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Message: #04971

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[EP-tech] Final Projects

	Following up on Justin's email announcing my departure at the end of the year, I wanted to talk a little about what I set out to do with this role, what I haven't accomplished (yet), and what I want to do with the rest of my time in post.

	I arrived fresh-faced and bushy-tailed a year ago, and began by asking you what your most important priorities were.  The overwhelming answer was Better Documentation (BD).  In almost everything I have done since then, I have attempted to find strategies to encourage BD.  I came to the realisation that BD is only possible if the whole community engages with creating BD, which just isn't happening at the moment (95% of edits to the wiki over the past 30 days were by EPrints Services -- I know; I counted them).  I have 6 weeks left to influence this, so there are two projects I'd like to complete with you:

	(1) A Community Contribution Day
		In September, members of the developer community got together the day before the UK User Group meeting and contributed code to the EPrints core.  We talked about running this kind of event remotely, every few months.  I think that's a great idea, but I think we need broader attendance from the community.  Everyone has something they can offer, be it code, documentation, support for new members or training videos.

		In November, I'd like to run a contributions day across the whole community.  The idea will be that you put a date in your diary and block out as much time as you can for EPrints contributions.  We'll have a google hangout or something to enable communication, and we'll organise a list of jobs that could be done beforehand.  Developers can code, documenters can document, organisers can organise, friendly people can be friendly and strengthen the community (I'm expecting people to fit into more than one category).

		As with the hack day, the key objective is to get people connected and supporting one another.  If it works well, it may be suitable to run as a quarterly (or thirdly) event.

	(2) Completing the EPrints Training Course page on the Wiki ( http://wiki.eprints.org/w/EPrints_Training_Course )
		I've been tying my training videos (15 and counting) together into a training course, but I can't do this alone.  I need help from the community in adding the textual parts of the pages to go with the videos, and to link the pages to other pages in the wiki.  I really do think that starting with the training course and working outwards is a great way to get to Better Documentation.  It would be wonderful if I can leave my role having been part of building a valuable community resource.  I have until the end of November to help with this.

	If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions for these two projects, let me know.

	Let me finish by saying that working with you (the community) over the past year has been one of the most rewarding professional experiences of my career.  Even though I'm leaving my role at EPrints Services, my new job at Jisc will keep me directly involved with the UK repositories communities, so I will see you all at the same conferences and events that I always have.  I look forward to continuing existing collaborations and relationships in my new role.


--
Adam Field
Business Relationship Manager and Community Lead
EPrints Services
+44 (0)23 8059 8814