Steve Foreman, Hiroyuki Ichijo, Dave Thomas, Timo Pröscholdt

The meeting noted the slow uptake of the wiki and Jira amongst ISS members. In particular, it noted the lack of response from ISS chairs to the invitation to participate in a telecom. It was considered the slow uptake reflected a couple of elements, especially that ET chairs were extremely busy and that historically, the interaction between the chairs has been minimal outside of the OPAG meetings. These two elements actually reinforce the need for tools such as the Jira and Wiki but it was noted that it is unreasonable to expect rapid uptake.

Regarding the Jira, the question remains of “is this the right tool?” and “is this too complicated?”. It was noted that to this point, the Jira has been a tool under trial by the ICG-WIS, and that the tasks populated in it are short term and specific, relating to the implementation of WIS. Perhaps, it would be sufficient if the initial use of Jira be restricted to those chairs or ETs and IPETs under ISS who also sit on the ICG-WIS, and that these people just use the Jira as a tool for coordinating between each other on critcal WIS issues. Eg, the ET-GDDP meeting process showed the Jira as a simple log file of arranging the meeting. 

The second question is whether or not the ISS should be focussing on utilising the Jira or the wiki. It was decided that for now the focus should be on getting the ISS ET chairs familiar with the wiki. This could be accomplished by utilising the wiki in preparation for the ISS meeting scheduled for September. This could be done by making the development of documentation for the ISS meeting to be done via the wiki, eg draft work plan. Tasks assigned to groups could be entered into the wiki and so on.

The meeting noted the use of Google docs by the IPET-MDI, and saw that this was due to a combination of factors. First, was the length plus range of fonts and styles in the meeting report that was above the ability of the WYSIWYG editor on the Wiki. This led the team to trying to use the upload of documents to the wiki for people to download and edit with change tracking. However, this was spoilt by the limitation of filesize that could be uploaded to the wiki which meant the report had to be broken into 3. The filesize has been addressed, but it is clear that working on the wiki does come with some changes in habits. It was noted that the use of google docs was not a bad idea, but it does have issues with firewalls at some organisations due to it being a file sharing system. An alternative is huddle, but this needs to be hosted by a member such as the UK rather than the secretary, whereas, the wiki can be done by the secretariat.

The meeting discussed the possibility of a regular teleconference (every two months) of ISS chairs to get people used to more interaction. While the meeting was positive about the idea, it was noted that timezone difference and high workloads would be risk factors to consider.

The meeting agreed to follow the strategy for the ISS meeting in September, and to keep encouraging people to make use of the wiki. It noted the secretariat has an intern starting in mid June who will be able to support users in getting familiar with the wiki and Jira. It further agreed that this is worth persisting with in the long term and not to be too disillusioned at a slow uptake.

 

Finished at 11UTC.