Minutes
Attendees: Joanne Bogart, Rob Cameron, Eric Charles, Jim Chiang, Richard Dubois, Elizabeth Ferrara, Karen Heidenreich , Tony Johnson, Heather Kelly, Gino Tosti
We went through the list of items Chuck was maintaining.
Richard gave an overview of what Chuck provided beyond documentation. He provided organization and a "path through the thicket". Offline had gone through at least 3 previous attempts at documenting the software which had all failed. Chuck was very proud of the navigation tools he created where he worked to make all information available within 3 clicks.
The newsletter is done in Dreamweaver. Karen will be taking this over. Richard states that depending on what technologies we choose for other documentation we may transition away from Dreamweaver.
The Picture Gallery is now a maintanence effort and should be fairly straightforward.
ISOC web pages
Rob gave an overview of the ISOC web page status. It includes a news section which will need maintenance. Richard asked how Chuck got the news to report? Rob believes Chuck was keeping an eye on press releases and other notifications that came by. We'll have to find someone to take that on.
Rob also mentioned a pointer to a google site and goggle groups should be linked into ISOC page? [need some help here, I don't think I got this down in my notes]
Workbook
Heather went through the items documented below. Richard stated that to his knowledge that two major areas are in flux: standard analysis and analysis threads. Richard asked if Gino or Eric had had a chance to think about where that should go? Gino responded that he was working with Chuck to integrate what was being maintained under Confluence. Chuck did complete linking in some Confluence ages. Gino hopes to carry on this relationship with the new caretaker of the workbook, such that they will continue to provide input about what is going on in Confluence. The plan is to use the workbook as the main entry point, and then allow readers to go deeper if they desire to..where they must provide a password to view the Confluence content.
Technology Issues
Tony briefly discussed technology issues, which will affect the choosing of "who".
there are some generic reasons why the workbook was kept as pure HTML
a) Chuck's preferred way of working
b) Makes it easy to create download-able workbook
c) Makes it easy to mirror site with no particular requirements on remote site
It does however make maintaining the site labor intensive. Someone needs to decide how important b and c are, and how much work they are worth.
Apart from that there are many ways that the workbook could be modernized to make it more maintainable.
Richard responded that we don't often have to export - but when SLAC is down, it's nice to have.
Jim had some ideas aobut DB driven tools like django
We will have a separate meeting to further discuss technology choices.
Tony also suggested analyzing who's using what pages to determine where to place our efforts.
Richard: Chuck may have mentioned this once, not sure if he ever did it.
Rob is interested in a wikipedia approach and open up doc in Confluence and let SMEs have at it, with editorial guidance.
Rob went on to describe the benefits of dividing and conquering. If we cannot find a single individual to take on the task, a wiki tool easily allows a group to maintain the documentation. Rob noted that would not be able to retain some of the nice navigation features that Chuck created, such as keeping the workbook header at the top of the screen while scrolling. The nearest equivalent in Confluence would be the creation of an expandable tree which persists on the left side of the page. A strong editorial board would prevent entropy. We would also need to carefully consider the top level structure. Could perform some analysis of chucks' links to see what nodes map to top level trunks of a tree in Confluence.
Gino noted this is similar to what Eric tried to do with standard analysis page. The problem will be to find people who will take the time to do this.
Richard says that the Standard Analysis example may be the easiest example to find people willing to do the job. We also have the lower level stuff.. scons, gr, sci analysis stuff. Maybe we should start with one segment and see how it goes.
Elizabeth then discussed the status of the connection with FSSC, where the pages at FSSC are independent from the workbook. Elizabeth noted that much of the workbook isn't addressable to the FSSC community. At FSSC updates to ST are on a specific schedule..so updates come in a single batch. Chuck would post emails to workcvs email list:
https://www-glast.stanford.edu/protected/mail/workcvs/
Elizabeth would like a system to communicate things to the FSSC to avoid things falling through the cracks.
Perhaps another meeting to allow looking at the details of content to be maintained..where do we need SMEs and identify them?
Target this as part of the collab meeting?
Rob also mentioned sharepoint. Richard noted that if we do go the wiki route, it'd be better to stick with Confluence which the collaboration is already aware of.
Agenda topics:
- content that needs to be curated
- who will curate
- technology to use (maybe intertwined with the who)
Newsletter
Karen will be taking this on.
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