[Evergreen-reports] Ideas for the Future of the Reports Interest Group

[Geoff Sams]

I think this is a great start, though I haven't been much of a part of this section of the community as of yet.  I do think striving for quarterly meetings would be a good idea.

2) While I tend to like the way agendas lay out the meeting, it can be too easy to fall into a habit of leaving things on the agenda or tabling them for next time.  I know from experience that this can lead to the same discussion a million different ways every meeting.  I think picking a singular large topic to focus a meeting on might be a good idea, as long as other meetings focus on different topics it should be fine.

3) I would love to see some hangout oriented meetings/demos.  This is the sort of thing I can forward to my group and have them participate if they would want to, without overwhelming them.

4) I would certainly like to see other options and possibly how to go about implementing them.


Thanks,
Geoff Sams

Roanoke Public Library
817-491-2691

________________________________
From: evergreen-reports-bounces at list.evergreen-ils.org [evergreen-reports-bounces at list.evergreen-ils.org] on behalf of Jessica Venturo [jventuro at biblio.org]
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 9:38 AM
To: Evergreen Community Reports Email List
Subject: [Evergreen-reports] Ideas for the Future of the Reports Interest Group

Hi all,

The Reports Interest Group met for the first time in a long while at the Evergreen International Conference in Cambridge.  Participants were asked to answer a series of questions on 3 X 5 index cards.  I am still in the process of compiling the responses to post of the RIG wiki page.

In the meantime, I would like to initiate a conversation about the future of the Reports Interest Group.  I have a few ideas that I would like to share with you all:

1) Revamp the meeting schedule

I would like to see RIG meet less often in IRC.  Perhaps quarterly?  This will make meetings more manageable.

2) Down with agendas!

Attempting to stick to an agenda has led to rather repetitive meetings.  We agree at every meeting that we need to learn more SQL and look at the documentation more.  We often don’t get into meatier conversations until we’re half way done, and then there are other agenda items to attend to, so we have to move on too soon or we end up going over time.  Furthermore, our meetings have primarily focused on “finding something to do.”  From now on, I would like to focus less on action items and more on discussion and education.

Instead of having an agenda, I propose that each meeting have a central discussion topic.  I can think of a few topics they may generate an hour’s worth of questions and discussion: managing shared reports, learning SQL, third party reporting tools, training library staff to use reports, common report hang-ups, manipulating data with Excel, etc, etc, etc.  We could vote on the topic before the meeting, or find some “experts” on the particular topics and see if they would be willing to hang out in IRC for an hour and chat with us.

3) Supplemental meetings or events in Google Hangouts

I see two advantages of having SOME meetings in Google Hangouts – 1) It would give us a chance to do live demos of things rather than just talk about them abstractly, and 2) It would allow the IRC-uninitiated to participate.  I have an idea for our first Google Hangout event, which I’ll post once I have more details!

4) Try to be more inclusive of folks who use reporting tools outside of the Evergreen reporter

We tend to focus our energies on talking about the Evergreen reporting tool, but it is evident from our discussion at the  conference that there are many organizations that use other tools to extract information from their databases, whether they are home-grown tools or something like Jasper Reports.  I want to be able to include these folks in our discussions and learn from them.

What are your thoughts about these ideas?  Do you have any ideas of your own?  Please share!

Jessica

---
Jessica Venturo
Applications Support Specialist
Bibliomation, Inc.
24 Wooster Ave.
Waterbury, CT 06708
203-577-4070 ext. 105

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