2009-06-17 Product Council Meeting

Meeting information

12:00 Eastern Daylight Time

Teleconference info: The conference line is 309-946-5300 and the passcode is *829335

Agenda

1. Introductions
2. Why people were selected
3. The charter/charge of the council.
   1. including discussion of community concerns.
4. The activities of the council at the Boston conference.
5. The frequency of meetings for the council
6. Selecting a council chair
7. The overall Sakai development process (at least a start on this)
8. Any other agenda items others would like to discuss.

Minutes

Attendees:

Michael Korcuska
Nate Angell
Noah Botimer
John Lewis
Max Whitney
Eli Cochran
Stephen Marquard
David Goodrum
Michael Feldstein
John Norman

Role of the council:

John Norman: Minimal role as gatekeeper between stages.
Michael Feldstein: Shepherd, not gatekeeper. Maybe the community will vote on council recommendations.
Michael Korcuska: Yes, gatekeeper based on objective criteria. But we may not get to objective criteria immediately.
Max Whitney: Agree with John. Semi-formal review and responsibility to making sure we don't let things through that don't belong.
Michael Feldstein: We're in the same ballpark. We need to work out our interaction with the community and project group.
Nate Angell: I have a negative connotation with gatekeeper. Custodian is better.
Stephen Marquard: "Cohesiveness" is a very slippery term and we need to work on what that means.

On email, later: General agreement that "steward" and "stewardship" are better than "gatekeeper" or "shepherd". (see conversation)

(link to criteria for provisional status)

Stephen Marquard: Have others had feedback on the product council idea? Does it apply to K2?
John Norman: We need to make our charge less vague so that people aren't imagining all sorts of negative things.
Michael Feldstein: If this works well then these governance concerns will go away.
Michael Korcuska: Yes it applies to K2.
John Norman: Much of what people think of as nearly finished products I would classify as R&D. People might be surprised by this, but K2 is R&D.
David Goodrum: R&D is at the core of how is Sakai is created. There is a challenge into making R&D projects into a product. Anything that would help ensure the success of the Sakai product is good and that has to do with how well the product is received by users and what it takes to run and support it.
Max Whitney: Getting to "shrink wrap" stage is one of the goals.
John Norman: We'll want to describe what end users can expect from the software.
Stephen Marquard: What concerns does the product council have that others may not. One is cohesiveness. Another is someone completely new to the software.

Boston Conference:

Max: Would like to do something in person at the conference.
John: If there is time, a small workshop on the scope of the product and current issues.
Michael: Like the idea of a workshop. Not sure that topic.
John: The output isn't the point. The process of discussing it is the point.
Michael: The outputs could be valuable.
Michael: Dinner on Wednesday night (mary will schedule). See about scheduling Tuesday afternoon working session?
Michael: Public Q&A for the community.
Max: It is a bit too soon, but we can't pass up this opportunity.
Stephen: We should do something even if it is informal.
Michael K: What about my product development process.