CodeRefinery-SG-meeting-2017-06-16

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Steering group video meeting 2017-06-16

Time

  • 2017-06-16 11:00 - 13:00 CEST.

Location

Video meeting using Google Hangouts - link is shared 20 minutes prior to the meeting via email with all participants.

Participants

Invited

  • Gerd Behrmann
  • Hans Eide
  • Lene Krøl Andersen
  • Radovan Bast
  • Thor Wikfeldt
  • Michaela Barth
  • Rossen Apostolov
  • Martti Louhivuori

Present

  • Radovan Bast
  • Thor Wikfeldt
  • Rossen Apostolov (chairing this meeting)
  • Gerd Behrmann
  • Hans A. Eide
  • Martti Louhivuori
  • Michaela Barth

Excused

  • Lene Krøl Andersen


Agenda

1. Thor Wikfeldt as deputy project manager (information).

This was done to get more continuity into the project in case project manager cannot continue for whatever reason as well as to get feedback on working routines, internal and external documentation, and to improve these.

2. Next physical meeting September 6 (information).

Arlanda, entire day. In this agenda point we can also collect agenda points for the September 6 meeting.

3. Status report by project manager (information).

  • Workshops held.
  • Workshops planned.
  • Lessons learned.
  • Success stories.
  • Road blocks.

4. Improved feedback and workshop monitoring (information and discussion).

We are designing a short (5 minute) online survey that we send to participants 2-3 months after the workshop. We wish to find out whether our workshops induce any change. We will present and discuss our tentative survey questions.

5. Prepare terms of reference for reference group (discussion).

How do we make best use of a RG? RG should define success criteria and requirements list. RG can come up with suggestions.

6. GitLab hosting: decide whether we set up an open call for the GitLab hosting (decision).

So far we have nothing concrete. It seems difficult to convince national infrastructure providers to commit to such a service. We can reach out to commercial providers but then we might need to host data outside Nordics. Data staying under Nordic legislation would be a big plus. If we wait too long with the service, it will be too late to get users on board.

7. Mid-term report preparation for September (information).

The SG is informed to reserve time to evaluate, give input, and for the approval process.

8. Decision points checklist https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9tCS2R8WVYFZm5rbXYzZkVtNFE (information).

Michaela will inform us about it and we get feedback from SG. No preparation from SG is needed this time.

9. Transferal of GitLab/CI (information and discussion).

No decision at this point in time but we should discuss and plan steps to transfer the service (which we do not have yet) at the end of the project.

10. Self assessment of the steering group and the meeting format (discussion, repeating point, will be a fixed part of the agenda).

Is the meeting format useful? What can be improved in the meeting pre- and post-processing?


Minutes

These meeting minutes are approved by the meeting participants.

Thor Wikfeldt is deputy project manager

This was done to get more continuity into the project in case project manager cannot continue for whatever reason as well as to get feedback on working routines, internal and external documentation, and to improve these.


Next face-to-face meeting

Arlanda, entire day, currently scheduled for September 6

Thor and Radovan have a collision with a very relevant workshop: http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe5-1/.

Mid-way report needs to be ready at the next face-to-face meeting. We prioritize a physical meeting to simplify discussions and discuss mid-way report.

Action point: Radovan will send out a Doodle for an alternative date but let us hold September 6 in our calendars until we find a better date.


Status report by project manager

Workshops held:

  • 3-day workshops in Espoo, Stockholm, Copenhagen
  • 1-day seminars in Oslo and Stockholm
  • half-day workshop in Umeå at NeIC 2017 conference

Upcoming workshop (next week):

Workshops planned:

Lessons learned:

  • Communicating the scope and requirements for workshops is very important.
  • Per-session feedback is valuable and important.
  • It is very useful to have a local organizer and quite hard if you don’t have one.
  • Room setup has a significant effect on the workshop: 2 projectors are good.
  • Official dissemination channels in Sweden seem to reach our users very well, in Denmark for some reason many people were not reached through official channel: we need to optimize dissemination channels.

Success stories:

  • Generally positive feedback from workshops.
  • We fill the rooms in workshops and people stay over the three days.
  • Oslo (although attendance low) and Stockholm (attendance high) seminars/meet-ups, we need more - good way to engage communities.
  • GitLab service maintenance by CSC team partners works very well.

Engagements:

  • Contribution from DeIC partner still pending.
  • Work plan for next 1-2 months: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IwqkIx4WE1grDldCabxtKgyuXH7AlutP-nb_ncH5ajU/
  • This plan was communicated to our DeIC project team partners.
  • The project manager now awaits action from the DeIC partner, otherwise it will be necessary to re-evaluate the contribution terms.
  • Meeting held in early May seemed to convey interest in commitment.
  • Expectations of something to happen in July in DK?

Road blocks:

  • We have no official hosting solution for GitLab, no transferal plans and no long-term plans (more about that in item 9).

Recommendations from SG:

  • Named local contacts help dissemination and they might have access to official university dissemination channels.
  • Keep track of local contacts for future announcement.
  • It would probably make sense to schedule a workshop for Bergen in case we have enough resources to do so but this could look unfair towards other Nordic countries which “only” have 3 workshops.
  • It is reasonable to expect commitment from DeIC - set up deadlines but mind vacation time in Denmark which is typically in July. If nothing happens, we need to take steps. End of June 2017 it should be clear whether it makes sense to continue.
  • Concerns about commitment need to be communicated clearly and directly.
  • At the next SG meeting this issue needs to be resolved or actions to reorganize in place.

Action point: Radovan will inform DeIC team of the urgency of the situation to commit to our plan. If there is no response or no progress on the plan is visible before end of June, Radovan hands this over to the project owner to take further steps.

Improved feedback and workshop monitoring

We are designing a short (5 minute) online survey that we send to participants 3-6 months after the workshop. We wish to find out whether our workshops induce any change. We will present and discuss our tentative survey questions.

Current drafts:


Prepare terms of reference for reference group

How do we make best use of a RG? RG should define success criteria and requirements list. RG can come up with suggestions.

Michaela has asked the NeIC Pooling Competencies (PoCo) working group whether it would like to be a reference group for the CodeRefinery project. Most important role for RG is to take the “user role” in this project. Time left in the project might not allow more than one review round by the reference group. A lightweight solution would be to invite the PoCo group to provide a one-time review of the CodeRefinery project. Benefit would be more outside feedback - risk is additional overhead.

Idea: organize one discussion workshop towards the end of the project and invite representatives and past participants. Also infrastructure users should be represented in the RG - if we form one. Currently no official infrastructure and no users, this should be re-evaluated once these are in place. And although we do not have these in place, we can start forming this group and involve such a reference group in the process of forming the infrastructure.

Lightweight suggestion: all users of infrastructure can and are invited to submit suggestions and feedback via lightweight/short online feedback tools and we would use this feedback in our reports and decision making. Also the PoCo group could suggest feedback in a lightweight form. Radovan can present the project overview and progress to the PoCo group. NeIC should decide whether it wishes to have an evaluation of an external group.

Action point: Radovan discuss this with the team and implement a lightweight feedback solution once we have sufficient size and communicate clearly its purpose.


GitLab hosting: decide whether we set up an open call for the GitLab hosting

So far we have nothing concrete. It seems difficult to convince national infrastructure providers to commit to such a service. We can reach out to commercial providers but then we might need to host data outside Nordics. Data staying under Nordic legislation would be a big plus. If we wait too long with the service, it will be too late to get users on board.

Radovan has so far not managed to have a meeting with the DeIC representative to discuss the offer in more concrete terms.

Would be potentially beneficial to stay on OpenStack. The recipes are public: https://github.com/coderefinery/gitlab-openstack-deploy

Growing big (goal: supporting all of Nordic academia) would need more than one container. If we discuss migrations, we should involve the team currently doing maintenance and operations so that they can give input and are not surprised or frustrated by decisions falling from the sky.

In the fall an option in Norway may open up based on Kubernetes based on NIRD with compute resources close to this for continuous integration services. We should revisit this point in the fall.

Action point: Radovan to schedule a video meeting with Rossen, Thor, and the CSC team members who are currently running maintenance/operations to discuss possible migration to a PDC-hosted server.


Mid-term report preparation for September

The SG is informed to reserve time to evaluate, give input, and for the approval process.

Action point: Radovan to prepare mid-term report and send out to all SG members 14 days before the next SG meeting.


Decision points checklist

Michaela informed us about https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9tCS2R8WVYFZm5rbXYzZkVtNFE

Action point: Radovan and Michaela will prepare this checklist and pre-fill it and then this will be discussed within SG to check whether observations match (item for next SG meeting).


Transferal of GitLab/CI

No decision at this point in time but we should discuss and plan steps to transfer the service (which we do not have yet) at the end of the project.

There is a possibility that the service might be supported for few more years financially even if a follow-up project for CodeRefinery is not granted. Of course this depends on costs and also the usage. To evaluate this, we will need concrete numbers and costs.


Self assessment of the steering group and the meeting format

Is the meeting format useful? What can be improved in the meeting pre- and post-processing?

No change was suggested.

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