TEI Members Business Meeting, November 7, 2008: Minutes
Minutes taken by Chris Ruotolo
- Certification
-
The meeting was certified at 09:04 UTC.
- Appointment of recording secretary
-
Chris Ruotolo was appointed recording secretary.
- Approval of agenda
-
The agenda was approved.
- Approval of last year's minutes
-
The minutes were approved.
- Place and date of next meeting
-
Next year's Members Meeting will take place at the University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor, in mid-November 2009. Kevin Hawkins will be the local organizer.
- Remuneration
-
The Board members confirmed that they are not remunerated for their
services.
- Approval of auditor and fee
-
The auditor, KPMG, was approved, as was the auditor's fee of $3,000.
- Host activities report
- The host activities reports are all online, except for Virginia's, which is forthcoming.
- Election results
-
The election results were announced. The following people were elected to the TEI Board:
-
Lou Burnard
-
Christian Wittern
The following people were elected to
the TEI Council:
-
Arianna Ciula
-
James Cummings
-
Dot Porter
-
Sebastian Rahtz
- Chair's report
-
Daniel O'Donnell reported on the year's TEI activities. The past year
was a transitional one that saw action on many fronts. The TEI is moving
from a focus on P5 to a focus on building the TEI user base,
education and outreach activities, and maintenance and development.
After
the last Members' Meeting, the Board reorganized the TEI Council structure.
The Council Chair position was made a Board-level appointment, and was
given more authority. Laurent Romary was appointed in January 2008
to a two-year term as Chair.
The Board is looking at activities to increase the TEI user base and membership.
Efforts include internationalization work, continuing work on the TEI stylesheets,
recent partnership with ISO, and the TEI Tite initiative. The Board is also looking
to develop specific membership benefits.
At Sunday's meeting, the Board will look at the corporate side of the TEI's future. Possible ideas include improving visibility
by creating badges for TEI projects, and improving community access by developing easier paths for people other than Board and
Council members to bring ideas to the TEI. The Board will work to streamline back office work where possible, and to simplify financial operations
by allowing online credit card payments.
The TEI Tite project refers both to a simplified customization of P5 suitable for large-scale keyboarding projects, and to a Mellon-funded
project to develop this customization into a membership benefit. This initiative would allow small TEI projects to undertake large-scale keyboarding
at affordable rates. The TEI has received $35K from the Mellon Foundation to work on the project. A member survey was conducted, and
a request for proposals is now being drafted based on the survey results. In addition to the Chair, Perry Trolard, John Unsworth, and Michelle
Dalmau are working on the project.
- Treasurer's report
-
Standing in for Daniel Pitti, Chris Ruotolo briefly reviewed the 2007 expenses report, and the
2008 budget report.
- Council report
-
Laurent Romary, who became Council Chair in January 2008, gave the Council report. The Council
had a very productive year and accomplished a great deal. In addition to quarterly conference calls, the Council held a face-to-face
meeting in Galway in April, in conjunction with a one-day symposium that was open to the public. The Galway meeting was so productive that
the Council hopes to hold two face-to-face meetings per year in the future, and is looking for potential hosts for future meetings.
The role of TEI editor was eliminated in 2008. In its place, an editorial support group was formed at Oxford, consisting of Lou Burnard,
James Cummings, and Sebastian Rahtz. Duties include monitoring bug reports and feature requests, handling fixes and preparing new releases
of the Guidelines, maintaining tools such as Roma and the XSL stylesheets, and maintaining connections with the TEI SIGs.
There are two major official releases of the Guidelines per year.
TEI P5 1.1.0 was released in July 2008, and 1.2.0 has just been released.
Releases are distributed via the TEI SourceForge site.
Feature requests are managed through the TEI SourceForge tracker.
The Council plans to focus on outreach activities in the coming year.
These include improvements to the mailing list, website, and wiki; updating
the examples in the Guidelines; reaching out to the SIGs; providing more
support for tools like Roma; continuing internationalization work; and
providing support to other TEI-related activities including collaboration
with ISO, TEI Tite, ENRICH, and TEI By Example.
Other plans for 2009 include enhancements to the Guidelines (especially
with regard to genetic editions, physical bibliographies, and critical apparatus),
and technical enhancements such as modularizing the XSLT stylesheets, creating localized
examples, and creating stable URIs for TEI elements over versions of the Guidelines.
- "Understanding the TEI-C Community" study
-
Lynne Siemens, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria,
presented a report called "Understanding the TEI-C Community: A Study in Breadth and Depth, Toward Membership and Recruitment."
The study was carried out in conjunction with Board's membership and recruitment activities,
to investigate popular social representations of the TEI and determine where
TEI membership and recruitment efforts would best be placed. A viral video featuring
a TEI encoding of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was uploaded to YouTube and
announced on TEI-L and other humanities computing mailing lists, and the
resulting spike in
traffic on the TEI website was analyzed via Google Analytics. The web traffic
analysis sought to distinguish between current TEI members and the wider TEI
"community of practice", which includes potential members. The Board
will consider the implications of this research for membership and recruitment
activities when it meets on Sunday.
- Other Business
-
Matthew Jockers was thanked for his help in developing
the new online election tool.
George Bina offered to host a user interaction session during
the TEI Tools SIG slot, for oXygen users to provide feedback.
SyncroSoft donated 10 oXygen licenses to be raffled off. Five winners
were drawn:
-
Stefan Büdenbender
-
Paul Schaffner
-
Sandra Silcot
-
Malte Rehbein
-
Ray Siemens
The five remaining licenses will be raffled off tomorrow.
- Adjournment
-
The meeting adjourned at 10:50 UTC.
The meeting was certified at 09:04 UTC.
Chris Ruotolo was appointed recording secretary.
The agenda was approved.
The minutes were approved.
Next year's Members Meeting will take place at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in mid-November 2009. Kevin Hawkins will be the local organizer.
The Board members confirmed that they are not remunerated for their services.
The auditor, KPMG, was approved, as was the auditor's fee of $3,000.
- Lou Burnard
- Christian Wittern
- Arianna Ciula
- James Cummings
- Dot Porter
- Sebastian Rahtz
Daniel O'Donnell reported on the year's TEI activities. The past year was a transitional one that saw action on many fronts. The TEI is moving from a focus on P5 to a focus on building the TEI user base, education and outreach activities, and maintenance and development.
After the last Members' Meeting, the Board reorganized the TEI Council structure. The Council Chair position was made a Board-level appointment, and was given more authority. Laurent Romary was appointed in January 2008 to a two-year term as Chair.
The Board is looking at activities to increase the TEI user base and membership. Efforts include internationalization work, continuing work on the TEI stylesheets, recent partnership with ISO, and the TEI Tite initiative. The Board is also looking to develop specific membership benefits.
At Sunday's meeting, the Board will look at the corporate side of the TEI's future. Possible ideas include improving visibility by creating badges for TEI projects, and improving community access by developing easier paths for people other than Board and Council members to bring ideas to the TEI. The Board will work to streamline back office work where possible, and to simplify financial operations by allowing online credit card payments.
The TEI Tite project refers both to a simplified customization of P5 suitable for large-scale keyboarding projects, and to a Mellon-funded project to develop this customization into a membership benefit. This initiative would allow small TEI projects to undertake large-scale keyboarding at affordable rates. The TEI has received $35K from the Mellon Foundation to work on the project. A member survey was conducted, and a request for proposals is now being drafted based on the survey results. In addition to the Chair, Perry Trolard, John Unsworth, and Michelle Dalmau are working on the project.
Standing in for Daniel Pitti, Chris Ruotolo briefly reviewed the 2007 expenses report, and the 2008 budget report.
Laurent Romary, who became Council Chair in January 2008, gave the Council report. The Council had a very productive year and accomplished a great deal. In addition to quarterly conference calls, the Council held a face-to-face meeting in Galway in April, in conjunction with a one-day symposium that was open to the public. The Galway meeting was so productive that the Council hopes to hold two face-to-face meetings per year in the future, and is looking for potential hosts for future meetings.
The role of TEI editor was eliminated in 2008. In its place, an editorial support group was formed at Oxford, consisting of Lou Burnard, James Cummings, and Sebastian Rahtz. Duties include monitoring bug reports and feature requests, handling fixes and preparing new releases of the Guidelines, maintaining tools such as Roma and the XSL stylesheets, and maintaining connections with the TEI SIGs.
There are two major official releases of the Guidelines per year. TEI P5 1.1.0 was released in July 2008, and 1.2.0 has just been released. Releases are distributed via the TEI SourceForge site. Feature requests are managed through the TEI SourceForge tracker.
The Council plans to focus on outreach activities in the coming year. These include improvements to the mailing list, website, and wiki; updating the examples in the Guidelines; reaching out to the SIGs; providing more support for tools like Roma; continuing internationalization work; and providing support to other TEI-related activities including collaboration with ISO, TEI Tite, ENRICH, and TEI By Example.
Other plans for 2009 include enhancements to the Guidelines (especially with regard to genetic editions, physical bibliographies, and critical apparatus), and technical enhancements such as modularizing the XSLT stylesheets, creating localized examples, and creating stable URIs for TEI elements over versions of the Guidelines.
Lynne Siemens, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, presented a report called "Understanding the TEI-C Community: A Study in Breadth and Depth, Toward Membership and Recruitment." The study was carried out in conjunction with Board's membership and recruitment activities, to investigate popular social representations of the TEI and determine where TEI membership and recruitment efforts would best be placed. A viral video featuring a TEI encoding of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was uploaded to YouTube and announced on TEI-L and other humanities computing mailing lists, and the resulting spike in traffic on the TEI website was analyzed via Google Analytics. The web traffic analysis sought to distinguish between current TEI members and the wider TEI "community of practice", which includes potential members. The Board will consider the implications of this research for membership and recruitment activities when it meets on Sunday.
Matthew Jockers was thanked for his help in developing the new online election tool.
George Bina offered to host a user interaction session during the TEI Tools SIG slot, for oXygen users to provide feedback.
- Stefan Büdenbender
- Paul Schaffner
- Sandra Silcot
- Malte Rehbein
- Ray Siemens
The meeting adjourned at 10:50 UTC.