poiril Annotations

In response to:

PECE Meeting July 6-12, 2019 (Ecuador)

What ideas have you had about ways to sustain and govern PECE and TAF as both continue to develop? What infrastructure, communication, and coordination will effectively support new collaborators?

Saturday, July 6, 2019 - 8:53am

PECE Meeting July 6-12, 2019 (Ecuador)

I've been getting lots of feedback that folks don't know where to begin with PECE. I think there should be a single location for new users (both those that want to use PECE and want to download PECE) to find all of the materials that they need to get involved. This can be linked out to other resources, but should be the first place they are directed to find all other relevant materials. I believe that the Read the Docs is the best place for this and that the World PECE instance is not the best location for this, because posting it there assumes that new users already know how to navigate PECE (and because we have so many instances now that users primarily planning to use TAF or STS Infrastructures would get confused). The problem with the Read the Docs right now is that it is very long and ominous, so I would really love to see some very simple "Getting Started" material designed for this page (perhaps by newer users who have recently learned how to use a feature).
Slack could be a really great space for new users to ask questions, but right now it is under-used. I'd like to know more about whether this is just because of low activity or if folks generally don't want to use it.
Weekly PECE meetings could help those who want to be more involved to have a space to do so. Also an infrastructure for recording tasks and assigning deadlines could help with accountability. (With Waffle.io closing down, we need a different system for this; many require purchasing a pricing plan). It would be great to have a designated space to account for the different PECE projects that we have underway. Right now we have pieces of many of these projects recorded in Google Docs, World PECE, and/or email, so it can be difficult to keep track of where we are with them. But if we build it, will they come?
My biggest ask - I'd really like to see some form of a project manager hired to help with scheduling meetings, staying on top of deadlines, and managing our collaborative infrastructure. A PECE grant could help with this. I'd like to plan to stay on top of the ODH grants this year.
I'd like to think more about how we can communicate to new users how PECE is a work-in-progress, and that, as an experimental system, it hasn't been designed to privilege a tight organizational structure (and sometimes favors serendipity over discoverability). There are ways to design a PECE instance to have a tighter structure and to make things more discoverable (with protocols and style sheets), but this assumes deep knowledge and experience with the platform that new users just won't have. Since our design logics have been core to the platform from the beginning, it will be important to find ways to communicate them to new users so that they can understand what they are signing up for.
Once the PECE newsletter starts getting published monthly, I'd like to see a list of current PECE projects, along with a call for collaborators, posted in the newsletter.