OpenWetWare:Respond to NSF

High Level Comments from NSF

1. Wants to see a 3-year plan (willing to hear case for 5 years, w/ evaluation point at EOY3)
2. Wants to see money spent on actual stuff (e.g., code) not project management
   • Jasonk 19:16, 16 January 2007 (EST):What are the chances we can convince them a community developer (the position we outlined for the NIH $) is doing 'stuff'? This is not project management (e.g. not dealing with funding, strategic decisions, etc), but rather a person supporting the growth of various communities on OWW - communities that in the end will do more "stuff" then a couple paid programmers could ever do. Also, those communities will be persistent when the grant money ends in 3 years, while the programmers won't. Plus we'd really like to get a volunteer software developer community off the ground, since new code will need support when the 3 years is over as well.
   • Vincent 13:01, 17 January 2007 (EST): Is there any possibilities to spend money on bringing face to face this virtual community in order to stimulate interactions/collaborations:
     • OWW annual conference
     • OWW workshops on hot OWW topics (characterization of parts, optimization of protocols, ethical issues ...)
     • OWW twinning (money available for some OWW user to visit some other(s) on a specific OWW project )

What user types should OWW target for focused development support? What are the needs of these communities?

1. Individual researcher
2. Research lab
3. Research community
4. Educator
5. Journal
6. Organization
7. Other?

• Sri Kosuri (talk): The focus here should not be on user types, but on any of the above categories that are willing to share information openly on biology research.

How should OWW best leverage existing software development efforts?

1. MediaWiki
2. Jot/Google
3. Apple OS Next (e.g., an OS with a built-in wiki)
4. Other?

• Sri Kosuri (talk): It's somewhat silly to consider this question now. Currently, Jot/Apple is not available to us; and Mediawiki seems to be the best software for what we are doing. As opportunities arrive for better software in the future, the Steering Committee (w/ support by technical people hired by the grant) have already shown they are well positioned to make such decisions (i.e., private wikis, moving servers, user management system).

What should be the relationship between OWW and publishers?

1. None
2. Sell-out
3. Destroy
4. Creative partnership
5. Other?

• What does OWW get from working with publishers?
  1. Increased legitimacy
  2. Opportunity to subvert existing merit structure in science
  3. Push forward more rapid publication options / technologies
  4. others?
• Why publishers anyway? What should OWW's relationship be with facebook/myspace? or with slashdot/reddit/digg, or Google? There are other groups that could be considered for partnerships as well.