Smart Columbus OS TWG Technology Team Kickoff

October 18, 2018

Attendees: Dean Allemang, Tammy Chellis, Johnson Denen, Vince DiMascio, Brian King, Chris McClellan, Monica McJunkin, Scott Merrill, Phil Norman, Jim Perry, Adam Sauer, Bill Schwanitz, Sharon Wilhelm

Regrets: Zach Mears, Mihail Chirita

Minutes

• Introductions

• Today's objectives

  • meet each other

  • review the terms of our engagement as TWG members

  • collectively set our objectives and the measurable results that tie to those objectives

  • Agree on TWG facilitators' and members' roles and duties

  • agree on dates that work for most of us for the rest of our meetings

• What is the TWG?

  • Framing the TWG in the broader Smart Columbus context

    • We are a volunteer group dedicated to supporting Smart Columbus. We are contributing to a foundational component known as the Operating System, which is the data backbone for Smart Columbus.

    • This is Segment 3. In this Segment we are focused on the use of Open Source in the OS.

    • There are four Working Groups: policy, data, productization, and technology. We are the Technology Group. The Policy group is running in parallel with us and the other two groups are dormant during this segment.

• Working Group Objectives

  • Defining audience and customer

    • Brian K noted that TWG recommendations directly inform the OS roadmap

    • We should include in our recommendations estimated new resource loads for the OS team to consider/budget (e.g., staff for managing Open Source campaign)

    • The OS team will shed light on the practical reality the OS team is dealing with today and anticipates to be dealing with in the future

    • Extended vision is that other cities pick will this up and individual cities would even own components of it, with accountability for future management/development of those components

  • The Smart Columbus Operating System team provided some initial specific categories, questions, and outcomes, which are set forth in the table below:

[Table: Segment 3 Objectives as provided by the Smart Columbus Team]

Category	Question	Outcome
Licensing	Which should be used?	Recommendation on Open Source License(s) to use
Downsides	What are risks and issues?	List of downsides with mitigation strategies
	Who might we model after?	At least 1 organization to recommend to use as a model
Community	How might we engage and manage	Examples of ways to keep community engaged
	How might we expand our sphere?	Examples of ways to expand contributor sphere

• Discussion

  • many organizations do Open Source really well. This TWG should start by identifying such organizations that are appropriate exemplars for how the Operating System should operate

    • Johnson noted that we should also find models of what not to do (e.g., AOSP / Android)

  • we probably need to accommodate more than one license recommendation, allowing for some variation in the situations encountered by the OS team. For example, while there may be a general desire to employ a permissive license, the OS team may choose to rely upon GNU GPL products that would require a strong copyleft license in the OS.

  • this TWG will differentiate between Free Software and Open Source software in its analysis.

  • Scott - why open source?

    • To build great secure products fast and with diverse perspectives

    • To enable reuse by other cities, per the City of Columbus OS charter

    • To make a better data discovery environment (e.g., adding social)

    • To make a better visualization env to serve people with many levels of technical and non-technical skills

    • To enable commercial app development for Columbus entrepreneurs and local economy

    • To build community for engagement and citizen ownership

• Timeline

  • The timeline for this segment is Oct 15 (Segment Kickoff) through Jan 30 ("Report out"). Taking holidays and vacations into account, we have 10-12 weeks.

  • Meetings during the Segment:

    • Technology TWG (this team meets every two weeks)

      • Consider meeting virtually in the spirit of Open Source. Agreed that next meeting will be virtual

    • Monthly broader TWG meeting (i.e., this team and the Policy team)

• Review of Roles: facilitator, member, Tammy

• Workshop: writing the press release

  • Agreed to work offline

• Tools

  • Slack: channels are open

  • Dropbox: unanimous that Dropbox is not ideal. People prefer Google Docs/Sheets for collaboration or github wiki

  • Video conferencing: G-Suite Hangouts were not ideal for meeting with in-person and remote people. Try BlueJeans next

  • Would like to try github for async communications, project/task management, and document development. Need to clear that platform choice with Tammy and locate the repo in an appropriate place (in the custody and control of Smart Columbus).

• Actions

  • Facilitators: create Doodle to determine availability to schedule next TWG meetings

  • Project plan -- Facilitators: schedule facilitator call to establish and document milestones; circulate to broader team with goal to flesh out by next meeting

  • Tammy: advise whether Github is viable collaboration platform for this TWG

  • Tammy: connect TWG with the people from whom to get scenarios / use cases

  • All: complete the Press Release

  • All: provide your availability for next meetings. Next meeting will be virtual

  • Facilitators: get and review the City of Columbus charter for Smart Columbus , to better understand the higher-level objectives, with special attention to the objectives specific to Open Source

• Notes

  • Do not refer to Smart Columbus Operating System as "SCOS". Use "the OS", the "Smart Columbus OS", "the Smart Columbus Operating System", or "the Operating System".