Happy New Year! This is the January 2016 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.
Call for Action
Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. Here is an easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort:
- Add a comment to any of these tickets [1] if you are interested in inching into Fedora development.
Membership
Fedora is designed, developed, and supported by a global community of stakeholders. Organizations that use and benefit from Fedora join DuraSpace as members [2] and direct their membership funding to Fedora. In 2015, the Fedora Leadership Group [3] set a goal of achieving $560,000 in membership funding, and we are happy to report that we have met that goal with just over $563,000 in funding from 76 member institutions [4]! Thank you to all of our members - your continued support helps fund two full-time staff members, the Product Manager and the Technical Lead, as well as training and outreach, hackfests and community meetings, and other initiatives as decided by the Fedora Leadership Group.
Software development
Community-driven Features
API Extension Architecture
API Extension stakeholders have developed a list of high-level requirements [5] based on the use cases [6] that have been submitted and reviewed. An initial proof of concept will be generated, with development sprints anticipated to start in late January or early February.
If you are interested in the API Extension Architecture, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [7] and attend the next meeting (TBD).
Performance and Scalability
Improved performance and scalability is one of the primary goals [8] of Fedora 4 development, and a group of stakeholders has gathered to review and validate past test results, document additional use cases, and establish new benchmarks [9]. The group has achieved consensus on the test plans [10], and a team has been assembled to implement an initial JMeter Test.
The stakeholders last met on December 21 [11]. If you are interested in participating, please attend the next meeting [12] on January 11.
Conferences and events
Past Events
Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group Meeting
The first meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group [13] took place on November 30 - December 1 at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. The meeting featured presentations and project updates from regional Fedora users, along with a Fedora 4 workshop delivered by David Wilcox. Presentation slides and workshop materials can be found on the meeting website [14].
Fedora Camp
Fedora enthusiasts from around the US and Canada got together to teach, learn and get to know one another at the recent Fedora Camp held at Duke University Libraries on November 16-18. Five instructors including Aaron Coburn, Amherst College, Esme Cowles, Princeton University Library, Mike Durbin, University of Virginia, David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager of DuraSpace and Andrew Woods, Fedora Tech Lead of DuraSpace led camp sessions. The curriculum led the group through in-depth technical “deep dive” sessions as well as question and answer discussions regarding features, migrations, data modeling, indexing for search and discovery, extending Fedora, and more. Slides and other materials from the camp can be found on the wiki [15].
Upcoming Events
IDCC
The 11th International Digital Curation Conference [16] (IDCC) will take place in Amsterdam February 22-25, 2016. This year a Fedora 4 Workshop will be held as part of IDCC on Feb. 22. This full-day workshop will demonstrate Fedora 4's capabilities through hands-on instruction, including data modelling, linked data best practices, and integrations with search applications and triplestores. The workshop will be presented by Aaron Coburn, Amherst College and Neil Jefferies, Oxford University. No prior Fedora 4 experience is required. Please register in advance [17].
Hydra Camp and Regional Meeting
Data Curation Experts will lead a four-day Hydra Camp hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara Library on February 22-25, 2016. Hydra Camp is open to all developers interested in building skills working with the Hydra technology framework. The 4-day course costs $925 and can accommodate 30 participants. For more details, and to register, please click here [18].
Following Hydra Camp, UC Santa Barbara will host a regional Hydra meeting on Friday, February 26.
References
[1] https://jira.duraspace.org/issues/?filter=13121 [2] http://www.duraspace.org/become_a_member [3] http://fedorarepository.org/leadership-group [4] http://fedorarepository.org/membership [5] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/High-level+Requirements [6] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Use+Cases+-+API+Extension+Architecture [7] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community [8] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+Four+Prospectus [9] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Performance+and+Scalability [10] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Performance+and+Scalability+Test+Plans [11] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2015-12-21+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting [12] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-01-11+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting [13] http://midatlanticfedorausers.org/schedule/ [14] http://midatlanticfedorausers.org/ [15] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Fedora+Camp+-+16-18+November+2015 [16] http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc16 [17] http://www.epay.ed.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=80&catid=96&prodid=2125 [18] http://www.eventbrite.com/e/hydra-camp-uc-santa-barbara-2016-tickets-19930212803
