[Devforum] Summary of First Meeting

[Karen Reardon]

Below you will find a summary or our first meeting. Lightly attended due 
to summer vacations, the meeting still proved to be very productive. Those 
in attendance, please send feedback if I've gotten anything incorrect or 
I missed a topic you think is important!

Attending:
Karen Reardon
Brian Kupiec
Jennifer Weintraub
Scott Matheson
Stephanie Davidson
Katie Bauer
Kim Parker
Steve Yearl
Matt Wilcox
George Ouellette
Julie Linden

There was a round-table discussion of the goals and objectives of the 
group. Expanding on the 'Possible Objectives' listed in the charge, folks 
wanted to be sure the group:
-Served as a structure for technical coordination to help increase 
efficiency
-Reviewed technology and skill sets gained and used in each project on a 
regular basis
-Remembered to consider possibilities of content sharing when 
presentations are given
-Held a round-robin open-forum for project updates each quarter
-Kept time at each meeting for quick updates and announcements that might 
be of interest to the group (for example recent Mr. Sid issues or the 
release of the Digital Library Cross-Collection search)
-Began to develop a checklist of best practices
-Coordinated a list of servers folks have - hoping that perhaps some 
could use already implemented technology
-Expanded on the excellent documentation produced by the CDC Digital 
Collections Task Force
-Saved time for discussion of currently being investigated research topics 
as well as for production projects
-Was open to extending the meeting time to 1.5 hours if necessary (we 
decided to keep it at an hour for now and see how it goes...)
-Held open forums for all staff to attend to educate and promote our 
efforts.

For our next meeting, August 20th, we will further focus on initial
information sharing. If you can attend the meeting, please be prepared to:
-Share one or two important issues you think should be covered in 
the project presentations (what do you want to know about what others are 
doing)
-Share one or two (if you have them) technology issues you are dealing 
with / trying to solve right now

We will allow time at each future meeting for the 2nd item.

If you have any further comments / questions, please email me.  If you 
can't attend the next meeting (I know some folks will be on vacation) - 
you can send me your responses and I will be sure they are included.
Thank you!

-Karen Reardon