Steering Group Meeting 20150327 -- Draft Public Notes

March 27, 2015, 1 PM EST

Attendees

Dean, Jon , Kristi, Paul, Mike, Debra 

Regrets: Jonathan, Robert, Melissa

= note taker

Dial-In Number:  (209) 647-1600, Participant code: 117433#

Notes

Agenda addition under Budget – whether Cornell can expect funding for Jim (60% FTE) to continue, and if so, for how long

• Mike – has talked with Debra; would expect to extend Jim for 6 months – time to hire the tech lead, works with the budget
  
• Dean – sounds fine from our side as well
• Mike – can plan for that and make it happen – an actual contracting thing between DuraSpace and Cornell

The Summit

• Mike - will be reviewing the document notes from the leadership group to share with leadership and get comments
  • will then post on the wiki
  • and will post the slides used in Mike's introductory talk

The I-Fest

• some shared notes produced Wednesday – worth reviewing and recording in a similar fashion
  
• some presentations from the sessions themselves – Mike will check with Melissa to see if we can create some working product from the event
  
  • a few spinoff meetings  – any notes?
    
• Jon – a suggestion on the Thursday implementation and development call that another time we could benefit from an experienced facilitator
  • Paul – the extroverts tended to talk more than the introverts – this is what a facilitator is for
    
• At the I-Fest, did hear about four task forces that people offered to create and move forward with
  • Jon and Mike and others to go over and inventory the VIVO assets to make – SourceForge, GitHub,
    
    • a suggestion that a newcomer help us with this task – perhaps somebody from Penn
  • Carol and Julia interested in collecting user stories of successful use cases of VIVO at a variety of institutions that could be used on the website and elsewhere
    • Julia knows of several, not just from Duke
  • Violeta is eager to be involved in helping organizing documentation around implementation – more from a project manager's point of view, not just the technical viewpoint – most information so far is very techincal and project managers need to put that in its place, along with where the data will come from, plus how your faculty and staff will interact with VIVO
    • Brown and Duke and Colorado have spent quite a lot of time on issues relating to faculty approach and acceptance
    • Damaris Murry from Duke – expressed a desire that there had been more the event about non-technical aspects
    • Kristi: usually the policy stuff is downplayed, but it's essential
    • The breadth of a VIVO implementation, with managed data and managed users
  • A group to consider how to have contributed software in a VIVO release
    • we have a lot of nice things people have made to go with their VIVOs, but they are currently independently owned and operated and scattered
    • Hydra has Hydra Labs – we need something that can be distributed with VIVO even if not everyone will be able to use
      
      • we have tested them at some level and authorized at some level with the software and ontology we are releasing – more than a listserv mention
        • Drupal has loads of stuff you can optionally add in – a wide range
          
      • Ted Lawless and Chris Barnes – agreed to help define what might be needed
      • need someone from the release side working with them
      • one umbrella (vivo-project.github.com) or two (add a vivo-labs.github.com) ? look
      • should be aware through the VIVO release that there are user-contributed tools that you should be aware of
        • a contrib folder in the repo – perhaps not all the way to automated include options in the install
          
      • how that happens should be completely up to the task force to recommend back to us
      • doesn't have to be selectable as part of the installation process
        

Budget

• Debra – we're at the budget season
  • have sent out invoices and gotten good response
    
  • Elsevier is dropping out – will continue to sponsor the conference but not the conference itself
• Mike – will have the money to hire a tech lead
  • will extend Jim for 6 months to transition to the tech lead
    
  • will be able to do the travel and promotion activities we expect to do
• Debra – can seek other memberships and partnerships
  
  • Has a call with Michelle at the event planning firm to get the sponsorship process going – some monies are due to them
• Kristi – need to bring up the conference
  • I'm supposed to be the conference chair but I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be doing, and I don't want to drop anything
  • Mike – let's have a conversation about this – for the first 4 years the contract was held by UF, and starting last year by DuraSpace
    • DuraSpace is financially responsible for the conference should it fail, with the hotel and the conference planners
    • the conference has residual funds that mitigate that risk
    • that's the framework Debra is speaking to
• • Debra – the logistics, not the programming; has time after this call
    
  • Kristi – wonderful that DuraSpace can facilitate things; Melissa doesn't have time to do the program, and as conference chair I have to worry about sponsorship – and I haven't been in the conference chair role before so I don't know what all needs to be done in that role – I need a Kristi to take care of what Kristi used to do
    
    • Rachel is our Designing Events rep again but doesn't understand the issue
  • Mike – let's have a meeting and go through it and let's have Designing Events on the call
    • go through the roles and responsibilities
  • Kristi – there are some places where DuraSpace could be very helpful – especially some of the follow up on sponsorship
    • Rachel is our direct person and is a challenge
  • Dean – did we ever have a conversation with Michelle about Rachel – happy to chime in from my perspective as well
    • Everything came through wrong
    • One sponsor said they would not renew if have to deal with Rachel again
      
  • Mike will coordinate a meeting – Kristi, Debra, Mike, Designing Events
    
  • Debra – Michelle had logistical issues to review for change from last year
    

Hiring a Tech Lead

• We have a job description substantially complete
  • Will circulate it again
• Mike would like to create a search committee for the tech lead – names:
  • Leadership – Mike Winkler
    
  • Steering – Melissa has expressed some very strong opinions and has been successful in hiring this kind of person
  • DuraSpace – Andrew Woods, the tech lead for Fedora
  • Mike
  • Community – Ted Lawless from Brown as a technical person at an implementation site

Elsevier

• Daniel Calto and Holly Falk-Kryzinski contacted Jonathan to discuss the future of VIVO and Elsevier's role in it
• Jonathan took the call and shared his thoughts with
• Debra – spoke with Daniel and Holly directly
  • Holly as manager of community felt their contributions had not been acknowledged or that they had been engaged in strategic planning
  • The lack of advancement in the technical plan
  • Asked them if there was anything they could do – they said no; they would be making other overtures to other groups such as Harvard
    
  • Daniel was in a worse place than Holly; they are interested in staying in touch with the community
• Dean – some of us at least have been seeing Elsevier acting more like a competitor than a collaborator
  • Mike – ditto
  • Dean – seem to be using us to target opportunities to say why their solution is better than VIVO; unless is more synergistic may not be a good fit
• Kristi – I feel like them not being invited to the strategic planning meeting was a terrible slight – while they sometimes drive me crazy and we like the Symplectic people, it is important to treat both the same
  • But we'll be fine – and frees us from tiptoeing around
  • We should engage Thompson and CrossRef a bit more actively who have been showing interest
  • A real movement to openness happening in lots of places that is not
  • Pivot and knock their socks off
• Debra – probably wasn't a good fit, but once we partner with somebody, we need to work with them and give people the seats they have paid for
  • Dean – how were they left out? Not invited
  • Debra – this gives us a clear picture in our membership drive of what we have to do
• Mike – I did talk with Brigitte from Thompson and there are real opportunities there – openness

Steering Committee

• Our charter says we should have 11 members and we have 6
• We should be rotating 3 a year; we could add 3 this year and next until we are at the full complement
• Rotate one off next year, add 3 more, and that makes 11
• The following year we would go to the 3-per-year rotation
• 2 nominated and selected by all members; 3 from leadership – add 2 from leadership and 1 from all members this year and do the same next year
• Dean – is there reason not to do 5 this year? Gets us up to full size and more engagement across the community
  
• Mike – we could, but we'd have to maybe not offer some of those people a three-year term
• Clearly we are in a transition
• Jon – will be rotating off due to retirement
• Mike – we should take these two options to the leadership group for feedback soon – will get a draft to Dean to review and circulate with Steering before sharing with Leadership

Other business

• Kristi – ORCID will have an announcement about funding – wants to reiterate out commitment to collaborate with them and align our two organizations well
• Dean – a big chunk of money for marketing
• Debra – Laure is eager to work with all the DuraSpace projects and mentioned VIVO; they are moving to a membership model
  
• Kristi – taking Laure's position on the AAUDE meeting panel discussion and will talk about ORCID and VIVO
  • Also a webinar coming up in April – need help from the VIVO team
    
  • need to know what the vision is for VIVO and ORCID to work together
  • what have people done
  • not bi-directional data exchange yet, but want to work toward that
  • and thinking about properly structured information at ORCID
• K – opportunities for us to bring funds in, and to partner with them on something; also a big effort in the CTSAs – NCATS has a solicitation out for proposals for areas of work they should fund
  • Opportunities in platform-agnostic data sharing across the CTSAs
    
  • Thinking also on evaluation/reporting/visualization of data