OpenWetWare:Steering committee

OpenWetWare is being considered for an MIT iCampus student grant. You can find our application here. The OWW steering committee is for coordination and communication with MIT iCampus leadership.

Goals

Software development

In order to facilitate user interactions with OpenWetWare, we would like to establish a UROP position to work on a variety of software tools:

1. Tools to simplify data entry into the wiki
   • Word - word macro to convert formatting to wiki markup. Improve the html->wiki markup scripts
   • Excel - improve the CSV-> wiki markup converter. Add support for chart addition.
   • Powerpoint - Auto-image saving and uploading of slides. Transfer of slides to word files and then convert to wiki markup.
   • LaTeX - expanded math support. LaTeX->wiki converter.
   • Images - expanded image format support, automated uploading of sets of images.
   • For further information see this page on existing document converters.
2. Tools to map wiki pages onto static websites.
   • Further automate the existing script.
   • Include CC license information on each dynamically created page.
   • Automatically set page width to an appropriate value.
3. Login
   • Add support for MIT certificates.
   • Write script to automatically create login accounts based on a list of email addresses in CSV format.
4. Tools to integrate permanent and evolving documents.
   • Discussion pages for DSpace documents
   • Markup for DOI's (just as there is markup for urls and wiki pages)

Ideally, we hope to coordinate with the MediaWiki open source community on tools that are likely to be of general use to the community (MediaWiki is the open source software that OpenWetWare is based on).

Contacts

• Principle contact: Barry Canton
• Other contributers: Ilya Sytchev, Austin Che, Sri Kosuri, Jason Kelly

Cultivation of user base

The success of OpenWetWare depends critically on cultivating and maintaining an active user base. We plan to dedicate funds to enable tutorials, conference visits, advertising, and other mechanisms for recruiting new users to OpenWetWare.

Contacts

• Principle contact: Sri Kosuri
• Other contributers: Jason Kelly, Danielle France, Barry Canton, Reshma Shetty

Data management

In the long term, the success of OpenWetWare relies on the assumption that the number of users actively curating the information of OpenWetWare will scale with the amount of content generated. However, there has been little work to examine how collaborative tools can best be used to develop information resources, such as the OpenWetWare protocol collection. We believe the project would benefit dramatically from the active establishment of community standards for organizing content in OpenWetWare. We will establish a UROP position to evaluate and implement templates and other methods for organizing information in OpenWetWare.

Contacts

• Principle contact: Jeff Gritton
• Other contributers: Jason Kelly, Reshma Shetty, Sri Kosuri, Jeff Gritton.

Integration with laboratory classes

To complement its mission to promote an open culture in biological science and engineering, OpenWetWare will be integrated into the curriculum of laboratory classes. As a pilot experiment, MIT's BE.109 Laboratory fundamentals of biological engineering will be relying heavily on OpenWetWare to disseminate course content and to serve as a shared space for students, TA's and instructors to communicate.

Contacts

• Principle contact: Reshma Shetty
• Other contributors: Natalie Kuldell

Specific Benchmarks for May 2006

Community Benchmarks

• 30 academic labs
• 750 users
• 3000 uniques visitors/day

(Each of these is ~3X the number currently on the site)

• Send representatives to 2 conferences (ASCB & ?)

Content Benchmarks

• An automatic method for to convert wiki->static webpage directly hosted on openwetware
• Templates for protocols, equipment, materials, biologicals; Also, better organization scheme to encourage use and standardization of the shared information.
• Integration with the BE.109 curriculum; Active Student Participation
• 1400 content pages (2X current amount)

Timeline

The tasks of greatest initial importance lie in building the usage infrastructure of OpenWetWare; i.e., quantifying the current usage and developing the tools and guidelines that will be needed to continue its growth. This timeline is written with this initial output in mind. It is expected that many of the up-front analysis and development tasks will morph into more curative duties as the year progresses. Some tasks will be better suited to a time when more of the infrastructure is in place. For example, we might wait until the summer to begin merging OpenWetWare with fall class curricula.

Regular committments include monthly committee meetings.

12.2005:

• Advertise for two UROP positions: software development and usage statistics & analysis
• Compile initial observations of wiki usage, desired software improvements, and specific tasks for UROP positions
• Make initial advertising materials (business cards, advertising & lab invitation emails)

01.2006:

• Review findings of Usage/Data Management UROP
• Formulate usage guidelines and develop their implementation
• First recruitment/introductory tutorial luncheon

02.2006:

• Review protocol templates, conversion tools, links to static webpages
• Implement usable tools with current users
• Second recruitment/introductory tutorial luncheon

03.2006:

• Design set of advertising materials (posters, mailings, etc) and have printed
• Develop outreach strategy: identify relevant conferences & meetings, etc.
• Third recruitment/introductory tutorial luncheon
• Recruit at Bioengineering Department Retreat

04.2006

• Fourth recruitment/introductory tutorial luncheon

Summer.2006:

• Develop tutorials for integration with BE.109 and 7.02
• Hold large-scale 'brush-up' tutorial for all current users
• Usage/Data Management UROP develops strategy for integration with DSpace
• Attend Wikimedia conference: Wikimania

Fall.2006:

• Develop institution-specific information hubs
• Fifth recruitment/introductory tutorial luncheon

Timeline 'enforcers'

• Principle contact: Danielle France
• Other contributers: Jason Kelly, Sriram Kosuri

Budget

A tentative budget, please revise.

• $6000 for a UROP dedicated to software tools development
• $6000 for a UROP dedicated to data management
• $2000 for advertising materials
  • OpenWetWare gathering in Boston
  • poster and business card printings
  • poster mailing
• $5000 for travel funds to conferences
  • conference registration
  • travel expense
  • Additionally, students traveling to conferences to present research will also be able to spread information about OWW without requiring direct support.
  • Which conferences? (please add!)
    • ASCB (Dec 10-14, 2005)
    • ICSB (June 18-21, 2006)
    • SB2.0 (May 20-22, 2006)
    • IBE (March 10-12, 2006, Tucson, Arizona)
• $2000 to hold Boston-area OpenWetWare tutorial sessions
  • travel to and from session
  • refreshments
• $1000 for OpenWetWare steering committee administrative costs
• $5000 for sponsorship of weekly contributions to a 'big-name' blog
  • Funds would be contingent on us having someone lined up by the mid-point meeting with iCampus.