The notes below reflect a summary of the March 13 open forum discussion answer the proposed questions.

EDITING IN PROCESS

...

Wednesday, March 13, morning sessions (cmm)

James Hilton kick-off

• It is not a crisis or cliff pushing this meeting agenda. It's an opportunity to come together and "Move the needle" towards a future that meets all of our needs.  
• We are at a pivital moment that hangs on (digital) preservation. 
• A 2011 Nobel Prize was awarded for those who noticed that the universe is expanding faster and faster; it is not static. In the far future galaxies that we now see will rush away so fast that we won't be visible anymore. The blackness will infer that nothing else ever existed in the universe except that matter which is immediately in front of and surrounding humans in that distant future. It is our responsibility to ensure that evidence of stars, galaxies and solar systems inform the far future.
• We have an emerging digital preservation stack (see JH slides).
• Where do all these parts and pieces fit together other than around the 20K price tag for support of each?
• No guarantee that any of these layers feed into the rest of the stack (bleed between the layers); institutions may utilize parts and pieces of the stack:
  
  • Access repositories
  • Preservation repositories
  • DPN backbone
  • Code (that includes DSpace and Fedora)
• What do I get for my 20K annual fee? 
  
  • It is an investment in collective/shared capabilities; it's more like thinking about FTEs because that's where you get "capability"

...

• There is not any chance to preserve some materials that are so fragile they are deteriorating. 
• Invisible to visible--Ann Wolpert. "You can't see digital."
• Scientific integrity has widespread support
• In Australia there are 2 funding agencies and research data must be accessible; U New South Wales; Fedora is critical to this effort
  
  • What we pay for software to access collections is high--has 7 people working on Fedora; Tyler's kind of arguments can help illustrate to people why this is important.

...

Wednesday, March 13, afternoon sessions

Attendees were asked to have table discussions and report out their answers to the following questions:

...

• Existing set of things that we have found out about from the community that we are working on
• Put 95% of F3 in 2 days into F4
• Not positive that we should carry some things forward lie XCML in its current form
• Why not do more roadmap development; trying to avoid the mistakes of the past of going dark and then doing the big reveal to find out that it's not what you want
• We should build quickly with quantifiable experiments and get early feedback from the community (Eddie)
• Metrics and reporting: as academia changes how people are evaluated then we get to be part of the infrastructure of the university; are you working with others on what a usage report would look like? Should be part of requirements development
• Partial effort to gather input from users--survey or something?
• Phone, wiki, conf call are not that good?
• Should we do a face-to-face hackathon for non-developers; need a deep conversation about what the user community needs

Thursday, March 14, morning sessions 

DSpace Session

Initial Discussion Questions:

• What does the project need to be successful?
  
  • financial contributions
  • developer contributions
  • articulation of requirements
• How to increase engagement with the community?
  
  • new models of funding (membership?)
  • stronger project governance?
  • other forms of communication?

Main challenges group discussion identified:

• No roadmap.
• Committers are more maintainers.
• Started focus groups, but still not a roadmap.

Is the roadmap / increased functionality a pressing issue?

• what does project need to be successful
  
  • who wants something enough so that they will put something in to make it happen? (developer resources/funding)
• DSpace Futures came down to three main points
  
  • hope was that DSpace futures would turn into something like Fedora Futures
  • turned into other smaller projects, not necessarily a roadmap
    
    • REST API
    • DSpace + Hydra
    • Metadata Improvements
  • not a lot of people 
• Fedora folks may have more developer resources, many DSpace institutions may not have developer resources
• Is DSpace a product or project?
  
  • no sense of DSpace user's community 
  • should be a push to develop a DSpace user community
  • DCAT and ambassador group
• centralized resources going through users 
• How to get more participation in DCAT?
• DuraSpace suggesting how this could work
  • e.g., set up BoF at your next conference

• need to have a vision of what DSpace will be in the next 5 - 10 years
• how to figure out 
• what if DSpace becomes a Hydra-head?
• DSpace is not an enterprise-level system
• if you had a clear migration path, then you might get funding
• Are there any projects already close to DSpace on Fedora?
  
  • analysis hasn't been done yet
    
    • scholarSphere (PSU) and hydris (Stanford)
    • lot of interest in creating DSpace hydra-head

• Fedora 4 will still not be an out-of-the box system until UI is on there
• DSpace could be UI that sits on top of Fedora
• is it a grant project to merge DSpace with Fedora?
• DuraSpace should scope the project
• need specifics on what needs to be done/how to contribute
• Issues
  • Roadmap
    • includes migration to Fedora 
  • energizing the user community
    • need specifics to ask for development money
    • need community to specify what needs to be done
    • everyone looking at DuraSpace to create roadmap, but DuraSpace wants community to lead
    • DSpace community
      • maybe different funding model, e.g., membership 
        • tie requisition to deliverable
        • adoption, patch, upgrade
      • "bill me"
      • size of institution

• • • bifurcated community
      
      • smaller institutions with limited resources - 
        
        • folks without IT support
        • could hosted DSpaceDirect address this need (SAAS)
      • other community 
        
        • institutions with needs where they've outgrown DSpace platform
        • contemplating exit strategy
        • need to contribute to reenvision / modify DSpace
          
          
  DCAT could serve in product-owner role?
• need a steering group

• Governance 
  • Centralized Technical Vision and Technical Leadership
    • how to ensure that features integrate well?
    • need a steering group
  • may need a DSpace Project Director
• Roadmap
  • Scoping project to see if DSpace-on-Fedora is viable
    • DuraSpace should scope (David) 
    • Need "dead-simple" migration path

• David Lewis
  
  • Hosting meeting at ACRL
    
    • MK will be there with project proposal
  • will pass the hat

• Need repository managers involved in strategic vision
• steering group needs mix of technologists, administrators, repository managers