September 19, 2008 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
1) Roll call – Jim Duncan (CO), Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Deborah Littrell (TX), Bev Obert (IL), Jim Scheppke (OR), Justine Shaffner (BCR), Henry Stokes (TX),
2) Minutes - The 7/18/08 Steering minutes were approved.
3) Report on financial statements – The last statement Duncan got was at the end of July, as BCR is moving to a new CRM system. The balance was about $165,000 (minus expenses for Plone Boot Camp for Brown from IL and Gregory from CO should bring it to around $160,000 then add IL’s $10,000 annual fee would bring it to around $170,000). When Duncan gets the most updated statement from BCR he’ll send a note to Steering and will also tell us what interest rate we’re getting on the money.
4) Brief reports from the states -
OR – They have two more libraries trained and two more coming up in the next month. They are updating the collaborative website and the Oregon Plinkit website to Plone 3.0. Hanning will tell the Plinkit list servs when the web site will be unavailable, but she will be out of the office for much of October for the Plone and GOSCON conferences. They have about 45 sites live or in the queue now.
IL – They have 85-90 sites live, including one community college, two hospitals, two schools and maybe one special library. They have four libraries interested in coming on (two are definite) and are setting up a list serv for them to communicate. Brown really got a lot out of Plone Boot Camp.
TX – They are in transition as Walczyk left to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of North Texas. Stokes has been working hard getting up to speed. Walczyk had done lots of outreach, so they are still moving forward but Littrell doesn’t have any updated statistics right now about the number of libraries.
CO – Is still nibbling at their 21st Plinkit site. They are waiting for that library to get its graphical assets together. Re: a new CO coordinator - they are interviewing next week to replace Morris. After being hired, the new person will be traveling around the state learning things and then will get back into producing new Plinkit sites, so they think they’ll have another six to eight sites within the next year.
5) Project Coordinators/Tech Group Progress Report - Obert said the PC/Tech Group met last Friday and discussed the SOW which will hopefully will be finalized by Hanning this week. They discussed the MOU addendum and approved sending it and the suggested Project Timeline to the Steering Committee, which was done. The MOU looked fine with the suggested changes and was forwarded to the Steering Committee. They also had state reports. Hanning was sick this week so the Tech/PC group should see the SOW on Monday.
6) Expansion of the Plinkit Collaborative –
The committee discussed the INCOLSA/PALINET/NEBASE proposal. Duncan said the addition of NEBASE was a surprise. Littrell saw the proposal as the networks reaching out to other OCLC partners. Obert is on the OCLC Members’ Council and said OCLC is changing their pricing structure which may affect the networks’ income so they are all trying to figure out how they are going to survive with less income than in the past, so she understands why they are working together, but this is worrisome. Duncan agreed and mentioned BCR went through a process of strategically identifying new possible revenue streams about 18 months ago. Duncan would like to see if others agree that it’s okay to throw a third network into the proposal. He asked is our mission making new members pay their fair share or is it just getting our open source product out there? And is there a conflict between these two goals? Littrell mentioned that despite Scheppke’s outreach we hadn’t been getting much interest in Plinkit and she feels expanding membership will be helpful for the future. She feels in the long run we’re better off with a larger membership and this should be a strong goal. Scheppke basically agreed and said we should get into a new membership fee model altogether. He’d like this to be done in this fiscal year and isn’t very concerned about equity. Obert disagreed slightly as she felt these networks could potentially cover huge areas. There will be a lot more work bringing these people up to speed and she doesn’t want that work to delay work in their own states. Littrell had this reaction when she realized what states the networks would serve, and she thinks if SOLINET merges with PALINET it really will capture a large part of the potential market. Scheppke felt that if we just let them operate in the states they specify, we don’t need to be concerned about SOLINET. Obert said INCOLSA will increase Illinois’ workload. Scheppke was concerned that two of the states mentioned in the INCOLSA service area in their letter of interest (Michigan and Indiana) have already expressed their own interest in Plinkit. When Duncan spoke to the Indiana State Library he mentioned INCOLSA’s interest and shortly after that he received that letter of interest from the Indiana State Library.
Re: Michigan, Duncan said that Sonya Norris was identified as the lead for this project. He’s been talking with her, but feels we need to work out some details before talking seriously to Michigan. Hanning said Plinkit would be a turnkey service there and 95% of the work would be outsourced. They moved really quickly in sending out an RFP which they consider a formal letter of interest. This RFP is not intended just for INCOLSA to bid on. There are five pieces to the RFP and vendors can respond individually or to all five pieces. Hanning felt that Michigan will be really easy and won’t need much handholding. She couldn’t remember if Michigan would be offering it for free to their libraries, but the Indiana State Library would be offering it free to theirs.
Virginia is also “low hanging fruit” as they have expertise in-state and might even be able to throw experts at development work. They have a developer who’s been working with Plone and rolling out government web sites (Plone.gov). Hanning said it’s not clear if the state of Virginia will definitely partner with the Plone.gov experts in the city of Newport News. Duncan hasn’t heard anything else since the meeting, but Hanning did have one call about a technical question. Scheppke said the issue of our capacity to bring in new states won’t be a problem in Michigan or Virginia.
Scheppke says maybe we should offer a $10,000 membership to all the people on the list, letting them know that there will be a new cost model next year, and if they join now, they could be involved in this decision. Duncan is inclined to look at this as future investment – the more people using Plinkit, the more reason to keep it going. Duncan sees this as an opportunity to expand Plinkit nationally and keep people invested in it. Obert said all this discussion illustrates that we need to have some more formal processes and guidelines. Scheppke said we should send them all a revised MOU now. Littrell said INCOLSA/PALINET/NEBASE should know that Indiana and Michigan are coming on as separate states.
Scheppke moved that we send an MOU extending membership for $10,000 to the state libraries of Michigan, Virginia and Indian and to INCOLSA/PALINET/NEBASE (this last group would pay one $10,000 fee which INCOLSA would be responsible for paying, but each network will need to sign the MOU and will have membership on all the committees) and we make it clear that we’re in the process of coming up with a new membership fee methodology for next year. Littrell amended this to say make sure the INCOLSA/PALINET/NEBASE MOU excludes SOLINET. Obert seconded it. All four states said aye, so the motion passes. Duncan said we have a lot of work ahead of us but he feels really good about how we’ll quickly balloon membership in our collaborative.
Hanning said we need to have a conversation with INCOLSA/PALINET/NEBASE about where we’re at with the new version of Plinkit so they can decide if they want to wait and join after we’ve upgraded to Plone 3.0.
7) Establish long term cost model - Hanning felt we should wait until we have the new members on board to do this. Scheppke felt that Duncan should appoint a committee to work on this after new members are here.
Duncan agreed, especially as some new members will be working on a cost recovery basis so will need to make sure the long term cost model makes it viable for them.
8) Update the MOU - Obert and Shaffner discussed the changes to the MOU. Scheppke moved to approve the MOU after we’ve made the suggested changes and to leave the MOU addendum alone and post both to the public side of the website. Littrell seconded. All four states said aye, so the motion passes. All current members should sign the new MOU and Shaffner will make the revised changes and send it out to them for signatures.
9) Discuss a Strategic Plan - Duncan asked if we could table discussion of the strategic plan until the next meeting. He and Obert will work on the strategic plan and send it to the Steering Committee for discussion at the next meeting.
10) Discuss Project Timeline - Scheppke moved to approve the suggested project timeline. Littrell seconded it. Hanning pointed out that dates here could move around based on vendors’ responses to the SOW. All four states said aye, so the motion passes.
11) Trademarking the Name Plinkit - Duncan asked if we could table discussion of trademarking the name Plinkit until the next meeting.
12) Other Business –
Logo - Obert asked that everyone complete the logo evaluation form so we can discuss it at the next meeting. Duncan will play around with the scalability and reproduction of the logos. Obert mentioned maybe we shouldn’t spelling out Public Library Interface Kit - just call it PLINKIT. Littrell said if there’s anything else you’d like to see in the logo, please mention it now. Hanning mentioned that the box in logo #2 has a background in just the first half of the word and she’d like the background to go through the whole thing. Littrell mentioned on some of the logos there are difference sizes and gray scale versions. Hanning said they were great and be sure to thank Texas’ graphic artist. Duncan suggested we fill out the logo evaluation form (by end of business next Wednesday 9/24/08) and send it back to Duncan who’ll send it to Littrell. Littrell will give it to her graphic designer for feedback. We may be able to decide on the logo design via email. Littrell will send out some logos that just say Plinkit (instead of spelling it out).
Shaffner asked if the fiscal agreement with BCR should be posted on the website. Duncan said it should be there, but not available to the public.
Next meeting will be November 21, 2008 noon-1 ET, 11-noon CT, 10-11 RMT, 9-10 PT
