OpenWetWare:Steering Committee/Old version

The OpenWetWare Steering Committee is charged with leading the future direction of OpenWetWare. The steering committee is open to all OWW members, and we are actively seeking participants. Please add yourself, or email any of the members for further information.

Working on a new version of this page, please help out.

=Members= This list shows current members that are on the Steering Committee. The email address is sc AT openwetware DOT org. We welcome any help that you may be able to contribute, so if you are interested in joining, please contact Sri Kosuri. Current Members List__HIDER__
 * George Ahunov, RPI
 * Satya Arjunan, Keio
 * Joseph Borg, University of Malta
 * Barry Canton, MIT
 * Austin Che, MIT
 * Sean Clarke, MIT
 * Caitlin Conboy, MIT
 * John Cumbers, Brown
 * Drew Endy, MIT
 * Danielle France, MIT
 * Jeff Gritton, MIT
 * Maureen Hoatlin, OHSU
 * Martin Jambon, Burnham
 * Jason Kelly, MIT
 * Tom Knight, MIT
 * Sri Kosuri, MIT
 * Natalie Kuldell, MIT
 * Julius Lucks, Harvard
 * Stephan Meister, Imperial
 * Alex Mallet, MIT
 * Kathleen McGinness, MIT
 * Jenny Nguyen, UT-Austin
 * Venkata Satagopam, EMBL
 * Reshma Shetty, MIT
 * Devin Strickland, U of C
 * Ilya Sytchev, MIT
 * Ty Thomson, MIT
 * Mike Yee, MIT
 * Razib Othman, UniTekMa
 * Eric Patridge, Penn State U

=SC retreat=

=Hot items= These are the specific areas in each project that could use more help or are currently being discussed/debated. Please join in!
 * Steering committee/Long term planning discussion - This is an ongoing discussion about the long-term goals for the steering committee. In particular, how do we ensure OWW is maintained indefinetely.
 * Software/Distribution - an OWW-branded wiki distribution for groups/labs using private wikis.

=Project Descriptions=

Funding
To help ensure the long term viability of OpenWetWare we hope to secure funding.


 * Funding - list of funding options
 * Steering committee/NSF BDI Grant - application planning page
 * Steering committee/501(c)3 - status of application for non-profit status
 * Steering committee/Long term planning discussion - This is an ongoing discussion about the long-term goals for the steering committee. In particular, how do we ensure OWW is maintained indefinetely.

Software development

 * Software - portal for all software related discussions
 * Software/Ideas - roadmap for upcoming software improvements
 * Software/Distribution - an OWW-branded wiki distribution for groups/labs using private wikis.

People
George Ahunov, Barry Canton, Austin Che, Sri Kosuri, Jason Kelly, Alex Mallet, Ilya Sytchev

Meetings

 * 3-8-06 meeting

Community Development
The success of OpenWetWare depends critically on cultivating and maintaining an active user base. We plan to dedicate funds to enable tutorials, conference visits, advertising, and other mechanisms for recruiting new users to OpenWetWare. We also will begin an OpenWetWare seminar series hosted at MIT. This series would discuss perspectives on open practices and communities in science. We feel this would be important for two reasons. First, it would highlight groups and individuals in science actively striving to accomplish some of the same goals as those of OpenWetWare (e.g. PLoS, Science Commons, etc.) Second, it would provide an amazing opportunity before every talk to introduce OpenWetWare to others.

People
Barry Canton, Danielle France, Jason Kelly, Sri Kosuri, Reshma Shetty

Current status

 * Had the first OWW Seminar Series talk: John Wilbanks
 * Community development ideas
 * Revamped the Community Portal

Promotional Material/Advertising
In order to help promote OpenWetWare, we will need a range of promotional material including business cards, logos, information pamphlets, posters and banners.

People
Jeff Gritton, Lisa Joslin, Sriram Kosuri, Jenny Nguyen, Ty Thomson

Current status

 * Chose a logo / poster / site color scheme, see logo and poster discussion.
 * Promotional material ideas

Data Management
In the long term, the success of OpenWetWare relies on the assumption that the number of users actively curating the information of OpenWetWare will scale with the amount of content generated. However, there has been little work to examine how collaborative tools can best be used to develop information resources, such as the OpenWetWare protocol collection. We believe the project would benefit dramatically from the active establishment of community standards for organizing content in OpenWetWare. We will establish a UROP position to evaluate and implement templates and other methods for organizing information in OpenWetWare.

People
Jeff Gritton, Jason Kelly, Sriram Kosuri, Jenny Nguyen, Reshma Shetty

Current status

 * We have a UROP -- Jenny Nguyen.
 * Data Management ideas
 * Data management meeting 2/21/06

Integration with laboratory classes
To complement its mission to promote an open culture in biological science and engineering, OpenWetWare will be integrated into the curriculum of laboratory classes. As a pilot experiment, MIT's BE.109 Laboratory fundamentals of biological engineering will be relying heavily on OpenWetWare to disseminate course content and to serve as a shared space for students, TA's and instructors to communicate.

People
Natalie Kuldell, Reshma Shetty

Current status

 * See the BE.109 course OWW site.
 * Discussion on OWW integration with classes
 * Update: Overall the course integration seems to be working reasonably well.  While the BE.109 site is not being edited at a very high frequency, the edits that have been made are useful and high quality.  The same appears to be true about BE.180.  Having the site on a wiki also seems to facilitate all the instructors and TA's for the course contributing to course content.

=Meetings=

Steering committee meetings are held on the second Thursday of each month, 12-1 pm EST, in 32-262.
 * Conference calls are possible using the MIT audio bridge conference calling. Please check the meeting agenda for the phone number to call; it can change from meeting to meeting. For the March 6 meeting, we'll stick to a conference call.  But 32-262 also has teleconference capability.  If you would like to teleconference in, let us know and we'll try to set it up for future meetings.

Minutes and Agendas

 * 1/6/06
 * 1/26/06
 * 3/6/06
 * 4/3/06
 * 5/1/06
 * 6/15/06
 * 7/13/06
 * 7/25/06 Steering Committee Retreat
 * 8/10/06

New meeting time/date is 2nd Thursday of the month, Noon-1 pm Eastern Time.


 * Prior to the committee formation, there were ad-hoc discussions on OWW development:
 * Old meetings
 * Ideas page