Call for input/opinions: Global Dataverse community survey on possible value propositions and benefits for members

[Dieuwertje Bloemen]

Dear all,

The Dataverse Sustainability Working Group would like to invite you to fill in a Dataverse survey that gauges the interest of the Dataverse teams across the different installations in possible added value propositions for Dataverse community members. In other words, what would make a Dataverse membership worth it for your installation? We highly recommend filling in this survey so we can get a complete picture of what the wants are of all community members and non-members. (For more context and background information, see bottom of this email.)

The survey is available via the link below and takes about 10 minutes to fill in, as it’s mostly giving a rating on a series of proposed added values. We ask you to fill it in once per installation, so we have a response per team that works with Dataverse. And we would like to get your responses by January 19^th.

https://forms.office.com/e/GyHxMU9QWz

If you want to prepare your answers in group or have read through before-hand, you can make a copy of the provided notes spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18WmCYNLYVDroql-xakjlc6BO_Dkpd18V3jGHCkm9PzA/edit?usp=sharing) to have an easy way to keep notes before filling in the survey via the link above.

Thanks in advance and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have by responding/commenting to/on this message.

Kind regards,

The Dataverse Sustainability Working Group.

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More context and background information:

Over the last couple of years, the Dataverse community has been growing continuously. With this community growth, challenges have appeared for the Dataverse community due to the variety of software deployments across countries, domains, and types of organizations, all having different needs and requirements.

To try and find a sustainable way to keep growing while continuing to be a tight-knit community, the Dataverse Sustainability Working Group was established in the Fall of 2023. The mission of the working group is to provide evidence-based, community-reviewed, and consensus-based recommendations on how to sustain and grow the Dataverse community. These guidelines are established with the aim to help the community to establish new and/or adapt existing strategies, organizational structures (e.g., through an organizational model), guidelines, tools, routines and other resources that are necessary to empower the global Dataverse community to ensure that the Dataverse software be maintained and developed in a way that benefits the user community as a whole in a long-term perspective.

One of the results of the preliminary work is that the Sustainability Working Group should get a better insight into what installations/teams/community members would like to get from being a member of the GDCC (global Dataverse community consortium) moving forward. In other words, what can the GDCC/Dataverse community offer that would make being a member worth the investment. The survey asks for the opinions of the different installations we know off on a series of brainstormed value propositions and leaves room to add your own suggestions. This input will be key in selecting which propositions are taken along to investigate further. We don’t guarantee that the top ideas can all be realised, but they will be looked into.

For more information on the Working Group, you can find the open notes document https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBCeLOkHuW0BHMdMbAT3zh8gsaPFWHR1NCTVAR7Xh_A/edit#heading=h.ouli6kp9mpti or email one of the co-chairs (Rene Belso or Dieuwertje Bloemen) with any questions you have about the working group. We will also be presenting the work we’re doing at the upcoming Dataverse community meeting in March. That presentation will include a recap of this survey and how we’re using it moving forward.

[Dieuwertje Bloemen]

REMINDER: The survey is due this Friday (January 19^th).

If you haven't already, please fill it in for your installation/team.

Link to survey: https://forms.office.com/e/GyHxMU9QWz

Thanks!