[CDAO-discuss] opening up CDAO development

[Arlin S. <sto...@um...>]

Dear all--

I would like to discuss possible goals and milestones for opening up  
CDAO development so that it becomes more of a community project.   
There are two parts of this-- building the infrastructure to support a  
community project, and cultivating a community of stakeholder- 
participants.  The community of stakeholders might be small or modest  
in size, and presumably would consist mainly of developer-scientists  
involved in projects to manage data resources or provide services.   
Right now our community of stakeholders consists of ourselves and a  
few people associated with nexml and phyloWS who are experimenting  
with using CDAO to anchor annotations.

Here is the technology that we have to support our community:
* public web site (www.evolutionaryontology.org)
* public code repository (sourceforge)
* public email list (this list)

The main thing we are missing right now is

* documentation

We identified this need at the meeting, and I seem to recall that  
Julie offered to do something about this.  Is there anything else we  
need in terms of technology?

In terms of community engagement, we could begin by being more  
responsive to our nexml and phenoscape stakeholders.  In the spring  
they were asking for our help, but i didn't find the time to do it  
then-- and as a result, we missed an opportunity to engage them.  I  
sent out a mass email in August to ask for people to voice their  
concerns and suggest ideas, but I got no responses.

Moving forward, it might be beneficial to have:
- a regular newsfeed or other way to reach stakeholders with updates  
(could be done via the email list)
- monthly teleconferences advertised online, so that anyone can call  
in to join us

To engage the community more pro-actively, we might want to create an  
online course, hold a workshop, or target a project for CDAO  
compatibility.   Other ideas?

Arlin