Orbital project team meeting: notes

Here are the notes of the most recent Orbital project team meeting (31 January 2013).

Present: Nick Jackson, Harry Newton, Paul Stainthorp, Joss Winn.

The project team discussed the following development tasks. The aim is for the following to be completed by the end of February 2013:

  • Demonstratable AMS-CKANEPrints workflow in Orbital Bridge (a minimal but operational RDM infrastructure);
  • Researcher dashboard to include projects and project metadata;
  • Users able to display and create datasets in CKAN from within Orbital Bridge (N.B. need to check changes to CKAN APIs between versions);
  • Demonstrator using the DataCite test API (until a budget is agreed for use of the live DataCite service);
  • Ability to publish dataset metadata to EPrints Repository, with a complete ‘publish’ UI in Orbital Bridge (to be tested on the University’s upgraded EPrints 3.3 Repository in March) – questions over versioning/locking of deposited metadata to be resolved;
  • Researcher dashboard to include analytics fom EPrints, CKAN, AMS, and bibliometric/citation services – add links to external profiles (Scopus, WoS, ORCID, Google Scholar) in the first instance. ACTION: JW to contact Planning to discuss reporting from the researcher dashboard (also data.lincoln.ac.uk; bibiometrics).

JW presented the Orbital business case to the University Senior Management Team on 14th January 2013. JW to work with the Dean of Research (Lisa Mooney) / Deputy V-c (Ieuan Owen) to discuss ongoing resourcing for RDM.

ICT are undertaking a cloud major scoping study, including RDM storage requirements.

The draft RDM policy is to be presented to the Research & Enterprise committee in April.

NJ, HN and PS are working on the display of RDM training and documentation in Orbital Bridge, with versioned text stored as Markdown in Github. Pages in Orbital can be linked to Github.

The next RDM training for postgraduate students will take place on 6th March 2013. ACTION: PS to embed a calendar feed of training events on the Orbital website.

Upcoming events:

Notes on Orbital v0.2.1

A few notes on some of the new features in the latest version of Orbital: these were presented to Dr Bingo Wing-Kuen Ling on 15 June 2012.

  1. ‘Your Projects’ now includes an Activity Timeline of comments and file changes aggregated across all projects in Orbital; each project page also displays a timeline for that project.
    Screenshot of the Orbital timeline
  2. Files from the File Archives can be organised using Collections (which are ‘tag-like’ rather than ‘folder-like’: i.e. a file can belong to more than one Collection).
    Screenshot of Orbital project
  3. You can now edit project information and add new members to a Project. To do this, go to the Project within Orbital, click on the ‘edit’ button, and scroll down to Project Members.
    Screenshot of the Orbital project page
    Screenshot of the Orbital add members section
  4. Finally, a bug which was preventing the upload of files using Internet Explorer has now been fixed.

Orbital is go! (Team meeting notes 24-11-2011)

Attending: Nick Jackson, Annalisa Jones, Bev Jones, Chris Leach, Paul Stainthorp, Joss Winn

Apologies: Lee Mitchell, David Young

Agenda

  1. Review Project Plan and Workpackages
  2. Status updates: Literature Review, User Requirements Analysis, Technology/Standards evaluation
  3. Forthcoming meetings and conferences (Agile method, Open Source policy, ERIM, Engineers, OR12, DCC, Start-up)
  4. Poster, papers, website
  5. Staffing and accommodation
  6. AOB

Notes

Joss Winn (JW) reported in detail:

  • JW reported on the work done to date (mostly relating to workpackage WP1), and reported back on:
    • The successful first meeting with users from the School of Engineering
    • The first Steering Group meeting on 3 November
    • The submission of the project plan
    • The appointment of NJ as lead developer
    • The relocation of NJ and PS (part-time) to CERD’s offices to work on Orbital
  • JW ran through the project outputs and workpackages in detail, identifying deadlines – most notably the Implementation Plan, which must be submitted by February 2012, with the following four pieces of work completed by then:
    • Data sources (NJ/CL)
    • User requirements (NJ)
    • Literature review (PS/BJ/CL)
    • Technical review (NJ/JW)
  • The group discussed the further user-engagement work to be completed in workpackages WP5, including Nick Jackson’s work with the School of Engineering to assess their requirements (through workshops, questionnaires, observation, and use of the Data Asset Framework – DAF), and on a planned round-table meeting about ERIM in late January
  • ACTION (NJ): dates needs to be set for user requirements exercises.
  • ACTION (PS): Date in late January needs to be set for ERIM workshop with Engineers.
  • PS reported on the work that he and NJ have begun to benchmark against the EPrints deposit workflow (WP8). NJ will work closely with BJ on this.
  • The group discussed WP9—the planned assessment of data sources—and CL’s role as library user. There are three obvious areas where Orbital crosses over with the Library’s priorities:
    • Integration with the Library’s Discovery selection & implementation project (CL)
    • Integration with the Repository (BJ)
    • Authentication (CL)
  • The Research & Enterprise office (i.e. AJ) will lead on WP11 – developing training materials & workshops.
  • JW will carry on the work with the University’s IP manager, James Murray on the correct approach to Open Sourcing code from Orbital – WP13.
  • ACTION: JW to follow up contacts with EPrints Services and OSSWatch.
  • Dissemination (WP14):
    • PS has been invited to speak at two events in January/February. The group will aim to have a publishable conference paper ready by Summer 2012. Submit abstract to OR12 by ?.
    • NJ, PS and JW are attending the project startup meeting in Nottingham on 1-2 December; presenting a poster. Also attending the DCC roadshow in Cardiff in mid-December.
  • Any other business:
    • JW is convening a meeting (8th December) about agile software and project development methods.
  • ACTION: as many people as possible from Orbital to attend ‘agile’ meeting.

First week meeting notes

Paul and I met earlier to catch up on where we are after the first week of the Orbital project.

We have:

  • Advertised the Lead Developer post. Interviews taking place Wednesday 19th.
  • Completed NOV/JD for Developer post, to be advertised 01/02/12
  • Arranged the Steering Group calendar
  • Met with Jill Stewart, Head of Engineering and most of Project Team for an informal briefing
  • Set up a recurring monthly team meeting
  • Started to put together a reading list
  • Started to arrange for accommodation for the project team
  • Written an article for the Staff Magazine
  • Set up a project website (needs more work)
  • Set up an issue tracker, code repository and project mailing list

We need to:

  • Set up initial meeting with Engineering users
  • Paul to contact Mansur Darlington (ERIM project) and DCC
  • Joss to write Project Plan for 26-10-11
  • Project Website needs work: member bios, press pack, etc. Check given examples.
  • Clarify MRD Programme objectives for everyone at next team meeting,
  • Book conference attendance: USTLG Workshop on research data and Warwick conference. Also, DCC event in Cardiff.
  • Joss to send Simon Hodson, JISC Programme Manager, the project template
  • Lead Developer to join JISCMail when recruited
  • Paul and Joss to book on Programme launch workshop on 1-2/12.

Where appropriate, I’ve added these to our Project tracker.