4th project team meeting minutes

Last month - on Thursday 16th June - we held our fourth project team meeting, in London (after previous meetings in the north and south-west of the UK). This was a crucial time to get the project team together because, even with our report write-up project extension, we're now in the final quarter of the project cycle. So it was key to make sure that the project advocacy work continues on track, and also to sort out any wobbles or issues. In addition, everyone who comes to these meetings has said that getting together like that is the best way to re-energise for the tasks at hand.

Aside from an update on the various strands of project progress - outputs, such as the advocacy materials (we saw Ellie's first printed posters and postcards for Keele - very exciting to see them in the flesh), the survey and the deposit community Google discussion group we've created and are trying to keep alive; and outcomes, such as how we're noting engagement with the repositories - we had two major areas to get our teeth into: (i) the upcoming RSP event taking place in Nottingham on 19th July, which is our major project dissemination opportunity, and (ii) how to put together the content for the final project report itself. Both subjects were large enough we could have spent twice as long on each, but at the end of the day we had shared out topics to work on for the RSP event and had brainstormed quite a good proportion of the sorts of points we already know we want to make in the final project report. Oh yes, there are plenty of lessons to be learned!

The full meeting minutes are available here.


Posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Forthcoming project team meeting and report deadline extension

Although we've had a number of Skype calls and informal meet-ups at other events, it's been five months since our last full project meeting - held in Leeds in January. So this week we have our fourth project team meeting, taking place on Thursday 16th June in London. As well as reviewing progress so far, and hopefully resolving any final niggling issues, the two major topics we'll be discussing are: what to put together for our part of the RSP dissemination event and how we want to put together our final project report - once all the findings are in.

Our revised project report deadline is 20th October 2011. Unfortunately, after further delays to the implementations of Repository Tools at Plymouth and Exeter - compounded by the departure of Richard Jones from Symplectic - in discussion with our JISC programme manager, an extension to the deadline for submitting the final project report was agreed to allow extra time so that the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth could also run training and advocacy activities as per their published plans (Exeter and Plymouth). Of course, this extension basically runs through the summer vacation, so there will be different types of opportunities (and possibly fewer of them) to talk to academics compared to term time - something that has to be worked around.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Notes from project team Skype call on 28th April 2011

At the end of last month, the team got together – virtually – for one of our regular Skype calls to keep each other up to date with progress and share experiences. The formation of smaller groups within the team to look after individual parts of the project work seems to be going well: for instance, the group looking after the survey have made great strides – and in the call we made the final tweaks to the core survey questions. Subsequent to the call, we now have an agreed core survey, which has been set up on BOS for the first site (Exeter University) and there will be further news about the survey in later posts. Another area of project work that has been active recently is the planning of our dissemination event – which is to take place within an all-day event hosted by RSP in Nottingham.

Here are the notes from the call.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Notes from project team Skype call on 21st March 2011

Last week the project team held one of their regular (approximately monthly) Skype calls, to discuss progress to date and follow up on current work areas. The minutes make for interesting reading, since we covered quite a few different topics, ranging from our new workgroups approach for the final stages of the project to how much great discussion has been going on within the newly energised Google group. There was also quite a lot of talk about what real-life issues are arising now that some people have started their advocacy campaigns (for instance around the RoMEO colours) - and that we must keep a good log of what happens during the campaigns so we can report back on it at the end of the project.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

Notes from project team Skype call on 28th Feb 2011

Last Monday we had our latest project Skype call, covering a number of outstanding topics for discussion, and here are the minutes. In brief: we pretty much finalised the advocacy materials designs from QMUL Creative Services; we discussed the necessity for images to be available for multiple re-use after the project ends; we tried to pin down our next steps for the survey (although since then we've had the complication of hearing about the RSP-created countrywide survey about open access); we talked further about our project dissemination event and the possibility of doing something jointly with RSP; and finally we came up with a plan for how to approach our newly created expert panel in the Google group discussion forum.


posted by: Lizzie Dipple

3rd project team meeting minutes

Our third RePosit project team meeting was held on Thursday 13th and Friday 14th January, running on the afternoon and following morning, at the University of Leeds. This is a key point in the project, just before the planned start of advocacy work, so this was our chance to test-run and tweak some of the advocacy materials, finalise the designs and decide on the survey. Of course, nothing happens quite as smoothly as in an ideal world, so we found we still have work to do and changes to make. We covered quite a bit of ground over the two half days and there is plenty to read about in the full minutes.

In brief:

During the project progress review, we looked at where we are with each of the project outputs, and considered the current issues and risks (discussed in more depth in a separate post). The user community output was discussed, and agreement made that we don't want to reinvent the wheel by trying to create a completely new community, just provide a forum for discussion that doesn't current exist for a subset of the existing repository community and approach research managers as well. When looking at the designs of advocacy poster and postcard for researchers, it quickly became clear that not just the design but the content itself wasn't getting the message across – and so we brainstormed new, punchy straplines and came up with our final choices: 'Spotlight on Your Research' and 'Don't Hide Your Assets'. This means a delay to finalising the materials, but they are getting there.

For the survey, we found that despite earlier fears to the contrary, all partner institutions are signed up with Bristol Online Surveys, so we can use that method. We fleshed out more details of the core questions and agreed there would be an institution-specific set as well. The final survey details are to be agreed in a Skype call at the start of February. The two dry-run advocacy presentations in front of an invited audience were a massive learning experience. We learnt as much about what we need to do differently as anything else: keep it even shorter, tailor the message even more, start with the strongest arguments, have lots of real-life evidence, recap at the end with something memorable, cover the downsides, use the internationalisation argument... It also became clear that our pack of advocacy presentation slides in the project outputs needs to be alongside real examples of presentations from the project to show the slides in use, plus with a crib sheet containing things like useful answers to common problem questions. This will take almost the full project lifetime to come to fruition, as these exemplars and the crib sheet will be added to by all project partners through their own advocacy periods.

posted by: Lizzie Dipple