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Minutes

1. Two sprints finished. Were successful in moving the implementation closer to the apec. On Andrew Woods plate is to summerize what was done and what is remaining. Would be good to have another sprint in the new year. Will mention that on tech call as well as how to chip away in a lighter weight fashion on the remaining tickets.
   There are also the contractors moving forward on a test suite. As they move deeper and deeper into the specification and are noting things in the spec but not currently implemented anywhere they are verifying that the API is detailed enough to be testable. We do not want to have a test suite that tests the current implementation.
   Is any more concrete/detailed information relevant to this group?
   The newsletters are also a place to provide updates as well as on the leadership calls.
   
   
2. Presentations
   
   1. Research Data Alliance plenary in Montreal last month.
      There are a number of efforts related to our work in Fedora. Repository Platforms in Research Data Interest group, comparing Fedora/Islandora/Samvera against a set of requirements and noting gaps in the landscape. Also there were some people from DataVerse there. RDA is very interested in interoperability and transfer between platforms. Fedora working with well defined and established APIs fits with their goals.
      
      
   2. Research Data Interoperability group - Focused on exchange of resources. About a year into their mandate.
      Moving objects between legacy and new software as well as between software.
      Talking around packaging, profiles and standards around moving resource.
      Fedora’s import/export and BagIt standard has been informative.
      Recommendations from the group will be around BagIt and BagIt profiles and standards around transferring data between systems. This helps with not only Fedora to Fedora transfer but also dealing with other platforms.
      
      Do you have any connection to the Research Graphs group?
      Vivo Community is involved, but Fedora Community has not as of yet been involved.
      
      Do you know how many F4 repos are supporting Research Data?
      Based on the deployments page, I would guess it is a minority. U of Alberta, U Michigan (Strategic planning has been going on, Deep Blue data in production last Sept. Done a lot of re-tooling to make it adapted to research data. Indiana U is coming up to see how U Michigan's implementation might fit their use cases as well). U of New South Wales (Fedora 3 for Research Data), there is an option to migrate but that is still in discussion. ICPSR group have some that contain research data.
      
      Are there any specific features that Fedora needs to fulfill to support research data?
      Fedora definitely has some changes that could be undertaken. U Michigan trying to determine what should occur at the Fedora level versus Samvera. But some issues are scaling, import/export, data modelling, access permissions, cloud based multi-tenant infrastructure. Some of these are on the roadmap, but they are still trying to wrestle with those issues now.
      Useful to surface those requirements, to see what are the gaps that at whatever level.
      ICPSR have gone very deep into a Fedora based research data repository. They are a gold mine of information and knowledge.
      Who will be at SamveraConnect? Perhaps an in-face discussion can occur there?
      Might be good to coordinate a broader meeting not only focused around Samvera.
      Stefano Cossu will set up a meeting at SamveraConnect.
      
      
   3. Also attended iPres in Kyoto last month.
      Did a presentation on Fedora’s role in digital preservation and Fedora’s Import/Export and moving data from Fedora to other distributed presentation/preservation platforms.
      Presented a workshop (35 registered). There are some folks using Fedora in Asia/Pacific region not previously aware of. At least one implementation in China and one in Japan. Mostly Fedora 3, but interested in Fedora 4.
      
      Related: There is a bit of a time sensitive email thread related to preservation. On the Fedora community list around the Oxford Common Filesystem Layout. Looking for interest in committing to participating in an interest group to flesh out what makes sense in specifying what the files should look like on disk. Possibly for Import/Export. Preservation has been in the conversation regularly, this is an opportunity to move things forward. Please encourage people to have a look and indicate interest if it is relevant. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fedora-community/k7sU1IosEIU
      
      What is the timeline for responses?
      4 weeks with a reminder at the 2 week mark.
      David Wilcox will mention this proposal at the NDSA(?) conference.
      
      
   4. Fedora Camp Texas (Austin) - last week. 29 attendees which is perfect, thinking about capping at 30 because larger makes harder to facilitate.
      Great team of instructors. Mike Durbin, Aaron Birkland and Bethany Seeger. Able to add content around areas of expertise from each instructor. Mike (import/export), Bethany (linked data), Aaron (API-X).
      Camp continues to be a good format and opportunity for learning and collaborating.
      Folks are excited and there is a lot of interest. Lots of Texas institutions doing great work, would be wonderful to maybe get some of that expertise working on the Fedora project directly.
      Kudos to the TDL staff for taking the lead in supporting the camp all the way along.
      
      Do we have anyway of noting any upturn in development after a workshop?
      I don’t think I have seen that, but the camp is not a developer focused. We mention and suggest attending the Thursday Tech calls. But that is a good point that having some way of on-ramping new developers to work smaller/easier tasks.
      Is it better to get people whom find it fun and are willing to work evenings/weekends or by getting buy in from the managerial level. There have been people that use the camp as a way of bringing context getting a first look for some.
      
      
   5. Next year looking at 2 camps (one Fedora one Fedora/Samvera) had some casual conversations about a camp on the West Coast. Perhaps the Washington DC region. If you interested, please get in touch with David. Highlight the joint Fedora/Samvera camp, it was good for the Samvera and Fedora developers to each get more understanding of the underlying architecture of the opposite. Suggest the same collaboration with Islandora CLAW.
      
      
3. Member committee for the year closing around the end of October.
   A few leads on upgrades.
   Currently at $560,000 of funding. Last year had $565,000. Could still come up a bit, but short of our goal of $580,000.
   Added 3 new member institutions University of Bern, University of Michigan Medical School (Knowledge Grid), U Tennessee (Knoxville) re-allocated funds to the Fedora project.
   Only lost University of Massachusetts. Also some downgraded due to funding cuts.
   Next year if we want to start allocating more funding to a development effort we may need to make a specific ask as we are at a level state of income/expeditures.
   Perhaps asking on an adhoc basis so not requiring a bronze level of commitment. Islandora does allow for small number of individual members at a lower level. Investigating lower levels than bronze for smaller institutions but also better/more attractive benefits for the higher levels.
   Have not spoken to Amherst about their decision around moving off Fedora to an in-house solution. Have not gotten more specific information yet but they seem willing to have a discussion and provide that information.
   
   
4. Skip roundtable due to small meeting size this month.

Actions

1. Andrew Woods plate is to summerize what was done and what is remaining from the API specification sprints.
   
2. Stefano Cossu will set up a meeting at SamveraConnect around research data and increasing linked data related functions in Fedora.