2019-05-06 TAC/UAC Coordinating Committee Meeting notes

5 min

Program update

Christine

Release candidate hopefully on its way this week. Our new CEC Jessica is available for engagement needs of sub-teams and Councils themselves. Annual Forum is Aug. 2 and there will be a Regional Forum in South Carolina in November.

30 min

Looking back and looking forward on the Council year

• Are there additional opportunities for Cross-Council groups or collaboration?

• Is there interest in re-envisioning any current sub-teams?

All

An idea that has been floated has been combining the two Councils and no longer maintaining the distinction between the Councils. Some advantages:

• would no longer require people to be classified/classify themselves as “user” or “technical”

• could enable a more holistic approach to work - could take advantage of the “whole brain” of the ArchivesSpace community

• would make information sharing easier

Some disadvantages

• Logistics of convening meetings and organizing work for such a large group

• May be more difficult to foster conversations in a large group

• May discourage participation of developers and system administrators if they no longer can clearly identify a role for themselves

In the discussion, an area of dissatisfaction is a lack of discussion in the full Council meetings. There is a significant difference between UAC and TAC in how those meetings flow, however. (UAC meetings are almost exclusively reporting and quite brief, TAC established expectations around meeting participation at the beginning of the year and most of their meetings feature significant discussion of other issues.) Some of the most valuable aspects of Council meetings and participation come out of discussion of broader issues; it would be good to shift the focus of most Council-level meetings from reporting to discussion.

Combining the Councils officially would require a Bylaws change, approved at the Governance Board level. There are many steps that can be taken to have the two Councils work more closely together without changing the Bylaws. We discussed various options along the continuum and the timing for implementing changes.

For the 2019/20 year, we would like to continue the structure of the Councils as they are (not propose a formal change to the Board), but undertake the following:

• Make all sub-team work have the potential to be cross-Council - UAC and TAC members will be able to choose/be assigned to any sub-team and focused working group activity.

• Have several combined UAC/TAC meetings during the year, rather than just one. Ideally have the first early in the year (perhaps August)

• To the degree that it’s possible, harmonize expectations of participation and meeting focus across the Councils

• Use Council meetings as a forum for sub-teams to present challenges for group discussion and also for broader discussion of issues related to ArchivesSpace. Have most reporting happen on the wiki so that it doesn’t need to be reported in the meetings themselves.

Christine will work to schedule another meeting of the group to talk about the logistics of moving ahead with this plan.

Additional topics as desired

Chair succession plan

Introduced by Maggie

TAC proposes moving to a Vice Chair/Chair/past Chair model - members would be encouraged to be Vice Chair in their second year (i.e. volunteer at the end of their first year on the Council), serve as Chair in their third year, and then still be on the Council for another year after their one-year term has been completed. This will enable people to get comfortable and ramp up to the role, provide better continuity for Council leadership, and make the Chair role seem perhaps more manageable as a commitment.

The group agreed, to the extent possible, the two Councils will adopt this approach beginning with 2019/20. TAC will recruit for a Vice Chair with this expectation; UAC will consider how to approach identifying future leadership as both Ashley and Lydia will rotate off the Council at the same time and want to enable a smoother transition.