September 11, 2015, 1 PM EST

Attendees

Steering Group Members

Paul Albert, Jon Corson-Rikert ,  Kristi Holmes,  Dean B. Krafft, Robert H. McDonald, Andi Ogier, Bart Ragon, Julia Trimmer

= note taker

Ex officio

Jonathan Markow, Mike Conlon, debra hanken kurtz

Regrets

Melissa Haendel, Eric Meeks, Alex Viggio

Dial-In Number:  

NEW DIAL-IN: 641-715-3650 (was 209-647-1600), Participant code: 117433#

Agenda

Notes

Updates

Discussion of upcoming euroCRIS event

• Dean forwarded to the group an invitation from euroCRIS for their strategic partners meeting in November in Barcelona
  • Would be valuable to represent things in common in the same way;
    • e.g., VIVO has the concept of a grant and a project, but the project is optional because we aren't trying to track the work – the grant is an agreement, the project is the work
    • if there's a product of the work, like a paper or a dataset, sufficient for us to say the grant produced the paper
    • many grants have many projects and the grant is kind of a rollup entity – institutions are focused on money and need the project entity to manage hr appointments, etc.
  • Could also be examples going the other way in which VIVO has more domain depth than a typical CRIS system.  The area of research resources is not one they typically track, for example.
  • The models overlap, and when they overlap there could be some reconciliation
  • Great that we're a strategic partner
  • Lots of activity in Europe and a lot of those people have CRIS systems
• Would anybody be in Barcelona?
  • Possibly to see if Converis would go, since they are a CRIS system and believe VIVO complements their functionality
    
  • And/or see if someone from the German VIVO community
    • Mentioned at the European BOF that a number of European CRIS adopters are looking for ways to do linked data using VIVO
      
  • Can ask if anyone is planning to attend
  • Perhaps we could help fund European travel
• Dean will reply to the invitation saying Mike will follow up and we're trying to find out who can attend
  

Site Survey

• Paul has been very involved in the previous survey leading up to the 2014 conference in Austin, with Jon, Alex, and Kristi
• This year's draft is quite a bit shorter, in large part hoping to get a larger number of responses – hopefully as many as 80 or 100 vs. 20 of the regulars
• Including sites that are not in production and just evaluating – what are their challenges
• Will go out through SurveyMonkey to people on our mailing lists
  • Will have skip logic in the survey to cut people out of sections that don't apply
  • And the sections are in the order of moving to a production VIVO – early questions apply to all sites
    
• Why not target people and do an interview with a representative sample – targeting the 100 listed as in progress
  • Resources and time, primarily
  • It's an extraordinarily amount of work to try and coordinate email lists, email messages, lists of sites, contact management systems; we haven't had that level of effort and we haven't asked people to give us any information when they download the code as part of being open and accessible
    
• Could structure with skip logic so front load with feel good but easy questions
  • We might want to reach out to hear ORCID's strategies and lessons learned from their recent survey.
  • We could engage diverse groups - our service providers, talk with related projects
• We could do half-hour interviews at the conference on challenges and opportunities with VIVO
  • We should be sitting down with people who are early in their VIVO experience, to help them as well as hear from them
• We can also think about how to get the survey out to people who aren't on our listservs – other venues
  • A more targeted approach is more a matter of manpower
  • More likely by the time of the conference next year or at intermediate conference venues.  6-12 sites to talk to – each steering person could take a couple for a structured interview
    
  • Sites implementing VIVO page on the wiki based on email to one of our lists – please add any more that you know of
    
• At other venues?
  • Library conferences, etc.
  • CNI?  We've certainly presented there; Places where overlap with other DuraSpace projects – also Open Repositories
  • Ideas for ways to do forensics on who's adopting VIVO
  • Will be at both DLF and CNI
• Some sites might be worth talking to sooner rather than later
  

Asset Inventory Recommendations

• Jon, Paul, Alex, Jim Blake, and Laura from UPenn worked on a task force to go over the various 'things' VIVO had accumulated, roughly since 2009
  • Trying to understand what those things are – websites, email lists, communication channels, etc.
    
  • Trying to understand what to do with/for them
• The spreadsheet of assets was put out for comments several times through VIVO Updates
• Many newcomers to VIVO are overwhelmed, and sometimes we aren't consistent in how we use resources because we have so many different ones – we lose coherence as a result
• The recommendations are grouped
  • There are questions of whether things even should be done – which headings are worth pursuing
  • Then a question of priority
• Some are obvious and have already been discussed
  • E.g., completing the move from SourceForge to GitHub (cluster 4)
• Steering can also act to indicate which items in the report it endorses and/or has plans to move forward with
• Some things we are not ready to do very much about – such as item #10
  • We haven't kept vivo.vivoweb.org up, so it doesn't really serve the purpose of being a demonstration of the system
  • We can either shut it down or decide we need a demonstration that shows well
  • And there are potentially several kinds of demo systems – one with sample data, another to highlight software and related apps&tools
    
  • We should take down anything that looks bad and would not help the project
    
    • Similar to removing software from the release that is broken, to avoid giving a negative impressions
    • We could replace with a series of screencasts or screen images of places that have a VIVO, until we get a working demo system, that won't be tomorrow
  • Cleaning up edges of the project that don't show well
    • Some of the recommendations may not go clearly enough in that direction
    • Implementation of a demo system may involve
      
  • Would this be a chance to have a sprint?
  • A different kind of demo that is a demonstration of a scholarship site is not what we have now
    
• Several of these will require spinoff activity with concerted planning, and some dedicated effort
• Looking for guidance on whether Steering wants the report amended, or whether it will accept the report and consider prioritization and further recommendations
  • 3 or 4 of us could write up a response to the report suggesting action steps – what we will do
  • Thinking of a step where Steering accepts the report, states it expects to go in this direction, and will review the list of tasks to prioritize and refine and suggest actions (e.g., a task force, a single volunteer)
    
  • • But if there are objections to elements of the report, we should hear them
    • Are we ready to do that today? This is a more complex report
  • The email recommendation, for example
    • Integrating with the CRM system at DuraSpace – we don't even know if its feasible
    • Also mentions a product called Discourse, but that would put us out of sync with the other DuraSpace projects that use Google Groups
    • These will require a more detailed response, and we are not likely to act on all of these
  • Any of these 10 items could have feasibility issues that affect priority and timeline
  • If we are doing a qualified acceptance, then a smaller group should go through to come up with action recommendations
  • May also involve the availability volunteer effort available for any task
• Accepted for further review to assess priority and possible implementation

Action Items

• Dean B. Krafft will follow up with EuroCris
• Mike Conlon will ask community about EuroCris and follow up based on feedback