2024-09-27 Tri-Council Meeting (at WOLFcon)

Date: Friday September 27, 1:30pm – 4pm, BST, room G5

WOLFcon 2024: FOLIO: Tri-Council Meeting

Attendance:

  • @Craig McNally @jroot @Jenn Colt @Julian Ladisch@Martin Scholz @Maccabee Levine @Tod Olson @Marc Johnson @Ingolf Kuss

  • @Jeremy Huff@Jennifer Eustis @Brooks Travis @Charlotte Whitt @Martina Schildt @Kirstin Kemner-Heek @Caitlin Stewart

  • @Boaz Nadav Manes @Christopher Spalding @Alexis Manheim @Jesse Koennecke @Simeon Warner

  • @Ian Walls @Maike Osters @Kristin Martin @Edwin Pretz @Owen Stephens

Proposed Agenda:

Time

Topic

Who

Notes

Time

Topic

Who

Notes

< 5 min

Agree to note taker(s)

@Tod Olson

@Christopher Spalding

 

15 min (5 each)

Recap of earlier council meetings

@Simeon Warner

@Craig McNally

@Alexis Manheim

Anything important/noteworthy come up at any of the council meetings?

CC:

  • Agreed to fund Dev. Advocate through end of June '25, more below.

  • AWS spending, see below.

  • Member meeting at WOLFcon, where to take this?

    • twice a year, once in-person at WOLFcon, once virtual

    • focus on growing membership

    • How do working groups happen? Spread beyond CC, have CC member lead and recruit WG members from across FOLIO

    •  

TC:

  • Tri-council meeting prep

    • Discuss next steps for Eureka adoption, including timelines, action items, etc.

  • Raise the desire/need for more awareness of development efforts outside "the community" teams - maybe the CC can help with this.

    • 2-directions: Awareness of development activity occurring at different organizations, and awareness of best practices for FOLIO (languages, frameworks, conventions...)

  • Suggest the idea of periodic meetings to "show and tell"/raise awareness of development efforts - scripts/tooling/modules/etc.

    • Including ideas, and work in progress. Not just finished work

  • Raise the topic of dev team onboarding - is there a better starting point for those wanting to join than the RMS group?

    • Maybe RMS group is the place, but with more involvement from others, e.g. PC/CC?

      • KM: RMS group is currently mainly about managing the timeline.

      • JC: need is to hear what work is intended, understand what other parts of FOLIO will be affected, and how to direct the incoming developer/team

    • Maybe Dev. Advocate has a role

  • Meeting hygiene - TC and PC dipped their toe in the "international meeting times" pool... how'd it go? Next steps?

    • Maybe try alternate approaches: e.g. ask those who can't usually attend council meetings (e.g. Asia/Pacific) to drive this; generate the agenda, and inform the councils when meetings are needed.

PC:

  • Gather ideas for what we can accomplish this year

    • used this process last year, had 4 things to work on

    • Two things for this year (large):

      • Funding for community- and institutional-directed development; finding ways to bring institutions together who have common goals and combine funding

      • Tracking enhancements and improvements

        • Need a PC vision for what FOLIO can be

        • create an overarching set of priorities that focus on consistency

30 min

  • Updates on progress with AWS costs and possible discussion

@Simeon Warner

@Christopher Spalding

  • AWS spending, agreed to three principles

    • Community should pay for truly shared infrastructure

      • UAT will be part of shared infrastucture

    • Individual development teams should have dev environments funded by their funding agencies

      • Will reach out to dev teams/sponsors currently using shared infrastructure about transitioning to this funding model

    • We can always talk about new projects involving funding, need to have conversations in time for appropriate planning

20 min

Developer advocate role

@Simeon Warner

@Christopher Spalding

Contract is up in mid-October.

Focus on the role and funding of it.

  • Agreed to fund Dev. Advocate through end of June '25, to develop success criteria

    • Will be considered in the FY26 budget planning

    • Anecdote: Jeremy has been approached by a developer who is not affiliated with a FOLIO institution, but who would like to contribute.

10-15 min

  • Update on Eureka / Application Formalization, impacts on community

@Craig McNally

@Jenn Colt

Detailed notes in2024-09-27 Meeting notes (In Person)

  • Impacts showing up in community

  • Need to get current tri-council group to wrap up. Target Nov wrap-up

    • Would like to get Eureka RFC in

    • Want to write a recommendation to adopt Eureka for agreement by other councils

    • write to-do list for successor group

  • JH raises: As point of process, Application Formalization and Eureka seem to be independent and would rather see them considered independently

    • KM agrees that App. Form. seem separate from the infrastructure changes. If tri-council wg is to go forward, would like to know more what you’re agreeing to.

    • 2 points

      • Security implications have an effect on the product in the market place.

      • Application formalization features are an enabler but expect an iterative approach.

    • Eureka seems like runs roughshod over community if adopt first and RFC later

      • CS: from EBSCO perspective, expect the RFCs to come out and that there will be changes suggested that EBSCO would implement

    • OS: application formalization mechanisms will come with Eureka and application bundles will be iterative, but first draft will come from whatever EBSCO provides

    • ML: Vince has been very clear about Eureka enabling a number of things, the detailed implementation of which will be determined by community

    • IW:

    • AM:

    • CS: It seems like this is seen as coming out of the blue, but EBSCO has been talking about a number of these things since Hamburg, so it’s unclear what’s off

    • SW: the carrot seems like community buy-in helps with more swift adoption

    • KM:

10 min

Feedback from the Wednesday member (& perspective members) meeting

@Kirstin Kemner-Heek

@Simeon Warner

  • What did we learn about what membership means to people and what might encourage membership?

    • This was an kick-off meeting to give something to the members something other than the councils (KK-H)

      • General agreement this was a good idea, short time to implement

      • Next meeting(s): dedicated agenda in advance

      • need to explain difference between general community and Membership, what responsibilities come with membership

      • CC to form an articulation of this and vet with the other councils

        • one goal is more funding and leadership engagement

    • Need way for results of members meeting need to become actionable

      • maybe by funneling to councils

      • want to focus on results

      • councils seem like executive body for the community and membership.

    • In order to be an executive body for the community to be effective is to have resources

    • Idea for further reducing AWS costs

      • Could find member institutions to host some community who have hardware and operations staff to host shared environments?

    • Running of membership meeting

      • Closed to members or open to all?

        • Unclear going forward, this time explicitly sent email to attendees with idea of recruiting some new members

      • Should member meeting be run by members and not by the CC

10 min

Break

All

 

10 min

How can smaller libraries engage in the community?

@Alexis Manheim

  • What barriers are there to membership (financial, time, etc.)

    • What are ways to engage and drive involvement with small libraries even if they are not members?

      • Not enough of resources (people or cost).

      • We’ll have more as the solution becomes spread across different types of libraries.

      • Engage where they are to see how they can be involved. Ask questions when at the beginning of engagement on where they would like to get involved.

      • New fees model (smaller at first, full after 5 years).

      • Target communications to implemented libraries.

      • Survey engagement.

      • Small library consortium (e.g. an EBSCO consortium).

      • Public libraries group with a liaison to the councils.

    • Engagement, plugin point, for smaller organized groups d groups would be into Community Council. (Colombian User Group, Mid-Atlantic User Group, Small Library User Group, Public Library User Group).

    • Engagement should be outbound from the Community Council.

20 min

Understanding community feelings and desires

@Alexis Manheim

  • In the past we’ve had “what could be better about FOLIO?” surveys

  • Maybe try something new? More specific/focused, perhaps avoid some of the in-the-weeds topics

    • How to make the release process smoother

    • Product quality & testing

    • Etc.

  • PC planning to do CSP retrospective, looking at better sample data

  • Desired outcome: Something concrete like the formation of a working group, etc.

    • Cross council working group to gather information. One person tasked with building survey with engagement from all councils.

    • Add to future Tri-council meeting to make further decisions.

    • Look to pull people from organizations that are not represented on the councils.

20 min

Term limits and council participation

@Simeon Warner

  • General consensus that the term limits are good.

    • Flexibility might be considered, but good to have new rotation (new energy and new ideas).

    • Mentorship of new council members.

    • Noted that as people roll off of council seats, people to tend to continue to engage.

  • Pipeline discussion

    • Reaching out to consortial members, colleagues, how to build a pipeline for sustainability.

    • Question regarding opening up council roles for people outside of community membership

    • End of council seats suggestion; people that show up let’s do the work. Interesting thought, but rejected by current council members as interest in the service model (responsibilities).

  • Nominations committee idea. Articulate that you do not need to be an expert. Leverage past council members for the committee.

  • ACTION ITEM: add to CC agenda to pull together committee.

Time Permitting

Global participation and time zone inclusiveness (PC and TC experiments)

@Simeon Warner

@Alexis Manheim

  • PC suggestions above noting outreach and offer to other time zones with agenda topics proposals addresses this agenda bullet.