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community:pmc_meetings:minutes20230606

PMC Meeting: June 6, 2023

Attending: Leila Gonzales, Demian Katz, André Lahmann, David Maus, Ere Maijala, Josef Moravec, Mohan Raj Pradhan

Apologies: Anne Christensen, Oliver Goldschmidt, Chris Hallberg, Craig Murdoch

1. Review of Action Items from Previous Meeting

  • Craig/Demian/André: continue updating older wiki pages as time permits. ONGOING
  • Demian/Mohan: make further progress on updating/testing Koha installation and Open Data Sources wiki pages. ONGOING
  • André: move security audit process forward. ONGOING
  • Demian/André: continue work on Lokalise integration. ONGOING
  • Demian: send out 2023 Summit/WOLFcon call for papers on 5/22. DONE
  • ALL: review call for papers and submission form and provide feedback to Demian before 5/22. DONE
  • Demian: draft short version of fundraising communication; post long version in wiki so it is linkable. DONE
  • André: brainstorm accessibility pull request management improvements with team. DONE
  • Josef: review screen reader feedback; share if useful. DONE. Available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qII8IRWOk0eP3er-91C5clhTfQq92yPkUbvAtq3xdNU/edit?usp=sharing
  • Demian: include GitHub user @pasitiis in accessibility conversations where appropriate. DONE

2. Goal Review

2023 Goals:

  • Release versions 9.0 (DONE!) and 9.1 (October?)
  • Hold a VuFind® Summit in Summer, 2023 linked with WOLFcon in some way
  • Run fundraising campaign in parallel with summer conference season
  • Complete a documentation improvement project
  • Complete a website improvement project (marketing-oriented)
  • Finish implementation of standard translation platform
  • Investigate possible training partnerships and fundraising around training materials

3. Documentation

Wiki editing

Koha wiki page development/testing is still ongoing, as is updating of older pages.

Work is still pending on MeSH, DoAJ, PubMed Central and NepJol “open data sources” pages. Mohan also plans to contribute documentation related to integrating SubjectsPlus (which recently had example XSLT import configs added to the project) and Moodle (which is still being researched).

Training Discussion

The training meeting in May had limited attendance and revealed the shortage of time/resources available in the community for training. In spite of these challenges, Mohan is moving forward with another round of training for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka and has shared the registration link. These training sessions help to exercise documentation and test various commonly-used system integrations. Participating in training sessions is one way that RSPs can support the project.

Mohan has proposed formalizing a training/technical documentation working group as well as a community/end-user group under the PMC to attract more volunteers and support. Demian is concerned that finding active participants for such groups may not be practical, and does not have sufficient time to manage further groups, but is open to experimenting if others can help with organization.

Ere: training is difficult to justify at an institutional level because institutions don't see the direct benefits (even though community benefits are substantial).

Leila suggested taking a poll for training needs and using a portion of the Community Call to train on most-demanded topics. There could be a “train the trainer” element to this if we can find community volunteers to run these trainings, with community experts training those volunteers ahead of sessions.

Demian will put training on the next Community Call agenda for further discussion.

André suggested that we might be able to leverage mailing list conversations to build up a community knowledge base. Asking participants to summarize their problems and solutions, so that this could be moved into the wiki appropriately.

Leila asked whether it would be worth raising funds to deploy an AI chat interface trained on the contents of the mailing lists and other documentation. Demian can share data as needed.

4. Translation Platform

No progress this month.

5. WOLFcon 2023

Demian is attending weekly WOLFcon planning meetings and still plans to attend the conference in person (though no other community members have confirmed attendance so far). The WOLFcon call for papers has been extended, and submissions are beginning to come in. Please submit as soon as possible if you wish to participate and have not already!

Demian has submitted proposals for a few sessions: the “state of the project” talk, the annual roadmapping session, and a cross-project discussion about fundraising strategies.

6. Security Audit

André heard back today; the company performing the audit is having trouble with software licensing and needs to find a new analysis tool which is slowing the timeline for the audit. André had hoped to have results in time to discuss the results at WOLFcon, but unfortunately this timeline may not be possible. The consensus was that we should wait for the licensing issues to be resolved so that full automated analysis can go forward, rather than trying to do a less thorough audit on a shorter timeline. André will submit a placeholder talk and Demian will make sure it gets scheduled appropriately as the situation develops.

7. Fundraising

Registered Service Provider Update

No news.

Communication Plan

Demian has created a Membership Drive 2023 wiki page to hold his long fundraising message. He also shared an email draft incorporating some of Anne's ideas.

Other possible next steps:

  • Build a membership form to make it easier to request an invoice (Demian spoke with OLF about online direct payment options, but currently their options are very limited due to vendor overhead/fees/minimum payment requirements).
  • Talk to RSPs about possible membership discounts/benefits they would be willing to offer.
  • Do we need to revise our membership benefit list to reduce promises of training, given the difficulty of finding trainers?
  • Can we find any developers who are capable of developing features on an hourly/contractual basis?

Josef suggested using a VuFind-based form for membership and use the database-backed feature to ensure no messages get lost in spam. Demian will draft a form and share it with the group for comment.

See December 12, 2022 minutes for other brainstorming notes about use of funds.

8. Accessibility Work

André discussed accessibility with his team. They're happy to split PRs into smaller pieces, but they can't offer an accessibility lead to the project due to limited resources.

Josef shared translated accessibility review results. Tests were run against the Sandal theme. Demian has shared the document with Chris for input. He tried to remove things that were already fixed, though some issues may overlap with open pull requests.

9. Future Meeting Schedule

Oliver raised the problem that “second Tuesday” won't work well for him, but first or third could.

First Tuesday will not work for American participants in July because of the July 4th holiday.

First Tuesday also overlaps with the Community Call, which might be beneficial, but might also be too much VuFind® in one day.

André, David and Josef indicated that first or third Tuesday could work for them going forward.

Consensus: third Tuesday should work going forward.

10. Possible Future Actions

Some other possible items for the future:

Other Items

David reports that Hajo may be re-joining us in the Fall.

Action Items

  • Craig/Demian/André: continue updating older wiki pages as time permits.
  • Demian/Mohan: make further progress on updating/testing Koha installation and Open Data Sources wiki pages.
  • André: move security audit process forward.
  • Demian/André: continue work on Lokalise integration.
  • Demian: add training to the next Community Call agenda.
  • Demian: build membership form and share with PMC for review (along with associated email solicitation draft).
  • Demian: reschedule PMC meeting to third Tuesday of the month.
  • André (and any other interested participants): submit WOLFcon proposals before deadline.
community/pmc_meetings/minutes20230606.txt · Last modified: 2023/06/06 15:56 by demiankatz