20150327 Steering Group Minutes

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

I. IFest and Summit Follow-up

• The Summit
  • Mike will review the document notes from the leadership group to share with leadership and get comments,  then post on the wiki
  • Mike will post slides from introductory talk to the wiki
• The I-Fest
  • some shared notes produced Wednesday – worth reviewing and recording in a similar fashion to the summit notes
    
  • some presentations from the sessions themselves – Mike will check with Melissa to see if we can create some working product from the event
  • A suggestion on the Thursday implementation and development call that another time we could benefit from an experienced facilitator
  • general agreement that an experienced facilitator would help manage conversation, encourage participation in conversation, help address topics of interest, help hear from a wider variety of participants

II. Task Forces forming

Four task forces appear to be forming as a result of IFest conversations.  Mike will follow up with each:

1. VIVO asset inventory.  Task force to review all VIVO assets: repositories, email lists, wikis, web sites, etc, record current status and attributes, recommend disposition/consolidation/expansion.  Mike to facilitate, Jon C-R, several others to recruit.
2. User Stories.  Successful stories of VIVO use across a variety of institutions. For use on web site and in promotional materials.  Julia Trimmer to facilitate.  Carol Minton Morris of Duraspace.  Others to recruit.
3. Implementation documentation.  Violetta Ilik to facilitate.  Organize existing materials in context of project management.  Technical/System, Data, Data Management, policy and local ontology extensions, User engagement and software enhancements.  Several sites with extensive experience on the non-system issues related to implementation.  Need to recruit these successful sites for participation.
4. Contributed software and VIVO.  Task force to recommend methods for sites implementing VIVO to consider and use apps and tools to augment core VIVO installation – more than a listserv mention, possible inclusion in QA processes.  Chris Barnes and Ted Lawless interested in facilitating.  Consider models from other open source projects – Hydra Labs and others.  Others to recruit.
   

III. Budget

It is currently budget season, and invoicing season.  VIVO has had good responses to invoices to date.  Elsevier will drop out as a corporate sponsor (see below).  We will have money for the tech lead, promotional activities, project infrastructure as presented at the Summit.  We will extend Jim Blake at 60% for 6 months to allow time for hiring tech lead (see below) and transition to tech lead.  Six month period is from April 1 to September 30.

IV. Hiring a Tech Lead

• The job description is substantially complete. Will be circulated to Steering Group for one more additional review.
• A search committee for the tech lead will be formed with representation fro Leadership Group, Steering Group, Duraspace, and Community.  Mike will chair.  As people are asked and agree to serve, names will be shared.

V. Elsevier

• Elsevier contacted Jonathan to discuss the future of VIVO and Elsevier's role in it.  Also spoke directly with Debra.  Their concerns:
  
  • Their contributions had not been acknowledged
  • They had not been engaged in strategic planning
  • Lack of advancement in the VIVO technical plan
  • Asked them if there was anything we could do – they said no; they would be making other overtures to other groups. They will continue to sponsor the conference and continue to have interest in the community.
    
• Lessons learned:
  • Redouble VIVO efforts on inclusion, openness, transparency
  • Address member concerns in a timely manner
  • Stay the course on pursuit of technical lead, development of open source community
  • Pursue additional corporate sponsorship with others

VI. Steering Committee 2.0

• Our charter says we should have 11 members and we have 6.  We should be rotating three members per year
• Plan A:
  • We could add 3 this year (to 9) and three next year with one rotating off to get to full complement
  • Add 2 nominated and selected by leadership 1 from all members this year and do the same next year (as per charter)
    
• Plan B:
  • We could add five this year. 3 from leadership and two from all members to get to 11
  • Three members would need to be identified as rotating off next year
• Either way, we are in transition and not fully in line with charter
• Jon will be rotating off next year
• We will take these two options to the leadership group for their preference – Mike will get a draft to Dean to review and circulate with Steering before sharing with Leadership

VII. Additional Business

• The conference
  • Need to discuss roles of conference chair, program chair, conference planners, Duraspace, volunteers; need to discuss contract; need to discuss sponsorship – financial targets and assistance in recruiting sponsors
    
  • Additional issues: Designing event staff support, potential for Duraspace staff support for conference, engagement of VIVO volunteers, support for program chair
  • Mike will coordinate a meeting – Kristi, Debra, Mike, Designing Events
• ORCID will soon have a major announcement
  • We want to reiterate our commitment to collaborate with them and align our two organizations well
  • ORCID is eager to work with all the DuraSpace projects and mentioned VIVO
  • ORCID is moving to a membership model
  • Kristi is taking Laure's position on the AAUDE meeting panel discussion and will talk about ORCID and VIVO
  • Also a webinar coming up in April on VIVO/ORCID.  Will need to clarify vision for VIVO and ORCID to work together
• Potential for 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

The meeting adjourned at 1:53