Topic: Reflections on the Kete Community Meeting.
Topic type:
Reflections from Joann Ransom about the 3rd Kete Community Meeting - not the official minutes (which the lovely James will type up from the pages and pages of notes he made!)
Wow - home at last ... what a week. Exhilarating, stimulating, fulfilling, inspiring and most of all satisfying.
Just spent the week in Auckland: 2 days of Kete Community Day meetings, then down to the lovely folk of Paeroa for a couple of days before 'filling up' at the second day only (alas) of the 2008 National Digital Forum.
Kete Community Day
This was a gentle and productive couple of days. We had 16 - 20 people in attendance, representing the big CPF funded projects plus Digital NZ and APN, both of which represent big partners in the Kete project, plus a team from Hamilton.
Register of development Initiatives
We all shared where were up to and it is absoutely clear that we must document or keep a register of what developments / enhancements are underway and what work is still coming. Too often people were thinking about what they'd like to see and Walter had already done or was doing it. I think we shall make a topic that resides permanently on the Kete.net homepage so people can see whats coming and where the gaps are.
Open source model
I fell in love with Open Source as a development model all over again too; we developed Kete and made it available for free. It was a starting point. I loved the way that a bunch of people and organsiations have written or funded and contributed so many enhancemenst over the last 12 months - all of which have been given back to the project. It is a very cost effective, and mutually beneficial way for a small country to maximise our development dollars. I loved the pride which which people say they have funded this bit, or will fund that big chunk that needs sponsoring.
The spirit of this Kete Comunity is pretty cool... we have always said that we need a strong community to nurture the project. THis means that Katipo and HLT invite criticism and suggestions for improvement. We ask the community to please not focus on what we have now - but what could be. Walter and Katipo are not precious about the code and being the only programmers. The project needs many brains and skill sets.
Pronouncing Kete correctly
Many many thanks to Maatakiri for teaching us how to pronounce KETE correctly. She hs posted a good tutorial here. Please, can we all try and honour the project by honouring the word. I remember it as rhyming more with machete than kitty or gidday.
Governance
I feel also that the governance issue will be addressed. I personally cannot put the time into leading this project going forward - and it is way too much for 1 person. I want to make sure that a governance structure is established that will define and defend the Kete project. selecting which enhancements will become part of the main trunk and simply turned on or off and configured during installation process, and some may not be incorporated into the main trunk but branch off instead. I want to make surethat great ideas are not lost through lack of funding, that collaboratively funding enhancemenst that we can all benefit from is possible, that people who may want to contribute financially rather than with code can 'sponsor' chunks of work that appeal to them to gift back tpo the project.
This will all happen. A working group of 6 will investigate options and come up with an excellent plan over the next months, in consultation with the Kete community.
Kete.net as the communication channel
Kete.net has been confirmed as the primary channel of communication. We all need to share what we know or what we are thinking in this space. Particpate in any way you like, whether initaiating conversations through writing a topic, joining discussion by adding a comment, or working collaborativcely to develop documentation in the wiki environment.
Other Kete
I didn't know how many Kete there are now! Please share your Kete with the community. It is really inspiring to see how other people have configured their installations. Especially overseas Kete... I know there are Kete developments in the Gulf region, and ditto in China and America. Who are these people and what are their projects and what can we share? Kete Horowhenua is really small (30,000 people) , so I'd love to hear how Orlando Memory is getting on with their population of 1million people. And how aree people finding moderation options? We have no moderation - but t can be turned on. Does that hinder contributions?
Themes Repository
Themes too, are an area that we talked about at the Kete Day, and I really hope that people will load theirs into the repository for others to be inspired by.
Promoting Kete in local community
I am so happy with the work that Smita and her team are doing in Hamilton getting their Kete ready for launch in mid Dcember. Smita is so enthusiastic and that bring sme to another wiki we should develop: "101 Ways to promote Kete in your community" . This should sit alongside the "How Can classes use Kete?" conversation which has been developing on kete.net over the last few weeks.
Digital NZ
The Digital NZ launch next week is a big moment for the Kete Project. Kete Horowhenua has turned on OAI-PHM (hope thats right ..) and Digital NZ harvest metadata from Kete Horowhenua to sit alongside the collections of National Library, Te Papa, National Archives etc. This was exactly what we hoped would happen with Kete: getting the informal, community created content sitting alongside the formal content.
I can just about retire now ... my work here is almost done!
Paeroa Museum, Past Perfect and Kete.
After the Kete Community meeting I headed down to Paeroa Museum and spent the afternoon working with their team and helping suggest ways to work more efficiently. Then after being beautifully hosted by Graeme and Joy Watton, I led a training day where I talked about Past Perfect. PP is a collection management system for local history organisations and museums. I love it - just love it. And NZ has a big body of Past Perfect clients. What I find interesting is that there is no sales representation down here for PP - it is entirely word of mouth.... speaks volumes about the quality of the product and the service that is developed out of the States.
Anyway, it was a very hard group to work woth. Included people who have never used to it, to beginner users to quite experienced and sophisticated users. Note to self for next time: run it in two groups. What happened was I couldn't keep everyone happy and probably made no one entirely happy! Crique forms were really positive but I was aware I was struggling at times. I have had a beautiful powerpoint to deliver, all orderly and indexed and sequential with lots of exampkes and demonstrations but the delivery did not happen quite as planned. Its a real dilemma to explore questions and issues as they arise, and di[ into a different series of slides, than go through rigidly and hope people remember their questions..,
Anyway, my point here - and i do have one - is that I spent a good chunk of time talking about various means which are available for these 13 different organisations to get their records online - at minimal cost to themselves. We talked about NZMuseums, Past Perfect's Virtual Exhibit (better for supplkementary in-house virtual exhibitions) and Past Perfect Online hosting service (excellent) and of course my personal favourite - Kete.
My vision is that someone in the Waikato - Hauraki region (Hamilton City Libraries as the lead agency maybe?) invites all of these gorgeous little local history organisations (and maybe art galleries etc) who are already running Past Perfect, to upload their records into a big regional Kete. It can be down - quite easily. Walter imported all the records from the Horowhenua and Foxton Historical Societies collection into Kete Horowhenua, which has now been harvested by Digital NZ ... and required no additional work by the organisations themselves.
Anyway .. those are my thoughts. Off to the Christmas parade shortly . my show pony children have all managed to get themselves onto floats in the parade so I shall go and take photos and stick them on Kete!
was the last to edit Reflections on the Kete Community Meeting.
on Nov 30th, 2008 at 4:02 PM
