The notes below reflect a summary of the March 13 open forum discussion answer the proposed questions.

EDITING IN PROCESS

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Wednesday, March 13, morning sessions (cmm)

James Hilton kick-off and presentation

• It is not a crisis or cliff pushing this meeting agenda. It's an opportunity to come together and "Move the needle" towards a future that meets all of our needs.  
• We are at a pivital moment that hangs on (digital) preservation. 
• A 2011 Nobel Prize was awarded for those who noticed that the universe is expanding faster and faster; it is not static. In the far future galaxies that we now see will rush away so fast that we won't be visible anymore. The blackness will infer that nothing else ever existed in the universe except that matter which is immediately in front of and surrounding humans in that distant future. It is our responsibility to ensure that evidence of stars, galaxies and solar systems inform the far future.
• We have an emerging digital preservation stack (see JH slides).
• Where do all these parts and pieces fit together other than around the 20K price tag for support of each?
• No guarantee that any of these layers feed into the rest of the stack (bleed between the layers); institutions may utilize parts and pieces of the stack:
  
  • Access repositories
  • Preservation repositories
  • DPN backbone
  • Code (that includes DSpace and Fedora)
• What do I get for my 20K annual fee? 
  
  • It is an investment in collective/shared capabilities; it's more like thinking about FTEs because that's where you get "capability"

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Michele and Jonathan Myths and Debunks (see slides)

• "Our Mission is not about software; we are committed to our digital future." MK
• We are here today because we need to work with you and creating sustainable, new investment strategies to reinvigorate DSpace and Fedora developmen
• Fedora needs about a half million dollars per year to move forward toward rapid, cohesive development
• "Each of you owns the Fedora and DSpace code to the degree in which you participate and utilize the open source software. You all own Fedora and DSpace."  JJM
• How does VIVO fit in? (Dean Krafft)
  
  • VIVO has moved from being a grant-supported project into developing a model for sustainability.
  • Large grant from NIH
  • More than 100 institutions piloting VIVO software
  • Signed on as a DuraSpace incubated project because:
    
    • Wanted independent biz administration
    • Wanted help with infrastructure (wiki, code repository)
    • Looking for a model for sponsorship and project support
    • There will be a tech coordinator/lead who will be hired through DuraSpace
  • "VIVO fits into the DuraSpace mission because research institutions like Cornell need to know WHAT the university scholarly output is (that should be preserved)--that's the content that VIVO pulls together." DK

...

• There is not any chance to preserve some materials that are so fragile they are deteriorating. 
• Invisible to visible--Ann Wolpert. "You can't see digital."
• Scientific integrity has widespread support
• In Australia there are 2 funding agencies and research data must be accessible; U New South Wales; Fedora is critical to this effort
  
  • What we pay for software to access collections is high--has 7 people working on Fedora; Tyler's kind of arguments can help illustrate to people why this is important.

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Wednesday, March 13, afternoon sessions

Attendees were asked to have table discussions and report out their answers to the following questions:

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• Existing set of things that we have found out about from the community that we are working on
• Put 95% of F3 in 2 days into F4
• Not positive that we should carry some things forward lie XCML in its current form
• Why not do more roadmap development; trying to avoid the mistakes of the past of going dark and then doing the big reveal to find out that it's not what you want
• We should build quickly with quantifiable experiments and get early feedback from the community (Eddie)
• Metrics and reporting: as academia changes how people are evaluated then we get to be part of the infrastructure of the university; are you working with others on what a usage report would look like? Should be part of requirements development
• Partial effort to gather input from users--survey or something?
• Phone, wiki, conf call are not that good?
• Should we do a face-to-face hackathon for non-developers; need a deep conversation about what the user community needs

What have you heard?

• makes me want to contribute more back  (need to do a little clean up) instead of working on something else (Sid from Rice)
• we knew this day was coming – funded thru grants, at some point something needs to change – this is it – the point where we have to step up a little bit
• distribute slides: want numbers – Tyler Walters slides 1.4 FTE – spending so little money in this area, that we need more allocated – I want to double what we spend
• grant $s get whacked by research office – 50% taken off – can’t some of that money help the projects?
• need to make the case that we aren’t just books and stacks
• terminology does matter – project/product/program – maybe program is better – program that spins off projects
• DuraSpace hasn’t broght some of these concerns sooner – need to know what the challnges are we Fedora
• Fedora needs to be backward compatable
• really keen to do open source except when it gets hard
• what is the governance model – how do we make it better
• funding modeles and ROI – we are the choir, we are making the case at our institutions
• governanace/stakeholder engagement – project level and DuraSpace, moving from appointed to elected boards – have some people involved besides just technical
• more communication for roadmapping - 
• F & D community can’t sit still
• heard fin position
• surpised that projects are in the red and that it isn’t a problem
• how do we get general presevation problem funded – long term access might be a better way to think about it – current $s vs endowment – and other funding for the whole stack
• both projects are mature, dev is difuse, might not be a good dvelopmetn strategy – look at other models – consolidating resources to make pushes (like Kuali) –
• governance – how to dev roapmap
• developing a common pitch for provost

What do you have concerns about? (val)

• we were told we are not in crisis, but are we really in crisis?
• urgency – physical backlog of books vs. a digital backlog – digital resources are vulernable
• many people on campus don’t agree that we need an IR
• 70% or organizations resources are dedicated on physical objects
• only 10% of our adopter community that are sponsoring – needs to be higher
• would be good to have an easy way to get from DSpace to Fedora – maybe that is a priority of the community to work on
• how do we make sure non-sponsors are included in community
• multiple 20K sponsorship needs
• deficiets of D & F are a concern, can they be resolved
• need to support community at large, risk factors on relying on just one person
• need more ULs here – need to broaden the base of supporters
• shocked at how low sponsorship rate is – thought it was higher
• donations to broad community effort  - DuraSpace – how does contributions benefit the platforms
• excitement around FF project – not an equivelent for DSpace – possible neglect
• same/usual suspects that contribute – fatigue – need to expand contributions (financial and inkind) by other inst.

What has inspired you?

• urgency of the digital dark age
• good to know DuraSpace not in crisis
• we have to take ownership and DuraSpace seems to be the place to take ownership
• how Lyrasis position’s itself as a svc – maybe DuraSpace would posistion itelf that way
• by the financial position of DuraSpace
• excelleration of the createion of dig data – is there a space to consider policy workflow layers so we don’t all re-create
• openess and transparency
• ROI discussion from Tyler
• Tyler – how much actual $ spent – suggests there is a lot of pontential upside – but how do we get there
• James stack – helped
• we are not dealing with digital humanities we are dealing with humanities that are digital

What unanswered questions do you have?

• Fedora – curiousity about additional investment – how much funding is needed – long term, short term, etc.
• what governance model would be effective
• need governance roadmap going forward
• more roadmap discussions
• more ways to particpate
• can we expand community of users
• can we expand ways projects use
• can we identify all who use Fedora
• more sharing of knowledge and expertise
• can we have a slide deck about meta issues for F & D
• making the invisiable visable
• do we take a bundled approach
• should Duraspace reach out to other orgs
• what are the other governance models used
• how does this relate to digital preservation /better communicate value prop of how DuraSpace fits into this larger value proposition
• share value propsition for selling to leadership
• we need a louder roadmap about going forward 

Thursday, March 14, morning sessions 

DSpace Session

Initial Discussion Questions:

• What does the project need to be successful?
  
  • financial contributions
  • developer contributions
  • articulation of requirements
• How to increase engagement with the community?
  
  • new models of funding (membership?)
  • stronger project governance?
  • other forms of communication?

Greatest needs in the community summary:

1) Need a roadmap - need a vision of what DSpace should be in the next 3 to 5 years

• DSpace Committers are busy with bug fixes, releases and reviewing the many contributions – making sure they play well together - don't really have time to focus on the evolution of DSpace architecture and long term road map 

2) Need governance for stakeholders to go along with additional funding and long term roadmap

DSpace Futures 

• discussions came down to three main projects - hope was that DSpace futures would turn into something like Fedora Futures, instead seemed to have turned into other smaller functionality projects, not necessarily a roadmap
  
  • REST API
  • DSpace + Hydra
  • Metadata Improvements
  • not very many volunteers so far  
• Fedora community may have more developer resources, many DSpace institutions may not have developer resources
  
  

How do we energize the DSpace community?

• Is DSpace a product or project? 
• more of a push to develop a DSpace user community more at conferences - set up BoF at your next conference
• more participation in DCAT and ambassador group
• need specifics to ask for money
• need community to be in charge of what changes need to be made, actionable items and identify people charged with doing it
• have a membershiop model for smaller institutions to fund DSpace improvements
  
  • maybe different funding model, e.g.,  
    
    • tie requisition to deliverable
    • adoption, patch, upgrade
    • "bill me" size of institution
    • membership depending on size of instutition
• need community to specify what needs to be done - need specifics to ask for development money, tying a specific deliverable to $$
• everyone looking at DuraSpace to create roadmap, but the community needs to lead
• DSpace community

Should DSpace be UI that sits on top of Fedora?

• Fedora 4 will still not be an out-of-the box system, no UI
• should there be a DSpace Hydra head or some other type of Fedora/DSpace integration?
  • DSpace-like Hydra head: scholarSphere (PSU) and hydris (Stanford) 
• is it a grant project to merge DSpace with Fedora?
• DuraSpace should scope the project

DSpace community is bifurcated community

• smaller institutions with limited resources - folks without IT support - could hosted DSpaceDirect address this need (SAAS)
• other community
  • institutions with needs where they've outgrown DSpace platform
  • contemplating exit strategy
  • need to contribute to re-envision / modify DSpace

Governance

• need a steering group
• could DCAT could serve in product-owner role - representing non-sponsors?
• centralized technical vision and technical leadership
  • how to ensure that features integrate well?
  • do we need a project director role - either funded or contributed in-kind by the community

• Roadmap
  • Scoping project to see if DSpace-on-Fedora is viable
    • DuraSpace should scope (David) 
    • Need "dead-simple" migration path

• David Lewis
  
  • Hosting meeting at ACRL
    
    • MK will be there with project proposal
  • will pass the hat

• Need repository managers involved in strategic vision
• steering group needs mix of technologists, administrators, repository managers

not an enterprise system, doesn't scale

VIVO Breakout Session  Mike Conlon, recorder

Attendees: Mike Conlon (UF), Bill Barnett (IU),  Hal Warren (APA), Julia Trimmer (Duke), Mike Bolton (Texas A&M), Dean Krafft (Cornell), Robert McDonald (Indiana), Mike Winkler (Penn), Daniel Calto (Elsevier), Jonathan Breeze (Symplectic), Alex Viggio (Digital Science), Paul Albert (Weill Cornell), Delphine Canno (Temple, by Skype), Andrew Ashton (Brown), Jon Corson-Rikert (Cornell, by video)

Three discussion areas:

1. VIVO Roadmap – Dean Krafft, facilitator
2. VIVO Strategy – Jonathan Markow, Facilitator
3. VIVO Strategy – Bill Barnett, Facilitator

VIVO Roadmap -- Dean Krafft, Facilitator

Vivo 1.6 -- VIVO-ISF, CTSAConnect, Eagle-I, bidirectional API via SPARQL, HTTP caching, search indexing, developer tools, landing page improvements.  1.6.1 running through tests.

If a grant or other sponsor can pay for a specific feature that does not take away from the strategy or roadmap, and gifts back the feature to the vivo core, there is general support.  

A collection of architectural use cases -- VIVO as an engine, an aggregator, an information representation, as data store used for external apps,  Balance use cases in the development road map.

Need for documentation.  Using, installing, adding code.  To build development community -- Internal code needs documentation.  Architecture documents. Development process. On boarding documentation.

Some possible new features:

• Control the rank ordering in search results
• Linked data for libraries will need billion triple scale stores and support for commercial triple stores.
• Internationization.  Labeling.  Or in operation of the software.
• Archival vivo.
• External URIs.
• Ontology editor improvements, application ontology, ISF module support
• Multi-site search
• Vivo linkages 

There will be an annual survey at the Implementation Fest.

How is the roadmap developed?  Users, sponsors, technical. Interaction with grant funded effort.  Community of developers. Balancing allocation.  Sponsors, steering.  Ideas -> proposals -> vetting -> deciding 

Time-based vs feature-based release? Most prefer time-based release.  Easier to plan.  Possibly bi-annual.

Action items

Project Director hire.  Community assessment of desirable features before Austin?  Time at Austin to disucss? Roadmap proposal. Goals: Functioning organization, roadmap development

Governance -- Jonathan Markow, Facilitator

Reviewed the project charter describing governance and membership.

Spending incubation period developing governance and membership.  Founding members are Platinum members with designation as Founders.  Other levels range from bronze at $2500 to Diamond at $30,00. Membership campaign in the spring -- we have a handful of non-founders currently.

Recognize in-kind contributions.  1/2 developer would be same as platinum, on the leadership group.

Steering committee -- Bill, Paul, Dean, Jon, Mike, Kristi, Robert, Jonathan, Project Director.  Should be elected by the leadership group.

Leadership group -- platinum and above.  Elect the steering group. Clarify the role of the leadership group regarding strategy, budget.  Intended to function as a board.

Project members -- submit requests, vote for two at large leadership group members

Work groups – largely volunteer effort with focus on an aspect of VIVO – implementation, core development, apps & tools, ontology, outreach

Duraspace – shepard the development of all things VIVO – software, community, process

Use cases for governance.  How do we create a roadmap?  How do we develop a strategic plan?  How do we develop and approve a budget? Allocate resources?  How (when/process) do we name the steering committee?  

Input rights -- bronze and silver

Decision rights -- platinum and diamond

Project members at the bronze level.  Consortia membership is possible to encourage participation outside the US. Learn from other projects and Duraspace.

VIVO Strategy -- Bill Barnett, Facilitator

VIVO business model -- membership, committed people, project director, Duraspace, alignment with institutuonal interests.

Kernel, application, ontology, applications

Community

What is our business?  competitors?  Public, shareable, Machine consumable, human attribute storage.  With lineage, trust. Create and Share data about scholarly work.

Alliances.  People who create and share scholarly work.  We're not in the publishing business, nor administrative function, nor repository businesses.

The concept of VIVO data and promoting the production of VIVO data by any means.

Spurring adoption --early adopters, secondary messaging, early middle (value propositions), late middle (everyone else is doing it, compliance). Enabling implementation, changing the ROI. Having usage and implementation stories at various scales.