already want to do - identify pilot institutions and complete a migration. Real output is to develop some tools for the community - migration tooling, documentation, videos, case studies. Target group Fedora 3 - 6.

Timeline: due to IMLS before the end of March. Would like to hear from Leaders about how to address feedback from reviewers, or pilot institutions (in US). Focus on national impact and diversity will be important.

Comment: Quote from reviewers - proposal doesn't address whether the grant will be helpful for Fedora 3 who want to exports their content but not to Fedora 6. Good to highlight that you can export Fedora 3 - OCFL and not use Fedora. Will be good to also use this as an opportunity to highlight OCFL.

Comment: Smaller institutions and how they will be supported in Fedora 6 - proposal notes that there are significant # of Fedora 3 installations that use Islandora. Islandora is already thinking about migrating issues. Notable in this big picture. Fedora 3 users with custom stacks are likely not the smaller institutions. Other institutions/projects are thinking about supporting OCFL. How do we keep users using fedora.

Comment: Even with migration tooling, migration from Fedora3 will take a lot of effort (rewriting client code communicating with fedora). We target particulary targeting smaller institutions who are still using Fedora3. So it woul be good if at least one of the institutions in next phase of this grant is such a smaller institution.

Strategic Subgroup Reports and Next Steps

Product Technology Subgroup

Fedora6 development so far:

• 3 sprints
• Fedora6 is able to write basic OCFL
• we depend on work happening between the sprints → so far this worked great
• groundwork is complete for most features
  • modeshape is no longer used
• prerequisites for releasing Fedora6:
  • needs to be tested
  • be as bullet proof as possible
• development plan:
  • clear path to finalising: 8 weeks of sprints (3 srints, each 2 weeks, at least 5 comitters)
  • 2 phases: alpha, then beta
• we could use help in documentation
• development team is very effective (complete overhaul of Fedora in 7 sprints!)
• worked out initial Fedora6 testplan (still a early draft)

Q to leadership group: Are there other requirements?

Comment: Good alignment between tactical team and development team.

Communication Outreach Marketing and Community Sub-Group

• 3 Meetings
• next steps for Fedora6 outreach: what are strategies regarding communication?
• We should do a blog post "8 weeks to Fedora6"?
• Idea: Do market research on membership and potential membership: Where could we get professional support to do that? Hire a professsional? Would make sense to approach it from the context of all Lyrasis projects. Currently we don't have time to do that market research. Probably more a long term goal. We need to contact our members now, so it's too late to do that research for this round.

Q to leadership group: Has anyone experience in working with professionals for market research?

Comment: There is an oppurtunity to reach out to the whole Lyrasis community.

Governance and Business Model Subgroup

• Reviewed the membership analysis (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LekFnjP4Cq_WuwnC-fXnU5ugqqjH4izN_2U9uVaSLUo/edit)
  • Recommendations out of the report regarding community engagement.
  • How do engage our community?
    • Focus on groups A and B (more in the meeting notes: 2020-02-07 Governance and Business Model Subgroup Meeting).
• gap between installation sites and memberships:
  • Are there any consortiums we could contact in Canada?

Comment: Austria is missing on the list of Fedora installations.

Comment: List is based on registry, if your installation is missing on the list, add it to the registry: https://duraspace.org/registry/.

Comment: Registry is voluntary so not every installation is listed.

Action Items 

• David Wilcox Ask Leaders to add their names to the list of current members beside institutions where they have personal connections
• David Wilcox Share list of membership prospects with Leaders and ask for additional prospects
• David Wilcox Discuss possible in-person ITAV workshop on resources with Steering; follow up with Leaders afterward
• David Wilcox Ask Leaders for comments and suggestions on IMLS proposal and reviewer feedback
• David Wilcox Ask Leaders for feedback on test plan; further requirements for Fedora 6 release
• David Wilcox Send out survey on current Fedora installations to update the registry