MP_22OCT10

Owned by Natalie Henriques
Last updated: Oct 25, 2010Version comment
2 min read

Agenda

  • Privacy/ My-Plant data
  • Action Items Review
  • The World Gesneriad Research Conference 2010 - Pam Soltis report

Notes

Attendees: Pam Soltis, Doug Soltis, Brent Mishler, Rick McCourt, Dick Olmstead, Steve Mock, Susan Tremblay, Michael Gonzales, Matt Hanlon, Natalie Henriques

Privacy/My-Plant data
  • Sudha Ram from the University of Arizona studies social networks, how they grow and are used. Her group would like to gather anonymous data from my-plant.org user for a study. We need to make sure the PIs are comfortable with this and that our users privacy is protected. The developers are working with Edwin Skidmore to create an IRB approval form for all users, current and future, to choose whether or not they would like their data included.
  • Benefits to My-Plant.org:
    • Find the areas of the site that are useful to users
    • Find how users are interacting with each other
    • Give us insights as a community network, and look at ways we are not utilizing the site
    • Low investment on our part. We will write an automated script to clean the data of any personal information.
      *Sudha's group has worked with well known sites like Wikipedia
  • My-Plant has officialy broken the 200 users mark, we currently have 208 users and growing at a rate of approximately 5 new users each week.
ACTION Items Review
  1. ACTION: Michael will send an email about integrating educational features and targeting education groups.
    • Item is outstanding Michael will work on it next week, please send any ideas of educational groups we could work with
  2. ACTION:Pam and Rick will work together a spreadsheet of each clade, common names and species clade. Michael will check with Sheldon and Bill about the taxonomic name resolution service and how that can be incorporated
    • Pam and Rick will work on it next week. Michael spoke to Sheldon about the name resolution service, it is not at the point where it could be automated as yet but it could be done in an ad hoc basis, it might be available in the next 3 - 4 weeks.
  3. ACTION: Michael will send the group an email to solicit ideas on changing the layout of the site and ways to make the profile view more useful.
    • Michael will meet with the TACC development team next week.
The World Gesneriad Research Conference 2010
  • My-Plant was well received at the The World Gesneriad Research Conference 2010. There were questions on what iPlant can ulitmately provide, there was an interest in where things could go. New users who joined were encouraged to email Pam or My-Plant any suggestions they have
Other Items
  • My-Plant was demoed at the iPlant Board Meeting, the memebers were impressed with the search feature
  • If you have a contact for any society or group where we can promote my-plant send the info to Michael at mgonzales@tacc.utexas.edu