Use it or lose it: a hybrid model for sustaining e-infrastructures

Use it or lose it: a hybrid model for sustaining e-infrastructures

• 1.
  Use it orlose it: A hybrid model for sustaining e-infrastructures A case study from the ViBRANT project Vincent S. Smith Biodiversity Informatics Group | Department of Life Sciences Natural History Museum, London Pro-iBiosphere final conference Meise, Brussels, June 12 2014
• 2.
  Maintenance Funding application Project starts Project ends Developmentphase No further funding or gap in funding for development ? The ephemeral lifecycle of a project TDWG lists 682 Biodiversity Information projects
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  Project Infrastructure Discovery Individualistic Ephemeral Optional Risk taking Implementation Communal/ agreed Persistent Essential Robust & reliable Adapted from Patterson D. 2013, Tempe, Arizona Transition from
• 4.
  “An infrastructure mustbe taken as a process instead of a system.” Shift in the way we think of e-infrastructures and information resources Stable/rigid system Dynamic/open process Outsource to and involve the end user community We need to set up the environment that will enable the community contribution Koerten, H. & van den Besselaar P. 2013. Sustainable Taxonomic Infrastructures: System or Process?
• 5.
  A network ofcompatible services with no single point of failure So… how did ViBRANT go? Low Medium High Scratchpads Platform for Cybertaxonomy Biowikifarm PWT NPT OBOE RefBank GoldenGATE Xper2 GeoCAT CartoDB ESTABLISHED USER BASE
• 6.
  For your communityto support you you first have to build one Confidence Commitment Longevity Agility Adaptability User monitoring Marketing Visibility Intuitive interface
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  Scratchpads Virtual Research Environments 600communities 7,100 active users Institutional support
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  Ambassadors programme Share enthusiasmand vision Usage experience Geographically distributed and cross-domain Crowdsourcing the support activities
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  Crowdsourcing the supportactivities On-line 3 online courses in 2013, 5 in 2014 Global reach Low cost Participants from all continents Training
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  Project management –Issues queue Bug reports Feature requests Support queries Redmine open source project management system > 1,200 issues / year Maximising support efficiency 61% processed within a day1 81% processed within a week1 1 Brake I. et al. 2011. Zookeys 150 doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2191
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  Wiki based documentationsite Documentation Maximising support efficiency > 115,000 views ca. 100 articles
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  1 Embracing acommons philosophy Adopt CC0/CC-BY licences for all support and outreach material Maximising support efficiency 2 Improve cost/benefit ratio Adopt open-source support software 3 Keep open communication channels Sustain intuitive communication tools 4 Study your end-user base Perform sociological studies
• 13.
  Could a communitysupport model on its own be the solution? Could any our projects follow the Wikipedia business paradigm? Conclusions But… Hybrid models will need to be applied Commons + No (not yet)…