Coordinating Meeting Sept 10 2021 11:30 am AST

• Chair: Gabriela Mircea
• Notes: Bethany Seeger

Per: Schedule

Attending:

• Mike Kemezis
• Noah Smith
• Jean Phillips
• Kirsta Stapelfeldt
• Brandon Weigel
• David Keiser-Clark
• David Wilcox
• Don Richards
• Drew Heles
• Ian Song
• John Herbert
• Donald Moses
• Mirko Hanke
• Rosie Le Faive
• Bethany Seeger

Agenda

Old Business

• Previous Meeting Notes

New Business

Discussion of Islandora Foundation staffing model with Leadership Group

Discussion about vision, staffing, and response to Leadership Open Letter (https://groups.google.com/g/islandora/c/vYzTfZY85vQ) Noah reviewed the process the Leadership Group came to make their decision to hire an Executive Director. The purpose of this meeting is a discussion about the Open Letter from the Islandora Leadership Group sent 8/31/2021 and get on the same page on a framework for moving forward.

Leadership Group Thoughts presented by Chair, Noah:

• The MVP Goals for the software do not meet the desires and needs for the community. Lacking a common vision of what is Islandora and what do we do. Gap analysis is need and then figure a way to implement what is missing. There are a number of visions for what is Islandora and how it should be configured - MVP, Issues Queue, Born-Digital LYRASIS install profile, ICG Feedback Document, Number of documents from MIG. All of these visions need to be looked at and should provide a roadmap of “core Islandora” functionality into the future. Leadership, ICC, and TAG need to be on the same page for the future of the community.

• Rosie: We should focus on what Islandora can and should do, not what is it doing now. Users are locked into the current version; that might restrict things it can do in the future with install profiles instead of manual install. What can you do with Islandora packaged in certain ways and what can’t you do with it packaged that way? What are the constraints of different installs? Documentation is so very dev focused.

• Kirsta: The system needs to be modular and extensible. It needs reasonable defaults and different install options (container vs. manual). Currently, I8 is very monolithic in terms of installation.

• David: Leadership group is pitching that it is so important that we all come together as a community to figure out the best cases for the future. Islandora has never had a comprehensive strategic path together. We have that opportunity now. This will grow the community and create a healthy community.

• Rosie: Would be great for there to be a community designing out-of-the-box experience (less dev focused and more front-end admin users). Modular will not look the same going forward, as in I7, it will be different. We also need to build community knowledge for managers.

• Noah: There is a knowledge gap as much as a software gap. Many of the issues in the ICG report can be addressed by training.

• Noah The voices on this call are usually the loudest voices in this community. We need more voices to join.

• Drew Do all of these groups that are talking about this (Leadership, ICC, TAG, ICG), understand each other? Leadership Group is focused on community leadership and consensus. People on the ground are more focused on migrating and the reality of EOL. If we are all about vision and not so much about implementation, many places could be in trouble.

• Feedback to Leadership’s original message is that the community needs more than one position can fill and they have backed off the original ED position. Looking into how they fill the positions needed (contractor, volunteer, etc.). They are trying to balance the needs for a healthy community and the code.

• Noah (not speaking for the Leadership Group, his own opinions): The most important role is the hub of the “vision” (product manager). ICC and TAG need to be highly involved in this process. These groups need to reconcile the different visions of what Islandora should be. We need a common core spec that the community needs to collaborate on building.

• Donald: A bridge for content owner/project manager for the community might already be in the community. This would be a bridge position for the time being. (Kirsta Stapelfeldt - not sure if we can include this)

• Amy: What is the timeline on all of this? How will this process play out over the next few months? How do we present all of this for the community and beyond?

• Noah’s opinion - this work needs to be done ASAP. We cannot take our time. There needs to be a short term plan to get to a sprint in the very near future - hiring temp people.

• David: Idea tossed around in Leadership of having temporary hired staff members - not committing to a particular person and continuing to iterate the project. Not locked into a particular person’s work style or vision.

• Noah: There is money to hire people. We need volunteers but we don’t want to burn them out.

• Drew: The committers are having trouble running a sprint without a tech lead. Does that group need a tech lead for particular sprints?

• Kirsta: On board with her and her staff member to work as the coordinators for the tech group. She is very much for a modular Islandora with sensible defaults. She really wants to help. She has the autonomy and time to take this on temporarily to get to a community sprint.

• It’s good to have someone familiar with the community that is good at consensus building and doesn’t impose their own vision. Teach lead for a sprint can be from the committer community - a short time frame (2-3 weeks at a few hours a week). A project manager from a community institution would have to dedicate 10+ hours a week. Could we make something like this a 3-6 month commitment?

• Alex O’Neil and Rosie Le Faive are spending time on Islandora, supported by UPEI. They can help out in the near future.

• There is a concern that as vendors and individual community members develop and implement I8 they might develop different tools and code to solve the same issue. How do we make sure we don’t have “different versions” of the same Islandora over time. It is important that we get people and organizations to contribute back to the community as much as possible.

• Idea to move forward - we plan a four month period where we fill team roles (Rosie, Kirsta, and Nat Kanthan) and move ahead with a spec period moving into a sprint period. We then evaluate that sprint and see how close we are to where we want to be. UPEI and UofT will help fill these roles. This idea will be brought to TAG and the community for feedback.

• Reinforced that we need a stable team to help the community in migrations and solving problems. Right now, we only have community help, such as Slack. These people should be in paid positions.

• Main goal of the Leadership group is to get momentum on the software first, then work on hiring staff (temp and perm) and then building community.

• It's on the table that TAG and ICC can take on a stronger role (advocacy, organization, leadership, roles, etc.). All groups should be tightened up in terms of structure.

• We hope the next four months will solidify the vision of Islandora. In order to upgrade in the future, we need to all be on the same core platform, otherwise, it is not sustainable.

• Kirsta, David and DGI are working on reworking islandora.ca with community input. Looking to have it launched by the end of the year.

Next Steps

• Leadership group will coordinate the outreach to TAG, meet with that group, and work on the next draft of a new response for the future ideas that we discussed here today. Leadership will draft a response, TAG and ICC will make comments before anything is sent out publicly.

• In the event that there is pushback in TAG, we should plan to regroup as a larger group in a week or so to resolve any issues that come up. We don’t anticipate any issues, but just in case.

• Leadership will return to the next meeting on 9/24 to check in on all of this (Jenna to schedule)

Interest Group Updates

(Out of time)

• Metadata IG (Rosie)
• IR interest group (Bryan or Don)
• ISLE Interest Group (Danny or Bryan)
• Documentation Interest Group (Amy/Yamil, Melissa, or Mirko)

Islandora 2.0

Islandora Events

(Out of time)

Round Table

(Out of time)

Next meeting Sept 24

• Chair: Bethany Seeger
• Notes: Mike Kemezis