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Current description:

DSpace is the most widely adopted open source repository in the world with thousands of installations in more than 120 countries. The DSpace Leadership Group is willing to strengthen the relationship with the community and for this reason has formed this Community Engagement Working Group.

The goals of the DSpace Community Engagement Working Group are:

1. Developing short- and long-term strategies for building relationship with DSpace users
2. Identifying ways for DSpace Leaders to participate in and support these efforts
3. Defining initiatives to encourage users to become paying members of DSpace

Do we have community members to whom we should promote membership, or a member is then invited to join a community?

Problem is recognizing the value of paying membership, considering they're already user the software

to be able to get access to the governance and to be part of the strategic decisions.

users always come first: there aren't examples of institutions that first became members and then dowloaded DSpace. It's always the other way around

There are different ways to contribute, not just membership

how do you make membership appealing to convert users into members? You have to do outreach to show the value of membership.

Influence; services; training; support; regional differences

building up a pipeline: who they are; what they expect

to define a (typical) engagement/membership conversion pipeline. 
And some clear added value. For "added value" you have to invest.

Latin America (maybe Asia also?): need for functional knowledge of DSpace. Benefit of a DSpace Certificate program. Maybe paid institutions could have special access for this kind of training.

creating new value

1 or more communities?

Mic: DSpace is a "community of communities" (users, members, regional communities, etc.)

We need to know who the users are. But the users also need to know who LYRASIS/DSpace program is.

Article by Mic, Pascal, et al about Stewarding National User Groups: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/99260720581

Certification idea: dspace certification for people, for repository managers or technicians. That would be wonderful for Latín América. Having discounts for members is a different issue.

different currency support and more granularity

Identify the value added of membership for different users

identify opportunities for training and certification

Identify regional strategies

DSpace 7 fundraising (short-term)

DSpace fundraising should be part of a long-term strategy too

Language: what is a user, a member, a contributor?

thinking of membership as part of an engagement strategy

• The registry of DSpace contains information on DSpace installations worldwide: https://duraspace.org/registry/?gv_search=&filter_10=DSpace&filter_4_6=&filter_3=&filter_20=&filter_28=&mode=all
• Existing DSpace National User Groups: User Groups

How do we better use the registry to better understand our community?

Can't use the contact information because we didn't ask for permission.

Suggestion from Pascal: Add an opt-in "you may contact me at this address" - would work for new entries only but could be achieved quickly

bi-weekly no end date

Action items: registry and national UGs

Mic will create doodle poll for new meeting time