Meeting Minutes March 13, 2009

1st part of meeting – all - 45 minutes


Roll Call
Troy Brown (IL), Tom Ceresini (PALINET), Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Kathleen Krause-Thompson (TX), Christine Kreger (CO), Jeff Humphrey (INCOLSA), Sonya Norris (MI), Bev Obert (IL), Michael Sauers (NEBASE), minutes by Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator)

Approve 2/13 Joint Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting Minutes
Hanning moved to approve.  All said aye, the minutes are approved.

Approve 2/20 SOW Discussion Minutes
Shaffner asked if we could also approve the 3/6 SOW discussion minutes at the same time (the meeting was so recent, this item wasn’t included on the agenda).  Hanning suggested that we might prefer to or also want to vote on a motion that approves Enfold as our vendor, since we decided on Enfold in the 3/6 minutes.  We decided to just approve the minutes.  Shaffner asked if it was okay to post the SOW meeting minutes with the SOW.   It was decided that the SOW minutes would be posted, unpublished, with the regular minutes but Shaffner would link to them from the SOW page.  Gregory asked if anyone had objections to the 2/20 and 3/6 minutes.  No one did, so these minutes are approved.

Status of SOW for work on Plinkit 2.0
Gregory said the big news is we’ve chosen Enfold and there’s been conversation about the contracts back and forth.  Hanning talked to Errington yesterday about contact people and procedural matters.  She reported there will be a project kickoff meeting (time to be set later) and everyone who can attend should so they understand the process for the project, communication, timelines and tasks.  We’ll also discuss the weekly status meeting then which should take about 15 minutes (we’ll get a one sheet progress report in advance).  Anyone can attend the weekly meetings and Gregory, Hanning and Shaffner will.  Depending on where we are with testing, others may need to attend these also.  There will also be very short meetings daily which anyone can attend (Gregory and Hanning will always try to be there).  At the end of the work, there’s a project closure meeting which we’ll discuss in the kickoff meeting.  Hanning will send an email about all this today. 

Mario Perez will be the project leader.  It’ll help Enfold get up to speed if we give them as much information now as possible.  Since it looks like we’ll be signing the contract Hanning told Errington to have Perez send questions to us now.  They’ll also want to look at our product directory and our Data.fs files as soon as possible, so if things need to be cleaned up there, please do that now.  Hanning will make sure they get a good copy of the master template which they probably already have.

Norris joined the teleconference.

Gregory asked if Enfold would be setting up all these meetings.  Hanning thought they would but said we’ll find out for sure at the kickoff meeting.  He then asked how the daily meeting will be done - Hanning thought by telephone and said they may also have a tracking mechanism we can look at during those meetings.  Norris said Michigan’s lawyer will be looking at the contract but she’s not sure when.  Shaffner will contact Mase to see when that might be and report back to the list serv.

Gregory asked if anyone saw gaps in the proposal and asked if we should we look more closely to make sure all the details from our RFQ are covered in there.  Hanning will give it a 2nd read for this purpose as will Gregory.  Shaffner asked if the revised proposal was part of the official contract.  Gregory said he didn’t see anything referring to it in the contracts and Brown said that he thought the new statement of work is now Appendix A.  Gregory asked Shaffner to email Duncan re when the Steering Committee might be ready to approve the contract.  Kreger said put an important flag on it as he’s going on vacation early next week so Shaffner said she would call and email him today.

Krause-Thompson joined the conference. 

Gregory asked if there was any other discussion needed on the Plinkit 2.0 work.  No one had anything.

Skins
a.    Which skins available for Plone 3.0 should we clean up and implement for our use?
b.    Who’ll do the SOW for this skins work?
Brown said that he’d volunteered to be the lead on the SOW for Skins work.  He mentioned there are skins available on the Plone website.  Hanning said that section of the Plone website is having issues because of a recent upgrade and other things so it’s difficult to look at the themes.  She’ll try to find out when this will be fixed.  She sometimes has better luck if she logs in.  If that doesn’t work for us she’ll make a list of the twenty most recent themes.  Brown said we’d like people to look at these and get a feel for what you like.  Hanning said we just need to come up with 3-5 we like as a group, and this may involve slight modifications (e.g. we could have them implemented in 3-5 color schemes so we have lots of options).  Brown said we should probably focus right now on getting the Enfold contract signed and we can deal with the Skins SOW over the next couple of months.  Gregory asked if there’s any best practices we need to consider for Plinkit 2.0 that’ll make it easier for us to work with skins.  The Technical Group will discuss this later.  Hanning thanked Brown for taking this on.

User's Manual - need point person – Darci
Hanning said we’ll need someone to take the lead on this as we get through the upgrade to Plinkit 2.0.  Do we want to revise it or start from scratch?  This is for the users in the libraries.  She mentioned we need something on managing portlets and there will be some differences with the tabs in the new version.  She’d like someone to volunteer to champion this, ideally a project coordinator since they work more with library staff and may be more familiar with the User’s Manual.  Ceresini volunteered to do this.  Kreger said she’d help him. 

Hanning also mentioned that the Administrator’s manual will need a full rewrite.  She met with Toni Mantic who’s helped on things like this in the past and discussed this at a high level.  Mantic will familiarize herself with the existing manual, the RFQ and Enfold’s proposal so she can get a grip on where this is going. We can eventually get a quote from her and the Collaborative will pay for this work.  Hanning said the last similar work cost around $12,000 and she thinks this will cost less.  The Fees Committee is aware of this upcoming expense.  There is a certain amount of overlap in the User’s and Administrator’s Manuals so we should discuss taking advantage of this when we start working on the outline.  Hanning discussed how the process worked last time.  After we have a draft, we’d do a round robin review.  She assumes that not everyone will need to participate in every aspect of this as that could be a big burden on our workloads.  People who do take leads at any point should represent everyone’s interests, and of course input from anyone is always welcome at any time. 

Gregory asked what Kreger and Ceresini need to get started on the User’s Manual work.  Ceresini thought they could flag areas that will obviously need to change, but the development cycle for Plinkit 2.0 work will determine timing on much of this.  Hanning recommended the Project Coordinators install and play around with Plone 3.0 to get familiar with it and how it’s different from Plone 2.  She said they should look at adding regular content types, site setup and the control panel and become familiar with the options (e.g. you can turn off the inline editing).  Sauers said he’s learning Plone 2 now and wondered if he’ll need to learn Plone 3 in just a few months.  Hanning said yes and added that the newer version of Plinkit will have a more simplified process but it won’t be hard to learn how it’s different.  The SOW is so detailed because she’s trying to keep the end user experience as similar as possible to what it is with Plone 2.  Gregory added there’s probably a 10% difference between Plone 2 and Plone 3, but that with Plone 3 things will get easier. 

Obert joined the conference.

Update on potential new members
Shaffner said she got a call from a Tennessee librarian who’d seen the press release about Michigan joining and brought Plinkit to the attention of their state library who asked her to get more information.   Hanning and Duncan offered to do teleconferences with them, but for now they are in information gathering mode, so Shaffner will contact them at the end of April if they haven’t yet contacted her.

Status reports from each state
CO – Kreger said not much to report.  They are getting ready to start with two new sites but a couple of others may wait until after we migrate and she’ll get back in touch with other interested libraries after the upgrade.

IL - Brown said they’ve had a few sites coming on and are trying to light a fire under others.  Everyone is excited about the new version of Plinkit.  They are up to about 82 live sites.  Obert said they are in a holding pattern until after the new version is available as they’ll be better able to market Plinkit then.  One library wants to drop out, but she thinks this is related to issues that the upgrade will solve.  Obert thinks some sites want to be flashier but this worries her as some changes may not be ADA compliant which is a requirement of participating in Illinois grants.  Gregory said good point - ADA compliance is a feature of Plone and we should use this to promote Plinkit.  Obert said this is good as many small libraries don’t know how to make their websites ADA compliant.  Norris will blog about the ADA compliance.  Shaffner will add it to the features page and Obert said this is discussed in the brochure she created

MI – Norris said they are outsourcing all hosting, help desk, programming, graphic design and web site administration work and anyone can respond to any or all parts of this RFP.  In May they’ll start working on promotion of Plinkit in their state.  Norris would work with individual libraries until their site is live and the help desk would work with them after that (with Norris stepping in when needed).  She thinks in May or June the work will start, depending on the bids received.  Hanning said that’s great as one thing we’d like to test is how it works for a brand new member to set up Plinkit 2.0.

OR – Hanning won’t be deploying any more Plinkit sites for the next 3-6 months due to all the Collaborative work we need to do and another Plone project she’s working on.  They are moving forward with another 16 banners from their graphics guy and have about 24 sites using professionally designed banners which she gets as jpeg or gif files and on a CD.  Brown wondered if she could share these.  Hanning said she could for share them to give others ideas, but she isn’t sure others can use the banners - she’ll check and get back to us.  These cost around $620 each and the graphic designer sets up the process - he interviews the libraries about their city and local culture etc.  Norris likes this process.  Hanning will send the list her graphic designer’s contact information and will point to some of the work he’s done for examples.  She warned it’s not a fast process as he does this work as a fill in between his other projects.

PALINET – Ceresini has met with state library folks in Pennsylvania and Delaware re setting up public library pilot sites.  PALINET would like to provide this as an outsourced service.  Pennsylvania looks especially promising.  He’ll be talking to New Jersey and West Virginia about this soon, but they will pass on Maryland as they have county based systems which already have extensive websites, though PALINET might revisit this decision at some point.  After they migrate PALINET to LYRASIS (PALINET AND SOLINET merge on April 1st), he’ll talk with their southern office about implementing Plinkit in that region.

TX – Krause-Thompson said Stokes just finished training 20 to 30 library directors in the Houston area to set up their websites.  They recently found out West Texas will be coming aboard with the state library as host.  They are working on specifications for a Plinkit 2.0 virtual host.

INCOLSA – Humphrey said they have their first library up - Walkerton Public Library in Indiana had never had a website before.  They’ll get the few that want to start sites before the upgrade up too.  Walkerton is really taking to Plinkit and is doing good things. 

Shaffner reminded anyone who brings on new sites to let her know when they premiere their sites to their service areas so she can add them to the Plinkit Libraries map.  Humphrey said he’d do this.

No attendees from the Library of Virginia and Sauers had to leave already so no report from NEBASE.

Innovative things done by states – add to website
Obert mentioned the brochure has been added.  It’s designed to let interested parties know what we can do for libraries and she encouraged people to use it any way they want to spread the word about Plinkit.

Oregon and Texas report on contribution to website for the month
Hanning said she’s still working on a blog post on Content Panels, which hopefully she’ll get up soon, her heavy workload permitting.  She asked if anyone else is using CMFContentPanels (if you go to http://www.hoodriver.plinkit.org/ you’ll see a good example of how you can control the layout of the page).  She said it’s nice that you can create 3-4 web pages and lay them out on a single page.  On the Hood River example the center area is 4-5 different pages - the image is its own panel as is the catalog search, research tool, library news and events…  These are Plone content pages, so you can just update the page and the front page will be automatically updated.  Brown said that’s very cool.  Hanning added that it breaks up the page nicely.  The user interface is a little hokey, but once you’re used to it, it works well.  This works in Plone 3 too.  Another product for this is Collage which when she saw it in an early beta version, didn’t impress her.  In Plone 4 Collage may become a core feature.  She’ll send us user documentation on CMFContentPanels.

Obert wondered about how we’re reporting back to Plone what we’re doing.  This will be an agenda item for Hanning to discuss next time and also how we can give back to them.

Gregory asked Shaffner to report back to the list serv on blog contributions re who has one upcoming and who is overdue.  She’ll do that on Monday when she’s back in the office.

To Do list status 
Shaffner mentioned the only change was that the SOW evaluation item is complete.  Gregory said we’ll get back on track with all this after we’ve signed the Enfold contract.

Are Tech Group/PCs sharing information at the website?
Obert said she’s seen lots of chatter back and forth with the Technical Group, which may not have been posted.  After we’ve signed the Enfold contract she suggested someone post this information at the website.  Hanning said she thought we’re all responsible for doing this so we need to make our best effort.  She mentioned we do have an online User’s Manual, so if you see problems with that, post updates there and she’s been posting logo updates.  Ceresini asked if he should post questions at the website.  Hanning said no, post to the list serv, then once they have a complete answer, the person who broached the item should post this under the Resource section of the website (e.g. if there’s a page there, update the page, or if it’s technical post it under the Administrator’s section…).

Other Business
Justine reminded everyone to review the Enfold contract by Sunday. 

There being no other business, the first part of the meeting was adjourned.


Next Meeting – April 10, 2009 Friday - noon Eastern Time, 11 am Central Time, 10 am Mountain Time and 9 am Pacific Time

2nd part of meeting – Technical Group Discussion – 45 minutes

Plinkit Updated To Do list

Who                        What
All                            Pick two to three people that could be in a conference call in January where we could make some decisions about what the Users Advisory Council should do.  Shaffner has CO’s people only.

INC/VA/NE/PAL    Look over the website and make suggestions about what needs to be made clearer and what needs to updated.

OR/TX/IL/CO         Look at your state sites and see if there is anything there that might be helpful at the collaborative site and send a list of those topics to Shaffner.

Shaffner                  Compile a list of helpful topics from the above item and send it to the list serv asking if they agree that all these things should be added to the collaborative site (as long as one person would like it at Plinkit.org, then it should be posted there). 

Hanning                   See if you can find information on how to fix the RSS feed for Plone 2.1 and let the list serv know about it one way or another. DONE

Obert                        Send marketing brochure to this listserv by the end of January for input, and to start group discussions re what additional marketing materials we should develop.   Brochure posted, need discussion on additional marketing materials.

Hanning                    Post the Plinkit Libraries location map at the Collaborative site after it’s upgraded to Plone 3.1.

All                              Look at the themes available for Plone 3.0 and decide on three you like and discuss on the list serv.  We can then make our final decision on which two to three themes to clean up and implement in two to three colors each at the February meeting, and decide who’ll write the SOW for this work.

All                              After the quotes for the SOW are posted at the web site, be sure to complete the evaluation form by February 13 so you can discuss them at that meeting.  Now should read - after questions from three vendors are answered, review and revise your evaluation form and send new scores/ranking combined by member entity to Shaffner by 9am on 2/20/09. DONE

Hanning                     Send the list serv the email about procedural matters, contact people and meetings for the Plinkit 2.0 work today.  DONE

Shaffner                    Find out from Mase and report to list serv re when the MI lawyer thinks he’ll be able to review the contract.  DONE

Shaffner                    Find out from Duncan and report to list serv re when he thinks the Steering Committee will be able to approve the contract.  “Urgent” email sent and phone message left.  DONE

Hanning                     Let us know when the Plone themes website is fixed so we can decide on our favorite Plone 3.0 compatible themes and if it won’t be soon, send the list serv a list of the twenty most recently added themes. DONE

Ceresin/Kreger/
Hanning & PC’s          User’s Manual – Ceresini will be lead with help from Kreger and they will review the current manual and flag areas that will obviously need to change.  The Project Coordinators should install and play around with Plone 3.0 to get familiar with it and how it’s different from Plone 2.  Hanning should alert Kreger and Ceresini when they need to start the rest of this process.

Norris                          Blog about Plinkit being ADA compliant. 

Shaffner                      Add “ADA compliant” to the features page.  DONE

Hanning                      Share your banners with the list serv to give others ideas, and check to see if others can use the banners and let the list serv know.  Send the list serv the graphic designer’s contact information and link to some of the work he’s done so they can see examples.

Hanning                       Send the list serv your user documentation on CMFContentPanels.

All                                Clean up your product directories and Data.fs files now!