Post-mortem: First ISLE Release Party is Successful!

[David Keiser-Clark]

Melissa Anez shared that, from her Islandora experience, our first ISLE Release Party was well attended and with a nicely varied audience. By what attendees self-reported, the "party" had a mix of experienced ISLE users, people just starting with ISLE, and at least one attendee who was there to evaluate ISLE and advocate for it at their institution. Another measure of success for the event was that our messaging reached a variety of different "use cases" and all of them saw something in the messaging that told them they'd be welcomed and might get something from the event.

We had about 12-14 people at peak, mostly during the first hour, maybe 16 people overall, and probably four people for the final hour. Participant suggestions were made to continue doing these release parties, and Islandora is enthusiastic about hosting them. We'll reduce the time from 4 to 2 hours as that seems a better length. Participant suggestions also included doing monthly ISLE open Zoom gatherings -- and not only for releases. The combination of a focused gathering, readily available support, and ability to focus work time for a couple hours on ISLE seemed to resonate with folks. Melissa reported on the ISLE Release Party at today's Islandora Coordinating Committee, with the above recommendations. 

Melissa Anez requested to borrow the ICG's "Maintenance-Mindset: ISLE Release Party!" model (request granted!) so that she, Roise LeFaive, and Amy Blau could use it as a starting point for developing a similar open Zoom gathering model with a How-To/Demo Islandora 8 focus. (There's also a suggestion to use it with other topics like perhaps metadata or migrations.)

Melissa shared: "I am very glad that it went so well, and I'm excited to see where this model can go in the Islandora community. Thanks again for inviting the IF into the planning."

Thanks to everyone for making this happen and for bringing your skills, questions, and passion.

David Keiser-Clark