Here we recap the events of the past month.

MOU and Budget

Beginning in September, Julia Trimmer and Mike Conlon worked with Erin Tripp to create a draft Memorandum of Understanding and a draft budget for 2019.  You can find both in the Leadership Group Google Drive folder

Conference

The 2019 VIVO Conference will be in Podgorica, Montenegro, September 4-6, 2019.  Announcement here:  https://duraspace.org/save-the-date-vivo-2019-september-4-6-podgorica-montenegro/

1. The conference committee is meeting every two weeks on Wednesdays at 10 EST.
2.  Conference progress updates will be posted on the wiki page: VIVO Conference Planning Task Force. We have a keynote speaker and two invited speakers confirmed. Communication about invited seakers is comming up in a couple of weeks. Follow the website: http://vivoconference.org/ for most up to date information. Many potential sponsors have been contacted but no sponsorships have been committed yet. 

Action Planning

1. Vision.  Has not met.
2. Governance and Structure.  Is meeting weekly on Thursdays at 11 AM US Eastern.  Daniel has summarized survey results and the group is reviewing the document.
3. Product Evolution.  Meets weekly Wednesday 11 AM US Eastern.  Meeting notes here:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rhsW7EKhQyfHRrzh7wZNziosJAfliduXxQQVcT1w0bI/edit#  See Slack channel for pinned items and conversation.  The group finished a first draft of the data model and has been discussing ways to continue their work in the upcoming sprint.
4. Community Development.  Is meeting monthly but our group struggles to find time to work outside the committee.
5.  Resources.  Is meeting bi-weekly. Contact Terrie Wheeler for details.

Task Forces

1. Membership Task Force: David Wilcox has joined the group to help devise new solutions for increasing VIVO memberships.
2. Development  meets weekly to discuss and work on VIVO issues. Andrew Woods  organizes.
   1. 2018-12 Sprint - a project success
      
      1. Excellent Leadership support and developer engagement (19 notional developers, 10 active developers)
      2. Although the focus has been on "development process", the quality engagement has resulted in real advancement for the software
         1. Internationalization
         2. Documentation
         3. Alternate triplestore support (Blazegraph)
         4. Bug fixes
         5. UX improvement
         6. Build process and Vagrant refresh
         7. Ontology improvements
      3. Notable participants - some are long-standing team members, some are new. How do we encourage ongoing engagement? They are GREAT!
         1. James Silas Creel / William Welling - Texas A&M
         2. alessandro galasso - Cineca
         3. Svantje Lilienthal - TIB
         4. Laura Wrubel - George Washington Univ
         5. Benjamin Gross - Clarivate
         6. Stefan Wolff - SLUB Dresden
         7. Ralph O'Flinn - University of Alabama, Birmingham
         8. Kitio Fofack - ARETEX
3. Research Intelligence Task Force:  Group is forming.  Has not yet met. Contact Tom Cramer
4. Ontology Task Force:  Group is meeting every two weeks, led by Mike Conlon.  Current work in two areas: 1) identifiers and attributes of identifiers such as ORCiD, DOI, GRID, ISSN; 2) languages, language skills, and languages of scholarly works.
5. Internationalization Task Force:  Group is meeting every two weeks, led by Kitio Fofackof ARETEX.