Present: Tim, Mariska, Eleanor, Andrei, Angela, Stuart, Paula, Becca
Apologies: Mark, Dale
Mark's inclusion as a Voting Member was agreed.
Roberto Villega-Diaz's application is currently awaiting review (by Florian - who is awaiting info from Becca).
Progress has been slow so far. Tim has posted on the wiki for help. So far has got Olly and Dale. Andrei is also interested (didn't have time previously). Tim plans to have a preliminary meeting with everyone and then think about using an external web developer. The meeting group and developer will talk about content and design. Once there is a concrete proposal (or proposals), this will be presented to the community.
There is some money that has been offered for paying developers, however there is also a request/suggestion that other groups should donate too. At this point, it was highlighted that this is meant to be a Community Website, so it is also a bit tied up with the legal entity - which will need some seed money too.
Slightly broader discussion then in which it was raised by Becca what could "founding members" of this legal entity contribute (financially)? Such monies could then go towards the costs of logo, branding, website etc as well. For example, by approaching groups like:
Becca stated that these groups (and others) are reliant on the community and so should be contributing! Therefore makes sense for this to be mutualised with the website and logo... Everyone agreed with this.
The question was then raised about the domain name, https://www.datashield.org
Becca suggested the community website and foundation should have a new/separate name with its own separate domain (e.g. "datashield-community.org" or similar). Her plan is to keep the current website as it is - a DataSHIELD research project website.
There were questions about why she doesn't have a different site, e.g. a subdomain on her university servers. Becca explained why historically this has not worked for the DataSHIELD research project as the research group and project has moved so much - having previously been in Leicester, Bristol, Newcastle and now Liverpool.
There was lots of discussion about the suggestion that having https://www.datashield.org as the website for only the DataSHIELD Research Project was not beneficial either to the DataSHIELD Research Project or the DataSHIELD Community.
Alternative ideas were
Post meeting clarifications: datashield.org is an asset owned since 2010 by the DataSHIELD research project, it has been used since the beginning of its ownership for the datashield research project website either directly or with a redirect from the datashield.org domain. The DataSHIELD research project also owns other domain names and other assets. The DataSHIELD website has always been a reflection of the DataSHIELD research project. As the community grew and subsequent advisory board set up, information about these were included on the DataSHIELD research project website in absence of either having their own websites. Over the last 2 years the DataSHIELD research project website was modernised to a more user friendly platform (Wordpress) and is now maintained primarily by Becca and Paula. In this decision, there was also consideration of the lack of value for money in the previous hosting partner which was not competitive compared to other hosters, the inability to adopt a permissions management structure for editors and administrators of content due to the incorrect use of plugins when building the intial site, the lack of ease of use of CMS and the plugins selected. I notified the steering committee these plans on a number of occasions and also the communications theme we discussed functionality wanted in the new website. Content wise, I split out research focussed content (grants, profiles etc) and put it on the Community wiki, and slimmed down the new website to only contain critical information,including signposting to materials (on social media, wiki, forum) relevant for different user groups as at the time there was no other comprehensive representation of these materials. As requested by the community, access to various community members to edit and create content has been given but it has become apparent that there is different opinions on how the datashield.org site should be used.
The Datashield community is seperate from the DataSHIELD research project and Becca raises the question why the domain that has always been associated with the research project requires adoption in the community instead of a new domain? We have always run a DataSHIELD research project website linking out to the community assets and infrastructure partners, as is currently done so on the front page of the website.
Overall, with the exception of Becca, everyone present who provided an opinion was against the idea of the datashield.org domain being used exclusively for the DataSHIELD research project, and for the idea of it being used for a community portal. Note that some people had left the meeting by this point.
Post meeting note: did we also all agree that the community and or the foundation requires its own domain?
The conversation was parked for a future meeting.
Mariska was here but it was thought best to discuss logos another time when Dale is present too.
Suggestion that forum should be re-organised so that the structure is more accessible. However, Stuart had left by this point.
Discussion about some FAQs for DataSHIELD on the wiki to help orientate people who don't need to know all the details but still require some understanding of how it works.
The idea of having a simple 'explanatory' video about DataSHIELD was floated (literally a video of someone clicking through a test system with test data explaining at the same time what they're doing, as a film which those 'selling' DataSHIELD to others can use). People thought this was a good idea.
Working group on writing a White Paper suggested. People agreed this would be highly beneficial and were willing to help write this.
Andrei reported that he's been having difficulties at work and hence hasn't had as much time recently as he'd expected.
All presentations that people wanted to share from the conference have been received, they now need to be uploaded to Zenodo. Andrei has started to look at this but hasn't had enough time yet. He has started off by trying to invite Steering Committee members who already have an account on Zenodo, and will do the rest when he is able soon.
Due to recent unexpected time pressures, Andrei has not been able to make as much progress as hoped. He is exploring a suitable set-up for a Foundation in the Netherlands.
Eleanor and Tim both said they would help to get Morris's attention for relevant emails/meetings to discuss the further progress of this.
Not much done
Wiki pretty much updated, some more work could be useful. Particularly "What is DataSHIELD (architecture etc)"
There's also potentially a new member who needs to be included a bit more.
Next meeting will be the first Tuesday of February.