2022-12-01 TAC/UAC Coordinating Committee

20 min

Checking in

All

Things continue to truck along in the Councils.

Regina walked us through the https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Csi1cbG_3fmTYyYxCfxKRhd2LSZISov5vdSF42HtYmI/edit?usp=sharing document that she and Valerie prepared. While TAC appears to be set up for fairly normal attrition in 2024, UAC is scheduled to lose 10 members due to expiration of terms, a much higher than usual attrition rate and one that could leave many leadership gaps. Some thoughts and options discussed:

• Should we recruit a slightly larger class for 2023 than the actual number of openings for next year? If so, we need to recommend this to the Nominating Committee when they are identifying recruitment needs.

• TAC leaders say the want 4-6 members on a sub-team; UAC will check in with their leaders as well. Adequate team staffing is important both for getting work done and how people perceive the workload and experience of ArchivesSpace service. UAC will discuss these issues with its leaders as well.

• Integrations has agreed that it should be sunset after the 2023-2024 term, but it is likely that TAC will want to explore bringing up a different sub-team in its place

• What about staggering terms for those who come on beginning in 2024 so that we don’t have such a large class leaving again?

• Since we usually have more UAC nominees than openings, have we redirected UAC nominees to TAC in the past? Yes, with varying degrees success.

• It would be good for the Councils to “certify” needs in a report that looks both a immediate and longer range needs every two years - will add preparing an analysis spreadsheet to the list of Council Chair responsibilities.

• Conditions under which those on 3-year terms can renew was discussed - while the main use case in mind at the time the change was made was people who would stay on as Chair or Vice Chair, since this is new, we discussed leaving some discretion for other leadership positions or possibly some short extensions for individual circumstances.

10 min

Any updates on tech training discussions from other meetings/conversations?

All

Tech training was brought up as a topic for discussion at the last UAC meeting, but there appeared to be little interest. Between TAC and UAC there is some interest in doing a tech hour for skill sharing/answering questions though there haven’t been many volunteers.

No further progress, but the plan is to begin moving ahead on approaching Joshua about whether he is interested in working with Valerie on the Docker topic. Will mention that there is the possibility of an honorarium, but will not be able to determine what it will be until we have a better sense of the work and the conditions for the work.

There was a discussion in the Trainers Corps November meeting about Corey Schmidt’s interest in offering a new API training that builds on past sessions developed by Valerie and Lora Woodford. It may look significantly different from previous offerings. Possibility of piloting it with the Councils. There are always technical barriers in getting a workspace set up for this kind of workshop (one reason Valerie now recommends people take a Python training first), but it may be that this could work in conjunction with the Docker instruction. Valerie will bring Corey into that conversation at an appropriate time.

5 min

Anything else?

Governance Board approved the amendment to the Bylaws to add Vice Chairs to the Nominating Committee. This year’s chair should be reaching out soon.

Nominating Committee getting started with its first steps (finding people to serve on the Nominating Committee)

Two questions from an October meeting:

• Does the Board feel like it’s getting enough information from the Councils? Consensus is yes.

• Timing on when the roadmap is updated and in what detail? Updated roadmap will be distributed the week of Dec. 5. Aim is to update after each release to reflect work that is anticipated. Release notes contain the detail on what has been delivered.

• In hand with the discussions of technical training, it would be good to remind people of exposure to the technical part of the application and skills that Council members get by virtue of their service. We should make sure to highlight (or create) resources such as:

  • understanding how to interpret the roadmap

  • Lifecycle of a ticket

  • Testing sub-team workflow

Going to try and schedule the Feb joint meeting by polling TAC first, to see if enough TAC members align with the Feb meeting time already on the books for UAC.

Valerie made a “quality of life” suggestion for 2023-2024: create “one massive Doodle poll for August and September” to facilitate early term scheduling