Attendees

Leadership and Steering Group Members

Ann Beynon,  Julia Trimmer  Robert Cartolano,  Andi Ogier,  Lauren Gala, Eric Meeks,  Alex Viggio, Dong Joon (DJ) Lee, Paul Albert , Mike Conlon

= note taker

Project Staff

debra hanken kurtz, Andrew Woods

Regrets

Dean B. Krafft,  Mark Newton, Michael Bolton, Julie Griffin, Terrie Wheeler, Joe Zucca, Jean Rainwater, Tom Cramer

Connection Information

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Agenda

• Proposed changes to VIVO Governance (review document here)
• Members’ requests for future VIVO versions (before the meeting, please submit your response to the survey that will be sent shortly)
• Update on VIVO Conference

Minutes

• Attendees: Julia, Paul, Alex, Debra, Andrew, Lauren, Ann, Eric, Rob, DJ
• Governance changes
  • Mike: It's important that the Leadership group take ownership of the Project. New Leadership group clarifies that we want to move our elected members to the Leadership group. The only election VIVO would have to have, beyond the community elected reps, in 2018 would be to have an elected rep from among the Bronze supporters. The Leadership group can nominate and elect people to Steering without limitation. In the other projects, it tends to be people from Leadership. We're not that big.
  • Andrew: is there a charter for each of these groups? Mike: yes, it's-in the existing charter. 
  • Andrew: I've noticed with other projects that I'm afraid we're just having repetitive conversations. Mike: yes, that a possibility. One way to accommodate this is to have a lot of overlap between the two.
  • Rob: I don't think for-profits should be able to have any representation on the steering or leadership groups. Also - for community representatives who aren't project contributors in some regard (monetary or in kind), I'm not sure we should allow them to be electable. Either that or they would need to receive an exception.... Fedora allows sites to participate if they give $500-$1,000. 
  • Mike: we've had community representatives from the outset. You don't get to participate unless you're offering something of value. I don't necessarily see a need for a filter. I also happen to disagree with the notion that we should exclude corporations. I think that any party that supports the project should have a voice.... It's a Leadership group decision to allow a second member from the same institution. This gives the opportunity to have dual membership for the project when it makes sense. Rob: I would respectfully push back against a non-member nominating a non-member.
  • Rob: I motion to disallow for profits to serve on the Leadership or Steering Committee.
  • Mike: I don't see the need to take on more change at this time.
  • Julia: I would like to add the Leadership group in a joint meeting with every other Steering meeting. Lauren and Paul: we're okay with that.
  • Julia: would be okay with the election in May? Rob: I would prefer we have more lead time to give people to review the candidates.
  • Eric: I don't think we need a lot of structural rules, because it's a close kint community.
  • Ann: At Clarivate, we've been a good corporate sponsor. Benjamin was active in the VIVO camp and sprint. It will impact our decision going forward.
  • Lauren: I find the perspective of a corporate sponsor to be valuable. 
  • Julia: I would like to hear what the pitfalls are from other projects. What are the risks? I feel like VIVO is in need of all the help we can get. I would hate to count anyone out.
  • Mike: VIVO has had strong corporate sponsorship. But, we were sponsored for a time by Elsevier. They took everything we said and used it against us in their sales pitch. They were a bad actor. We currently have an extraordinarily good actor. This is why we don't like the rules. We need to help build the project. I think we should accept their help. I don't see a need for rules.
  • Debra: there is a trend to question the role of corporations in projects. I think rules get a bad rap. Maybe we should focus instead on setting expectations about how something should work. In the CASRAI project, there's an expectation to contribute back. That may mean some institutions need to opt out. I would propose that I get some examples from other projects.
  • Rob: for dSpace, do any corporations have voting rights? Debra: yes, some. We have generally not experienced bad actors. Samvera is looking at putting a layer between for-profits and the rest of the community. David of CASRAI has said that some corporations has opted out. It would be helpful to review alternative structures.
  • Paul: let's periodically review any participation for Steering, Leadership, sponsors, etc.
  • Rob: why 3 community members? Mike: because the terms expired. Rob: I worry that my value as a gold member could be diluted.
  • Mike: it is a feature of the VIVO project that the adoption of VIVO can take up to 3 years. Some institutions may not support the VIVO project until they go into production.
  • Rob: there are 14 members of Leadership and Steering, and we're looking to get 17? On the call now, we have 9 of 13. Is there a quorum level? Mike: we rarely take votes; it's almost always consensus. Rob: I would like to have a voting process.
• Update
  • Mike: we're in the midst of our first VIVO communtiy sprint. It's looking very good thus far.
• Decisions:
  
  • Group is OK to move forward with elections of three community members to the LG and one bronze member to the LG
  • Group is OK for the Leadership/Steering Groups to meet every four weeks and the Steering Group to meet every two weeks.
  • Julia and Mike will work with Kristi Searle to schedule the elections.
  • We need to ask the Goverance Group to propose a model for the LG to vote.
  • We need to explore the issue of having for-profit voting members of Leadership.