Aug 27, 2007 Agenda & Minutes

gg20070827
  • Al
  • Caryn
  • Ellyn
  • John
  • Kyle
  • Nan
  • Steve
  • Review of Action Items
    • [Caryn]: update the table of elements to add Critical Concepts - DONE
    • [Caryn] will re-write section A in light of the new organization, and fold her old "what is a dictionary " and "what is a thesaurus" document into this. - PENDING
    • [Luis] will send Caryn a long list of CV types he knows of.- DONE
    • [Luis]: will send further clarification of what he would like the guides team to provide with respect to future activities and timelines. - PENDING
    • [Nan]: will review Kyle's "what is a metadata standard" - DONE
    • [Karen]: will finish up the "Review of widely-used content standards" - PENDING
    • [Karen]: will see John's guide on choosing a cv through to publication - PENDING
  • August, 2007 Guides Group Report - Accomplishments to include?
  • Guides Group Planning - Projected activities?
  • Telecon Time Change
  • Feedback form for the guides

August, 2007 Guides Group Report

It would be useful to see an assesment of guides group work - how many have been assigned? drafted? published?

[Caryn] Generate assessment report

Guides Group Planning

The group discussed a variety of goals, and decided upon these:
Note: All goals are prefaced on our completion of the current version of guides documents in this year.

  • Convene a face-to-face meeting of the Guides Group, to assess progress and plan for future work
  • Establish a style guide for MMI guides, which will include things like how to reference other work, etc.
  • Create a framework for web-printing of the guides
  • Publish a hard-cover book for the guides, complete with a CD that includes pertinent software, tools, etc.
  • Establish a method to collect, publish and search case studies (very low priority)

Related Discussion - Guides End Goal

The question was posed - what is the guides end goal? Do we think that we will accomplish our milestones, then be done? Or, is there ongoing guides work?

Initially, the 80/20 idea was posed - we are 80% "milestone" organized, then 20% ongoing.

For some users, the most useful guide would be a very targeted resource - i.e. I have XXX data that I need to archive. Tell me the fields I should include, the vocabularies I should use, the tools I can use to display my data, and exactly how I should publish.
The group agreed that this is more of a System Description document than a guide - however...

Guides can be thought of as an index to the MMI site. Essentially any scientific or technical content should be accessible from a guide (via a minimal number of clicks). This has a variety of ramifications. First, when someone creates new content on the site (like a resource), the "publish gatekeeper(s)" should ensure that some kind of related guide is available. Also, this means a matrix of content-guides would be a concrete illustration of how complete the guides really are.

Guides also provide context for the resources presented on the site; that's a major interest in having the guides serve as an alternative access method, as opposed to only using the main site navigation. We can have default pages (that's the Plone term, but there's an identical concept in Drupal) that give information on the resources being presented through the main site navigation, but the thorough discussion of concepts presented in the guides gives a much richer context to these resources. This will appeal to a different audience, but might be a really important feature for them.

Related Discussion - Keeping the MMI site dynamic

At this point, the guides group is a very active content contributor to the MMI site. As more of the guides are complete, this constant stream of content might be reduced. It was suggested that we need a way to maintain the dynamic nature of the site, while allowing members of particular Tech Team Subgroups to continue to contribute in substantial ways. One solution is to establish rotating groups. The idea here is that MMI will maintain it's established working groups (Guides, Web, Workshops, etc), but will identify a "focus of the quarter". Any member of the marine metadata community will be welcome to participate. This will be a short-term commitment to collaborate on a very narrow topic. Theoretically, this will be like a RFP. We can use various MMI posters, etc as recruiting tools - both to visit the MMI site, and to work on the MMI focus.

So, as a test of this idea, the guides group proposes the following:

  • We will wrap up major guides content by December, 2007.
  • At AGU, we will announce the inaugural focus - Tools.
    We will solicit input/participation on the Tools Focus Group, which will begin Jan, 2008.

[Karen & Caryn] Incorporate Focus Group Idea into MMI Strategic Plan

[All] Discuss this idea at the next Technical Telecon - including identifying Tech Team members to lead and participate on the "Tools Strike Force"

Telecon Reschedule

The group agreed to try Tuesdays (2nd and 4th of every month), 9 am Pacific as a regular meeting time.

The next Guides Group Meeting will take place Tuesday, September 11, 2007, 9 am.

Feedback form for the guides

Due to time constraints, an in-depth discussion of this item will be tabled for the next meeting.

Background: We've been thinking about implementing some kind of feedback form on each of the guides pages. The idea is that it will be something very simple, which generates instant feedback from our users. Samples: Apple (see bottom of page), Microsoft (see bottom), ArchSurvey (Plone add-on).

We have the following action items, to prepare for this discussion next time:

[All] Generate a list of possible questions for the survey

[Nan] Explore the Drupal "feedback" functionality

[Caryn & Luis] Identify a graceful way to "Ask MMI" on the Plone site.

Posted August 27th, 2007 by carynn
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