Meeting Minutes September 11, 2009
Plinkit Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting Minutes September 11, 2009
Roll Call
Troy Brown (IL), Steve Gregory (CO), Christine Kreger (CO), Tom Metzger (INCOLSA), Bev Obert (IL) – minutes by Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator)
Approve 8/14 Joint Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting Minutes
Obert asked for a motion to approver. Brown moved to approve, Gregory seconded. We took a check mark poll and the minutes are approved by all attendees.
Status of Plinkit 2.0 work
As Hanning not able to attend, Gregory reported that work continues to move forward – we’re in the last stages of the work and we just approved the invoice for Milestone 4 (of 5). We’re looking to get a Plinkit 2.0 master template that all members can use. We’re doing migrations and bug fixes now. We should have an estimate on perfecting recurring events early next week and a contract addendum will cover the extra hours for this work.
Brown asked what the high level hang ups are right now. Gregory said we have a list of change/bug requests and most are about CSS styling with only a few of the fixes relating to functionality. If you want to see a list of them, he can send something. Brown said no, he’s just curious. Obert said she thinks the biggest hang up is recurring events as the specifications on recurring events in the original SOW weren’t good enough to make recurring events usable for everyone. Gregory said the existing contract will be completed without the additional work on recurring events.
Obert said you mentioned the new template – several of us have been doing work on dead links on the template and she’s also found some better links to use. Kreger said she had a brief conversation with Hanning re setting up a delicious.com account so you’d just have to update that instead of updating every site. Shaffner said this sounds great, but the big problem now is getting all the tons of bad links on the original template fixed and she doesn’t have any Plinkit time left to do that in. Obert said one problem is the same link is in multiple places on the website. She’s not sure how easy it’d be to spread this work out. Brown said if it’s just finding new resources to replace links that are dead he could use Loretta Broomfield for this. Shaffner said it’s also updating the dead links with their new urls (e.g. the government is famous for changing their links) – people who did the link check often provided the replacement url, but someone needs to replace the urls on the template. Obert could do some of this, but not a lot. Kreger can help with some of this too if someone tells her how to do it. Obert said she thinks Shaffner needs to get with Hanning to hammer out the exact procedure to make sure this is done in the most efficient manner, and then we can put a call out to the committee to have others help with this.
a.User’s manual
Hanning is still working on getting a quote for this.
SOW for Skins
Brown’s waiting for Hanning’s input on what she wants added – he thinks it’s more detail, but he hasn’t been pushing her as she’s been so busy. Obert asked Shaffner to send a reminder to the group to look at this (9/11-email sent). After Plinkit 2.0 is done, we can concentrate on this.
Finalize Plone boot camp recommendation for Steering
Recommendation from Tech group was –
***A three (3) year rotation, for one person from each of the states/groups, should be implemented to further the education of the entire group. This will break down to approximately 3 people per year. There also needs to be a provision for additional training if there is another major migration and everyone needs to come up to a certain level at once.
Obert asked if we should develop a method where those that went can present updates to technical people who didn’t go. Brown said it’s difficult to know what others do and don’t know about updates – he thinks we should just be open to new ideas. Gregory said the training was very valuable and he likes Brown’s idea of letting people run with new ideas.
We then had a long discussion re what happens when new organizations come on board, the need for training for everyone if there’s a major migration or at least training key people then, costs and possibly reserving a portion of each annual fee for an “escrow/contingency” account that could help pay for this unplanned training. We made a number of changes to the Tech Group’s recommendation, so Brown will send our new recommendation to Shaffner and she’ll send it out to the listserv for email discussion before the next meeting. This discussion took a lot of time, so comment on it by 9/25 so the only thing we need to do at the next meeting is approve sending it to Steering. Watch for the email.
Mentoring program
a.Have enough mentors?
b.Have administrator/usher?
As Norris is not here and we’re out of time, we’ll table this until the October meeting.
Status reports from each state
IL – Obert said they’d had no change since the last meeting. She and Brown have been working with the PC/Tech Group getting Plinkit 2.0 ready to go and she’s been doing link checking and Brown’s been doing migration testing and they have had some budget issues to work on.
CO - Kreger said she’s been doing lots of testing and is waiting for the new software to be done.
INCOLSA – Metzger said not much is going on as there’s lots of flux at INCOLSA. They’re working on a marketing plan and are anxiously awaiting the upgrade.
Metzger asked if there’s any word on the timeline for the upgrade. Gregory said not yet. Obert hopes we’ll be done with the original work by the beginning of October. Shaffner mentioned we’ll have a better idea on when everything will be finished when we get the estimate for recurring events next week, and Obert said that should only take about 100 hours of work, so maybe it won’t take longer than a week…
VA, MI, Lyrasis, OR, TX, NE – No attendees so no reports.
Update on potential new members
As out of time, Shaffner sent this out via email today.
Report on Steering Committee meeting
Obert reported they met yesterday and nothing earth shattering is happening. They are working on the strategic plan, by-laws and trademarking the Plinkit name. The first two documents have been sent to the listserv for review and comments by all so they hope to approve them at the November meeting.
Innovative things done by states
We haven’t had time to do anything innovative.
To Do list status
Obert asked Shaffner to send an email on anything we need to make sure everyone does. (Shaffner checked, and other than items mentioned already in these minutes (reviewing/commenting on SOW for Skins and the revised Plone Boot Camp recommendation and volunteering to replace links on the template) , there’s nothing that is vital).
Report on website contributions for the month
Shaffner did a blog post on Kreger’s newsletter.
Other Business
The Technical Group won’t be meeting as this meeting ran overtime (so they are in a time squeeze) and they are short on attendees and they didn’t have anything vital to discuss.
There being no other business, Obert adjourned the meeting.
