The return of VIVO Notes

VIVO moves fast. Its teams, its team members, its work are all going at breakneck speed. Emails, phone calls, web site updates, video conferences, face-to-face meetings all serve to get the work done, but there is still a need to share information across all the teams. Since the conference, I have placed some particular emphasis on national outreach activities. This is critical to insure the sustainability of VIVO as a critical infrastructure for science. I’ll share more on these efforts in future editions of VIVO Notes. But for this first issue following a long gap, we have some catching up to do.

The VIVO RFA

As you may know, the VIVO Request for Applications was issued last week. We have had great interest from around the world, and many emails and questions. Please refer questions from team members or potential applicants to Alicia Turner (aliciatu@ufl.edu). She works with me to develop consistent answers. Every email is answered.

The RFA is intended to spur work that is complimentary to VIVO. The best applications for a national network will be identified and funded, creating additional value for all those using VIVO. You can read more at http://vivoweb.org/mini-grant-rfa

Upcoming Events

The VIVO team is making presentations every month. In November (and the month isn’t over yet), VIVO was presented nationally at at least eight events. I say “at least” because despite our best efforts, we sometimes learn of presentations after they occur. Please let Michele Tennant (UF) know of speaking engagements you have accepted so that they can be added to the Upcoming Events section of vivoweb.org. Below are some major events planned for the coming months. There are many additional events planned.

• December – the completion of release 1.2. This major new release provides fundamental improvements throughout the core software, new visualizations and new features for the Harvester. See Confluence (https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ennsrd/User+Feature+Map) for more details on the planned features.
• January – Announcement of the VIVO Collaborative Research Projects Awardees. The number of awards will be determined by the strength of the applications and their proposed budgets.
• February – VIVO Hackathon, Gainesville, Florida. We will bring together top developers from around the projects and world to engage in semantic mash-ups using VIVO and other data sources. This is an invitation only, developer only event. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon if Hackathons are new for you.
• March – Workshop, Bloomington, Indiana. A workshop will be held to bring together invited thought leaders on the topic of VIVO application architecture and the national network. More as we approach the event.

  There’s Outreach and then there’s Outreach

  Many words have more than one definition. On the VIVO project, the word “outreach” is used in two fundamentally different ways. This has caused some confusion.

National outreach consists of efforts related to building awareness of VIVO around the world, as we as efforts leading to adoption of VIVO beyond the original seven schools. Adoption is the decision making process by which a school decides to implement VIVO. The VIVO org chart (below) shows the teams that make up the national outreach team. Kristi Holmes is the national outreach team lead.
Local outreach consists of efforts related to building awareness and use of VIVO at institutions which have adopted VIVO and are implementing VIVO. Implementation is the process of setting up VIVO, loading it with data and having people use it. It is this last part of implementation that is called local outreach.

Local outreach on other projects might be called “change management.” It has to do with creating a change in the way people work. VIVO is intended to be a valuable tool for faculty, staff, students and administrators of academic institutions. Local outreach insures that we move beyond a technical implementation to a new way of working. Local outreach on the VIVO project is typically done by librarians – they have tremendous experience helping the university with its information and knowledge tools and processes.

To recap, national outreach consists of efforts to build awareness and eventual adoption of VIVO worldwide. Local outreach consists of efforts designed to help the university with its change towards making use of VIVO. It certainly can be confusing to have the same word used for such different activities.

Three Purposes, Three Web Sites

In the beginning, the VIVO project had one web site – Confluence at Cornell. Then we created vivoweb.org to help with outreach efforts. And more recently we created vivo.sourceforge to help with technical support and sustainability. The three web sites have three missions. They are described briefly below.

Confluence. https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/ennsrd/VIVO This is the primary resource for all project related materials – meeting notes, technical diagrams, works in progress, planning documents of all kinds, team rosters and much, much more. If you are not on Confluence you will be unable to stay up with the project. We occasionally see people creating sidebar project sites in Google Docs or elsewhere. This is discouraged (one might say strongly). Please make sure you and your team members are able to access Confluence and please make sure your work documents are developed in Confluence. Confluence provides the common repository for all VIVO project materials.

The VIVO Web Site. http://www.vivoweb.org. This site is used for all materials related to the national efforts. All outreach materials – presentations, marketing materials, conference and other public announcements, the VIVO blog and much more is found at vivoweb.org. White papers and other conceptual public material has a natural home here as well. Finally, material for faculty is best placed at vivoweb.org.

VIVO at SourceForge http://vivo.sourceforge.net. This site is intended for technical material in support of open implementation and open development. The site has an open wiki where participants from beyond the seven original schools can join the project. The site is not intended for adoption, nor for faculty. SourceForge provides an instantly recognizable brand as an open source, open development environment, one in which developers from around the world can begin contributing to VIVO. Implementers are also encouraged to share experiences and build community at SourceForge. Finally, SourceForge has an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) capability where technical conversation can be had about VIVO, sharing experiences, questions and answers.

Three web sites ought to be enough – Confluence for project-oriented material, vivoweb.org for national and local outreach material, SourceForge for technical material and activity supporting open development and open implementation.

The VIVO Org Chart

I hope everyone has a copy of the VIVO Team Poster hanging in his or her workplace. It is a great representation of the scale and interconnected teams of the VIVO project. You may wish to make notes on your copy of the poster, adding people who have joined the project and noting the people who are no longer with us.

Some have asked for a hierarchical view of the VIVO organization. I’m not a big fan of hierarchical organization; I much prefer to think in terms of teams and the relation of teams. Members of teams serve the team. The “leader” may be the one organizing meetings, but the ideas and work should come through the interaction of the team members. Natural leaders emerge as people who think clearly, get work done and serve the greater good of the project and its members.

The grant had a simple organizational chart, and I have embellished it below with some of the more important team substructure. This is not intended to create rigidity, nor authority. It is important that VIVO continues to move quickly to identify and solve problems, to analyze, design and create work products and to serve the needs of science and scholarship. As you will see below, we have one opening. We will move to fill this position. If you would like to nominate a team member (of yourself), please contact me.

The VIVO Team Leads are Katy Börner, Mike Conlon, Jon Corson-Rikert, Elly Cramer, Val Davis, Ying Ding, Kristi Holmes, Dean Krafft, and Leslie McIntosh. This group has weekly calls to set direction for the project. They are often joined by our program officer Elaine Collier of the NIH/NCRR.

Comings and Goings

Some people have recently joined the project. Nicholas Rejack (UF) has joined as an ontologist. Ryan Cobine (Indiana) has joined in implementation. Syraj Syed (UF) has joined in Education. Kaitlin Wilson (UF) has joined in Marketing. Sara Russell-Gonzalez (UF) has taken a new role in technical implementation and support. Val Davis has taken a new role as UF Implementation Lead. Narayan Raum (UF) has left the project. Yang Li (UF) has left the project. Jim Pence (UF) has joined the project as a developer. If you know of other changes to the staffing of the project since August, please let me know and I’ll get them included in future editions.

With Val’s move to UF Implementation, we have an opening for National Implementation Lead. This position manages the existing implementations and sets the stage for sustainable implementation support activity through community processes. We need a person who understands implementation, is conversant with technical matters, has outstanding organizational and communication skills and can represent the project on the national level. We don’t ask for much.  If you would like to nominate someone (self nominations are fine), please contact me.

A final note on changes. Sara Henning (UF) has left the project to take a role as Marketing Lead for the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida. Sara created the VIVO “look,” PowerPoint templates, posters, and the new look of VIVO Notes. She made a remarkable contribution to the project with her tireless effort, team spirit and brilliant creation of materials. She will be sorely missed. I wish her all the best in her new position!

Ideas for VIVO Notes?

Is there an idea that you would like to see developed in VIVO Notes? Do you have questions or concerns that might best be clarified here? Please drop me a note.

[ Mike Conlon|http://vivo.ufl.edu/individual/mconlon]