September 11, 2015, 1 PM EST
Attendees
Steering Group Members
Paul Albert, Jon Corson-Rikert , Kristi Holmes, Dean B. Krafft, Robert H. McDonald, Andi Ogier, Bart Ragon, Julia Trimmer
= note taker
Ex officio
Jonathan Markow, Mike Conlon, debra hanken kurtz
Regrets
Melissa Haendel, Eric Meeks, Alex Viggio
Dial-In Number:
NEW DIAL-IN: 641-715-3650 (was 209-647-1600), Participant code: 117433#
Agenda
Item | Time | Facilitator | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Updates | 5 min | All | |
2 | Review agenda | 2 min | All | Revise, reorder if needed |
3 | EuroCRIS event | 10 min | Dean | Attend? Who? |
4 | Site Survey | 15 min | Mike | See draft survey |
5 | Asset Inventory Recommendations | 20 min | Mike, Jon, Paul, Alex | See final report |
6 | Future topics | 5 min | All | Implementation documentation; attribution/contribution efforts; training program |
Notes
Updates
Discussion of upcoming euroCRIS event
- Dean forwarded to the group an invitation from euroCRIS for their strategic partners meeting in November in Barcelona
- Would be valuable to represent things in common in the same way;
- e.g., VIVO has the concept of a grant and a project, but the project is optional because we aren't trying to track the work – the grant is an agreement, the project is the work
- if there's a product of the work, like a paper or a dataset, sufficient for us to say the grant produced the paper
- many grants have many projects and the grant is kind of a rollup entity – institutions are focused on money and need the project entity to manage hr appointments, etc.
- Could also be examples going the other way in which VIVO has more domain depth than a typical CRIS system. The area of research resources is not one they typically track, for example.
- The models overlap, and when they overlap there could be some reconciliation
- Great that we're a strategic partner
- Lots of activity in Europe and a lot of those people have CRIS systems
- Would be valuable to represent things in common in the same way;
- Would anybody be in Barcelona?
- Possibly to see if Converis would go, since they are a CRIS system and believe VIVO complements their functionality
- And/or see if someone from the German VIVO community
- Mentioned at the European BOF that a number of European CRIS adopters are looking for ways to do linked data using VIVO
- Mentioned at the European BOF that a number of European CRIS adopters are looking for ways to do linked data using VIVO
- Can ask if anyone is planning to attend
- Perhaps we could help fund European travel
- Possibly to see if Converis would go, since they are a CRIS system and believe VIVO complements their functionality
- Dean will reply to the invitation saying Mike will follow up and we're trying to find out who can attend
Site Survey
- Paul has been very involved in the previous survey leading up to the 2014 conference in Austin, with Jon, Alex, and Kristi
- This year's draft is quite a bit shorter, in large part hoping to get a larger number of responses – hopefully as many as 80 or 100 vs. 20 of the regulars
- Including sites that are not in production and just evaluating – what are their challenges
- Will go out through SurveyMonkey to people on our mailing lists
- Will have skip logic in the survey to cut people out of sections that don't apply
- And the sections are in the order of moving to a production VIVO – early questions apply to all sites
- Why not target people and do an interview with a representative sample – targeting the 100 listed as in progress
- Resources and time, primarily
- It's an extraordinarily amount of work to try and coordinate email lists, email messages, lists of sites, contact management systems; we haven't had that level of effort and we haven't asked people to give us any information when they download the code as part of being open and accessible
- Could structure with skip logic so front load with feel good but easy questions
- We might want to reach out to hear ORCID's strategies and lessons learned from their recent survey.
- We could engage diverse groups - our service providers, talk with related projects
- We could do half-hour interviews at the conference on challenges and opportunities with VIVO
- We should be sitting down with people who are early in their VIVO experience, to help them as well as hear from them
- We can also think about how to get the survey out to people who aren't on our listservs – other venues
- A more targeted approach is more a matter of manpower
- More likely by the time of the conference next year or at intermediate conference venues. 6-12 sites to talk to – each steering person could take a couple for a structured interview
- Sites implementing VIVO page on the wiki based on email to one of our lists – please add any more that you know of
- At other venues?
- Library conferences, etc.
- CNI? We've certainly presented there; Places where overlap with other DuraSpace projects – also Open Repositories
- Ideas for ways to do forensics on who's adopting VIVO
- Will be at both DLF and CNI
- Some sites might be worth talking to sooner rather than later
Asset Inventory Recommendations
- Jon, Paul, Alex, Jim Blake, and Laura from UPenn worked on a task force to go over the various 'things' VIVO had accumulated, roughly since 2009
- Trying to understand what those things are – websites, email lists, communication channels, etc.
- Trying to understand what to do with/for them
- Trying to understand what those things are – websites, email lists, communication channels, etc.
- The spreadsheet of assets was put out for comments several times through VIVO Updates
- Many newcomers to VIVO are overwhelmed, and sometimes we aren't consistent in how we use resources because we have so many different ones – we lose coherence as a result
- The recommendations are grouped
- There are questions of whether things even should be done – which headings are worth pursuing
- Then a question of priority
- Some are obvious and have already been discussed
- E.g., completing the move from SourceForge to GitHub (cluster 4)
- Steering can also act to indicate which items in the report it endorses and/or has plans to move forward with
- Some things we are not ready to do very much about – such as item #10
- We haven't kept vivo.vivoweb.org up, so it doesn't really serve the purpose of being a demonstration of the system
- We can either shut it down or decide we need a demonstration that shows well
- And there are potentially several kinds of demo systems – one with sample data, another to highlight software and related apps&tools
- We should take down anything that looks bad and would not help the project
- Similar to removing software from the release that is broken, to avoid giving a negative impressions
- We could replace with a series of screencasts or screen images of places that have a VIVO, until we get a working demo system, that won't be tomorrow
- Cleaning up edges of the project that don't show well
- Some of the recommendations may not go clearly enough in that direction
- Implementation of a demo system may involve
- Would this be a chance to have a sprint?
- A different kind of demo that is a demonstration of a scholarship site is not what we have now
- Several of these will require spinoff activity with concerted planning, and some dedicated effort
- Looking for guidance on whether Steering wants the report amended, or whether it will accept the report and consider prioritization and further recommendations
- 3 or 4 of us could write up a response to the report suggesting action steps – what we will do
- Thinking of a step where Steering accepts the report, states it expects to go in this direction, and will review the list of tasks to prioritize and refine and suggest actions (e.g., a task force, a single volunteer)
- But if there are objections to elements of the report, we should hear them
- Are we ready to do that today? This is a more complex report
- The email recommendation, for example
- Integrating with the CRM system at DuraSpace – we don't even know if its feasible
- Also mentions a product called Discourse, but that would put us out of sync with the other DuraSpace projects that use Google Groups
- These will require a more detailed response, and we are not likely to act on all of these
- Any of these 10 items could have feasibility issues that affect priority and timeline
- If we are doing a qualified acceptance, then a smaller group should go through to come up with action recommendations
- May also involve the availability volunteer effort available for any task
- Accepted for further review to assess priority and possible implementation
Action Items
- Dean B. Krafft will follow up with EuroCris
- Mike Conlon will ask community about EuroCris and follow up based on feedback