HSF Interim Foundation Board meeting notes, Nov 5 2014

[Vidyo did not work well for us today. Did we make a wrong call on using Vidyo? If you have experience with a possibly better approach to large free international conference calls (video not needed), please let us know.]

Pere presented slides on behalf of the startup team.

Torre's notes on the discussion around and following the slides follow. Corrections and improvements are welcome. Actions are highlighted with ***.

Indico pages and vidyo are open to all, you don't need a CERN account. BUT lightweight CERN accounts are needed for non CERN people to be able to post material to indico agendas.
*** We will put info on these details with instructions on the HSF website.

It was confirmed that the intent is that editing of website pages is open to all registered members [membership requests are explicitly approved so the membership consists of valid people]. Revisions are recorded and revertible (like wikis). We'll have to see how manageable this is [it will be nice if we have so much participation that manageability becomes an issue ;-)]

We discussed the urgent need to get an announcement out on the SLAC workshop so people put it on their calendars (for many it will also be their first introduction to the HSF).
*** We agreed not to wait for the official DOE-approved site, we will send a pre-announcement right away. We'll approach Hiroshi about using the CHEP list. The initial announcement will point to the hepsoftwarefoundation.org web page for the meeting. We will send a second announcement through the same channels when the official page is ready, probably in a week or so.

John complimented the startup team on the good progress so far. It is good that initiating contacts is beginning.
We discussed how those contacts and discussions should be framed. Is there a method we are following?
The startup team has taken the approach of preparing the draft document synthesizing the white paper inputs and proposing a startup plan, in advance of contact meetings, so we can distribute in advance of these discussions a document that introduces people to the HSF and the ideas for it at this point. This will give some background and a framework to the discussions. But it was noted that the discussions should be open, not bounded by what's in the document; we are talking to people to hear their answers to "What can the HSF do for you".

We discussed the idea of a questionnaire in order to guide the input to the information we want to gather in a uniform way. We may also want to target specific questions to particular groupings of people. It was agreed a questionnaire could be a good idea particularly leading into the SLAC workshop. But again without bounding the input to what we think to ask. We want to hear also about the things we haven't thought about.
*** We'll look into complementing the document with a questionnaire, as input to contact discussions and/or the workshop.

The draft document should be public in the next few days, and usable for contact discussions.
*** With this in hand, the startup team will begin organizing contact discussions soon (as per the presented plan for next steps for the coming month). 

We discussed ideas for the SLAC workshop agenda. Very short (5min) talks could be a way to hear a broad range of inputs on the most important things communities bring to the HSF and would like to get from it, without overwhelming the time available. The workshop should include both structured discussions, and open discussions to hear new ideas from newcomers.

It was noted we haven't yet lined up 'guinea pigs' as we said we would in the next steps presented in last month's presentation. We are arriving at the point where we can begin to do this, with contact meetings about to begin and the website in place.

There was general consensus that the presented timeline for the next month looks reasonable.

Next IFB meeting will be in early December, probably in the same or similar timeslot.
*** We will try to move the meeting an hour later to be less unkind to the US west coast.