---
# System prepended metadata

title: Chris and Jim strategy sync notes
tags: [2i2c]

---

::::success
- Template: [Follow the 1-1 template doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ENQLZHa7z5Bfwod4EFRnjw5kxx1h6ek5ddCnnBn3kDE/edit?tab=t.1ab9a1red0xp#heading=h.nbfn9oohkqr5)
    - 3 "work" meetings for every 1 "person" meeting.
- Video link: [this slack huddle](https://app.slack.com/huddle/TKHFGBRC2/DKUU6CP16)
::::

## Person goals

### Personal goals for this period


### Highlights from last 1-2 weeks


### Low points from last 1-2 weeks


### Anything you learned?


## Content goals

### Goals for this period

- Test initial sales hypotheses around premier membership.
    - [Lead generation experiment](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aI-NhVOqx6G1n8pBMS6oDSBaZlSoR2Z-jhudJMBbhg8/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.vq43ra9iqk8p)
    - Involves improving the pitch deck, then identifying communities to reach out to.
- Integrate Harold, April and IOI into BD motions
- Keep selling and renewing

### What are you not doing:

- Not building a communications and marketing strategy
    - Open source science conversations etc
    - Will be parked for now
- Stop unstructured exploration of service design with James

### Things we need to keep an eye on

## 2025-10-28

+ CZI lookback?
+ Are we on track?
    + Don't have explicit financials, this is a risk.
    + Anecdotally, feels like we are on track for memberships. Things "feel right".
    + Felt more "2i2c is in it for the long haul vibes" at the CZI conference.
    + New risk: prospective buyers think that AI replaces us.
    + Do we need a different strategy than "grow the membership"
        + Rate of growth is unlikely to be fast enough to hit our revenue marks w/o additional funding.
        + Should have exploratory plans around philanthropic investment.
+ Jim projection "where are we at?"
    + 
+ Services strategy lead?
    + Examples of unintentional community leadership
        + Tasha gets a lot of interaction with Yuvi and Jim
            + This has empowered her to bring them into proposal writing, vision-making, etc.
        + Carl has leveraged Yuvi to help with Carl's NRP
        + Jim and Bernie Boscoe
            + Possible approach to Josh G. for funding LLMs in adjacent hubs.
    + When this happens in P&S
        + James is curious, but feels pushed off because "it's not his job"
        + Giuliano comes across like "we just need to scale"
        + Example: Statements of work are hackmds, not organized, involve a lot of deep engineering work.
            + But not visible, published , celebrated, etc.
+ JupyterCon planning
    + Strategic role gap in 2i2c?
    + Ways to connect science communities to open source communities
    + Proactive versus passive
+ HPOSS report
+ IOI retro
    + Helped at coaching Jim, but not benefitting 2i2c's broader strategy.
    + B+ / A- total
    + How it helped
        + Helped Jim to understand his own role and design the roles of BDL
        + Allows him to build more discipline around the work he does.
        + Gives him language for how Giuliano's role is vital
        + Scaffolding time in roles
    + What did we miss? What is still burning?
        + Still a gap between P&S and BD around product conversations and innovation.
            + Gap between Jim and Giuliano still doesn't feel solved.
        + Didn't make progress on the "approach to market"
            + Language like "service addressable market" vs. "total addressable market" has improved, but not systematized.
    + How does IOI feel about this?
        + Initial engagement after needs assessment wasn't in the direction we wanted.
        + They imagined we were less-further along than we were.
        + Turned into coaching Jim and helping him grow into a BDL role, see the ways that he was blocked.
    + Would you recommend working with them?
        + Yes I would, but probably Q2 2026 when we have more sharply-defined problems to work on.
        + We did a blend (SOWs didn't hit the mark) and this became more like a general coaching and exploration session.
        + Retreated into "shadow executive" with somebody recommending tactical ways to make changes.
        + "Very confident in Emma's skill, and her past in building lines of business at Springer were relevant here"
    + What's a risk now that the IOI engagement isn't there?
        + When weeks get disrupted, it disrupts the system for disciplined, systemic thinking.
        + This is a risk for vacation, travel, etc.
        + We were having wind-down conversations with Emma etc. Harold met 1 on 1 "how can I best-coach Jim?"
    + Did we learn that we weren't ready to have a consulting-style relationship after all?
        + Maybe, need to think about this.
+ Sloan proposal with Bernie Boscoe
    + Fernando has known her for a while
    + Quillm
    + Tacit knowledge
    + What is missing in 2i2c
        + Jim keeps building exploratory proposals on his own.
+ Blogging workflow check in
    + `blogidea.2i2c.org`
    + How can we make academics feel safe to share a quick win instead of expecting them to make a claim!?

## 2025-09-30

- CloudBank 2
- Anything to discuss or refine for Q4 objectives?
- Can you share any knowledge you gained about Giuliano when you two met? What makes him tick? How he thinks about his role? How to most appropriately motivate him etc?

## 2025-09-16

Agenda

1. Value of connecting with Giuliano?
    - Did a lot of relationship-building in general, which will hopefully make it easier to find common ground.
2. 2025Q3 wind down
    - How does Chris see the Q3 wind down? This is a WIP. Discussions with April. Chris is sometimes feeling like a project manager. 
    - It's hard to bring everyone together in space and time. Async reflection. A meeting to process some of that via a Miro board. Discussion about the key themes that emerged.
    - On or around October 2 we will have a planning session for Q3. 
    - Jim liked the learning tables. Chris: thinking about how to enhance what is going well.
    - Where was the friction in our processes from Q3?
        - Had to juggle a lot of different documents
        - But had the least amount of confusion about systems of work
    - Width of the learning tables felt like it was a lot of information, maybe too much.
    - Problems with actions: moment of first value had issues to move it forward, but no work happened.
    - Chris: Expected each objective had approximately 15 rows of learning. Every day we should see progress.
        - CH: Not necessarily "expected" this quarter, but something we want to build _towards_.
    - Jim: Need to make sure that we are building towards future scaling needs, not just doing manual things for our current levels of scalability. We need to build the foundation so we can start building above it. 
3. 2025Q4 planning
    - Chris: I hope this will follow a similar structure. I'd like to get up and running faster in Q4. Retrospective on Q3 to influence what changes we should make to the system in Q4. 
    - Chris: Some objectives (e.g PMF) might be too big and need to be shaped more tightly to be actionable. 
    - Chris: I want to see more subgroups. Jim and Giuliano think we should make progress toward X so they got together before the planning event to present the plan. 
5. Jim reshaping his role(s) 
    - https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/2667
    - Chris: Assume you only actually do 10% of this. What is the most important thing to do? 
    - We have already defined too many KPIs! What are we actually trying to improve? What is the simplest possible thing?
6. Marketing
    - Chris: I was chatting with April. I didn't realize that marketing was situated under BD. I was more off the cuff.... triad: Marketing, BD, Product. Marketing is providing a critical service to BD. I still need guidance on goals. 
    - Jim: Interesting! I imagined the triad as Marketing, Sales, Product. Is BD more than sales?
    - Chris: Sales is part of it. Marketing vs. BD? I imagined marketing as growing the brand, casting a net that is very wide, generates leads for BD. BD then converts these leads or funders of whatever to stay engaged with 2i2c and produce revenue. 
    - Chris: Should BD be limited to membership sales? Should BD also include grants and funding scenarios? Jim: Yes, from an operation point of view. At a content level, this will likely be implemented by the ED. 
    - Chris: We need the right information source to understand if we are on track or off track toward pushing the revenue cliff out. This is vital to define our fundraising targets to compliment sales targets. 
    - Jim: How does 2i2c give value around co-creation? How does this connect to marketing? How does this connect with brand?
    - Chris: With my marketing hat.... I want to know how 2i2c wants to be seen. What is the org? I felt like Marketing has been blocked on the value prop level. Getting that nailed down would be helpful. THIS is why 2i2c is valuable. When the value prop has lots of words about co-creation and community impact, our product and our sales literature need to speak to those claims. 


## 2025-08-26

1. PMF - Survey next steps
    + How to get engagement?
    + Giuliano seemed to read but didn't engage.
    + Meeting with G+J today needing customer feedback before asking James to deliver.
    + How to get P&S engaged differently in customer discovery and product-market fit.
    + What's the situation right now?
        + GMan gets frustrated because James hasn't delivered services.
        + James says "well this is what I've done"
        + Jim's take: How does James know what's right? Is there a dialogue with customers that shapes this answer?
            + Can we integrate this with service design work?
        + Common vignette
            + VEDA says "we want to buy X services from 2i2c"
            + 2i2c promises a shit-ton of hours
            + This scared P&S.
            + GMan now wants to strongly scope the number of hours.
            + GMan is more worried about constraining James, so James is more worried about hour counts rather than unlocking via the right amount of service.
            + Example: Software images
                + Yuvi says "we don't want to be responsible for maintaining images"
                + James says "we have to be involved in maintaining images, that's why this is baked into tiers"
                + GMan agree with Jim's blending of "2i2c not responsible for images" and "2i2c needs to enable users to build images"
            + Leadership is a verb not a noun.
        + What has the PMF objective taught us?
            + Customers see risk in the prospect of unbounded cloud costs.
            +Observability and reliability of cloud costs are drivers for customers to purchase 2i2c.
2. How to think about fundraising.
    + Chris met with LJ. She will reach out to Jim to discuss HubSpot. LJ will likely reach out to Jim via cal.com.
    + What should the role of fundraising be within 2i2c? Who should oversee this? Last year we did an all-hands-on-deck move to get the NF funding. Fundraising apparatus has not been nurtured. 
    + Have the strategic winds shifted enough to keep doing fundraising? Federal retreat retreat from investment in research. Should we revisit fundraising?
    + Was it a mistake to try and say that our goal is to achieve self-sufficiency in one to two years? 
    + Depending on the answers here, what is 2i2c's strategy here?
    + What are we missing?
        + Inadequate articulation about a 2 year time horizon.
        + Not enough pushback for our original strategy to sell direct to community premier memberships.
    + What we need?
        + A target to hit for ARR by date X.
        + Hypotheses to test to get there.
        + Milestone targets.
        + A way to test whether we are hitting our milestone targets or not.
    + Flavors of revenue
        + Essential, Advanced, Premier membership.
        + Usage fees.
        + Statements of work.
        + Other (grants, org funding, etc)
3. BDL Accountabilty influence
    + FMRR repo as a command center for business strategy
    + Stay "on task" during sprints
4. Feedback from Giuliano and James on BD request as a way to influence P&S
5. How to handle LLM generated content with Yuvi?

## 2025-08-19

### Next actions

- Chris defines an objective to define a communications system for 2i2c to communicate its impact. Use this system to enable somebody like Kirstie.

### Notes

- Communications strategy
    - What did you discuss with Kirstie? Are comms part of our _service_ rather than just our BD goals?
    - How can Chris participate in this now that April is stepping back from it? What is missing?
    - This is related to the deep customer survey work from Kirstie and the survey responses.
    - Kirstie
        - She is more interested in enabling people like Stefan and Jarrod to get credit for things
        - She wants to support impact stories for others in the BIDS network
        - How could 2i2c support this
            - Help them co-create blog posts about their infrastructure.
            - Not selling communications artifacts built by 2i2c.
        - Project that Chris and Kirstie could start with
            - Blog post from the future about using local LLMs using NSF and public infrastructure.
            - This could align Yuvi, Giuliano, Jim towards product direction.
        - Directions of lots of little blog posts, openness, and transparency
            - Generally, really like the idea
            - This is not the natural stance of everybody in the org
            - Need to figure out how to surface these stories for everyone
            - Would help the organization function in this transparent style. Continuous learning.
            - Can you shape an objective around continuous communications workflow?
    - What stands out from the survey
        - Reliability
        - Customizability of community infrastructure
        - Openness and transparency
- PMF objective
    - Do you feel we're on track to make progress here?


## 2025-08-05

- Product market fit objective and experiments
    - PMF objective is really big and hairy. Don't know how to define easy experiments.
    - What is it that we're trying to solve when we meet with somebody like Kirstie?
- How can we iterate on a *single* experiment rather than multiple experiments?
- Set it up so that any of us could interact with a premier tier buyer and follow a structured way to capture the interaction.
- CH: We need to iterate much more quickly than this. Just focus on the one better thing to do.
- Time to first value
    - Need to define the time to first value.
    - We can programmatically define when agreements have been executed.
- How can Chris more effectively be involved?
    - Track initiatives in the initiatives board.
    - Provide *positive*, "how can I help" level feedback throughout initiatives.
- Events
    - Should Jim attend GeoJupyter meeting?
        - ACTION: Chris will ask Kirstie what she thinks.
    - Should Jim go to the VEDA meeting?
        - CH: It might be a strategically valuable meeting, depends on who will be there and if we'll have opportuntiy to interact with people.
        - Recommendation: talk to Chelle and see if it's worth attending.
- IOI meeting was unsatisfying
    - How can Chris be most helpful?
        - Say three things over and over and over.
            - One is "measure, target, iterate"
            - One is something related to the core 2i2c value proposition. Feedback loop requires a different kind of comms strategy.
            - 
- How can Chris help in BD?
    - 

## 2025-07-22

- What needs to be measured from Q3 objectives?
- Hub flavors and distributions
- What's been taking up time
    - NASA VEDA lookback
    - Toronto RfP
    - Updated budget for FY2026
    - Invoicing JupyterHealth
    - Invoicing STRUDEL
    - This has been a lot but sounds like it is closing out.
- Are you leaning into others more?
- What measures are we tracking, and what is blocking us?
    - Time to First Value
        - Have a baseline measure by the end of this week.
    - FMRR
        - Need to agree on what is "good revenue" vs. "bad revenue"
        - Blocked on implementing it in hubspot
    - Who is responsible for product market fit?

## 2025-07-15

### Person goals

+ Learn habits and build systems to sell better/faster
+ Plan ahead for UK trip
+ May want to visit Berkeley soon
+ Jim needs to schedule some time off

## Highlights from last 1-2 weeks

+ BD systems are getting better
    + HubSpot turns out to be really useful
+ Working with Harold
+ Exploratory work toward PMF and 2i2c's grand vision (discussions with Claude…)
+ How to strike the mid-level in getting things done
    + Comfortable at a high level
    + Getting better at a low level
    + Struggling with translating high-level into low-level.
    + Target for personal growth.

## Low points from last 1-2 weeks

+ VEDA request for line item accounting over past year.
    + Was a bit shocking at first
    + Somebody at UAH wants line item style reports
    + Question from Chris: what's the big problem?
        + Reaction 1: To some degree this is a standard problem.
        + Reaction 2: It's a recurring manifestation of prior anti-patterns.
        + Reaction 3: We're solving the problem right now by having more tiered menu.
        + Where is the risk? We have throughput in that we are creating things and have systems for defining deliverables. Is there a strategic level of risk if we don't up the signal. 
+ Creating stories to secure funds from underspecified grants and contracts (JupyterHealth, STRUDEL, Pathways, …)
+ Sluggishness around demos and delivery speed improvements

## Anything you learned?

+ Curious about viewing nbgitpuller as a transformational protocol that can be embraced by our consortium
+ objective measure action
    + "ghost of Chris appears" is driving conversations in sub-group meetings.
    + Need to measure is coming through.
    + But we haven't yet figured out the art of this
        + Too many objectives in Q3
            + Some objectives don't have clear measures.
        + 

### What to discuss today

- Person vs. Content meetings and how to use the sections above.
- Q3 objectives - anything to overview?
    - [Standardization objective](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nFb8h631gvyWsNTCB6QB91pkiyPbDdxowY7YgrLgWJU/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.v4dcglmc4qtc)
    - [Monthly fees objective](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nFb8h631gvyWsNTCB6QB91pkiyPbDdxowY7YgrLgWJU/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.6a1xm8a1pr3d)
- Service menu iterations
    - How to ensure the team gives feedback on the service menu? https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/2474
    - How to think about the Middlebury interaction in the context of our Q3 measure?


## 2025-07-01

### What to discuss today

- Defining objectives for Q3
    - Are you working together with the others?
        - Yes, working a lot with Giuliano
    - Capacity in P&S
        - Keep hearing that James says P&S doesn't have capacity
        - Need to have more conversation in public spaces with others
- Asana task whether CS&S can support euro-zone entity for funding
- Solyr
    - Have had one meeting to see if it's worth making another Solyr push
    - General thinking is that we should try this, since Kirstie is there to help push it forward
    - What's different this time?
        - Turn the big idea into component chunks
    - How could we generalize this roadmapping process so that it wasn't just with BIDS?


## 2025-06-24

### Goals for this period

#### Account Management
+ Close BIDS 2025 deal
+ Shape NASA VEDA renewal SOW
+ Renewals (MTU, U.C. Merced, Temple, Smithsonian, ...)
+ U. Toronto RfP coming up soon...

#### BD direct-to-premier experiments
+ Experiment 1 second emails
+ Experiment 2 planning
+ Quarterly planning

#### IOI + 2i2c engagement

+ Integrated into BD team
+ Currently in Discovery Phase

### What are you not doing:

+ Not building sales decks...
+ Not analyzing risks associated with NASA and NSF funding changes
+ Marketing strategy work

### What do you want to discuss today:

+ BIDS as a Premier Tier learning opportunity
    + Trying to close BIDS
    + Concern from Giuliano and James
        + Worried that this will be more recycling of bespoke stuff.
        + Giuliano much more enthusiastic about public roadmapping.
    + Slowness in P&S providing information
        + Sales cycle is too slow because P&S isn't providing the right information.
        + Where we are doing well
            + James has built the table of services we can offer.
            + But it's not signed off by P&S and James is hesitant to say it's done.
            + Michigan tech university
                + Tech allocation, CPU allocation, Disk allocation, etc isn't there.
                + A person asks "how much more RAM should we add? what would it cost?" Jim doesn't know how to answer. 
                    + Is it BD's job to answer this, or P&S's job?
                    + Where is the urgent / high-opportunity thing to work on? What makes the most progress?
        + James is hesitatant to tell people things are a "source of truth"
            + For things that are already being offered, we need to 
+ Other lighthouse prospects
    + Jim to reach out to Zach re: Stanford.
        + depends on finding the right person to help shape Premier Tier as a lighthouse rep
+ Aaron grant opportunity
    + Chris will send an introduction email Aaron <> Jim.
    + Aaron used to work at the D-Lab.
    + He's working on a project involving multiple stakeholders.... he will apply to NF possibly with 2i2c as a contractor or co-investigator
    + The topic may be focused on homelessness
    + Aaron has a lot of context around Research IT.
    + Another outcome is to have Aaron serve as a voice of endorsement of 2i2c to Karthik.
+ "Not building sales decks" - how are we testing the value prop and the pitch for premier membership?
    + Experiment 1: Send out e-mails to chief information officer personas.
        + No replies yet.
        + Follow-ups and then will close it if nobody engages.
    + Experiment 2: Go after 5 lighthouses
        + Instead of direct to premier, use contacts that we've got to facilitate sales to a few lighthouse customers.
+ Q3 planning
    + Q1 was agree there is a 3-tiered model
    + Q2 was a framework to test the model
    + Q3 is more clarity about whether our model is right.
+ My guardrails: speed of sales versus speed of P&S
## 2025-06-03

### What do you want to discuss today?

- Emergencies or missed deadlines (what are you going to do about these misses?)
    - EarthScope feedback today on $250/h; Jim needs to develop a brief rationale for why we charge this amount. 
    - NASA and NSF budget implications; Headcount costs, economy of scale benefits of Premier
    - VICTOR compliance docs; Trust Center
- What is the role of docs.2i2c.org
    - To define the intended behavior, outcomes, and value of every service and platform functionality that we offer.
    - Owned by product
    - Is this the source of truth for "intended outcomes / behavior of 2i2c's service"?
    - Does this define what "expected behavior and outcomes" is like for 2i2c?
- Upcoming deliveries or deadlines
    - UToronto RFP
- Places where you’re stuck & want help
    - Comms and brand
    - Not stuck might want help
        - Testimony
        - Demos
        - Trust Center
- New ideas you want to run by each other
    - 501c6
    - Continuous Science Foundation
    - BIDS/Kirstie

## 2025-04-29

- LJ in the works
- Emma in the works
- Meeting with Harold

## 2025-04-15

Agenda:

+ [(Draft) BDL Accountabilty Table](https://docs.google.com/document/d/16yYvr0PC-rYx9cHnV_KwuIMR0Rgoi_cMWJVYh3AiiVo/edit?tab=t.0)
+ [2025Q2 BD Operations Plan](https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/2098). 
+ Balancing Sales role and BDL role
    + be thoughtful about the conflict within these roles
    + data-driven response based on volume of work
    + use burst capacity in a way that is rational
    + balance tactical and strategic
    + iVEDA
+ Shaping Communications Initiative? How to refine?
    + communications plan? interesting but seems complicated.
    + need to know if this will actually work.
    + nontrivial amount of work; minimal possible step with least amount of risk to give us information; keep Giuliano's voice on my shoulder....we are maxed out.
+ UBC update

## 2025-04-01

Jim to revisit the _content-focused_ statement below with a changed perspective on _behaviour-focused_ outcomes. The full cycle of a quarter -- set OKRs, ask and receive help where required, chunk out and solve problems in sequence to complete intiatives -- is an opportunity to demonstrate the leadership of the BDL role. 

Jim to move this text with the changes described above into another artefact. Get feedback on that document from April and then return to nail down with Chris. 

+ OKRs for BDL (2025Q2)
    + Met with April to discuss BDL targets.
    + Meet at the end of the quarter to validate what we've achieved or not achieved.
    + Chris should follow up to do the following
        + Define the Quality Control type principles that we need to follow to .
    + Sales process documented and ready for delegation
        + describe current process
        + integrate clerk role
        + CRM migration
    + Lead generation system
        + ideal customer personas
        + three experiments
    + Invoicing system integration
        + P&S <> BD <> Ops <> CS&S
+ Harold and Jim met with Lila Jane Mabe
    + LJ recommends HubSpot
    + HubSpot can integrate with SAGE
    + Required reconciliation has pros and cons
    + HubSpot has marketing and lead gen support
+ Phasing?
    + Engage LJ under the CS&S hours during April
    + Evaluate larger engagement with LJ in May
    + IOI re-engagement in June
        + upstream dev-as-a-service shaping
        + network of network benefits

## 2025-03-25

### Feedback placeholder
- Suggestion that we start using placeholder for feedback in these meetings.
- IOI process and async communication
    - 
- How can Chris improve the working dynamic with Jim? How can Chris more effectively support Jim in the BD Lead role?
    - 2i2c is getting big enough that we need to move beyond the "individual identity" model of a non-profit.
    - 2i2c's image heavily reliant on Chris, Yuvi, Jim. Less on Harold, Giuliano, April, etc.
    - Celebrating other faces within 2i2c is really important. How can we help them be more visible.
    - Example: Shaping the board
        - Jim's "old self" thinks he'd have to be the one shaping the board.
        - But that's also a "co-founder"-centric model.
        - CH thinks that "setting up a board" is an executive-level task, and that's why the "Chief of Staff" role is appropriate to lead this.
        - JC: There are risks to thinking of Chief of Staff as a pure extension of the Executive Director.
        - Harold should be empowered to identify the systems of accountability for the ED.
    - Sometimes Jim feels like Chris' creates an "anchor point" for a document that forces him to use that as a starting point. This makes Jim feel unhelpfully constrained.
        - Chris needs to instead focus on setting structure and deadlines, then give feedback.


### Agenda

- Review the [Q1 quarterly objectives in BD](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YeksnH88iagFA5WzyQSdDV6xpAjZ7flfd7-COq3VBwQ/edit?tab=t.0). Agree that what's written there reflects reality as we close-out the quarter.
- Begin thinking about [Q2 quarterly objectives in BD](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aI-NhVOqx6G1n8pBMS6oDSBaZlSoR2Z-jhudJMBbhg8/edit?usp=sharing). Review the document. What are the most critical milestones to achieve in Q2?
- Align on [BD KPIs](https://hackmd.io/S6d1JGTvSVei-pPMY-vN7Q)

## 2025-01-07

Chris items

1. UBC status? We need more clarity on the 2i2c role defined for Jim.
    - Jim wants two questions from UBC: salary if he came back, wind-down scenarios at UBC (e.g. could he gradually wind down). Sounds like he'd need to do more "traditional" math work if he went back to UBC. Sounds like Jim really wants to go back to traditional things at UBC. Jim really wants to focus on 2i2c's mission.
    - Need to define a 3-year role that is sustainable for both 2i2c and Jim.
    - Kinds of things Jim wants to do
        - Help 2i2c build an engine for revenue generation, revenue targets, etc.
        - Lean into the Navigation Fund goals and shape them for near-term targets.
        - Jim wants his KPIs to be driven by the Navigation Fund.
        - Jim's strength is not on the operational side of business stuff.
        - Jim wants to focus on the business model, customer archetypes.
        - Harold and Jim have a plan to articulate the business KPIs that Jim should be held accountable to.
        - Chris notes it'll probably be something like "revenue multiple of salary" as a KPI.

1. Alumni page. Damian, Erik. How to position 2i2c as a great celebrator of open source contributors? Contrast this with intra-team dynamics re: Erik.
    - Gracias to Damian didn't happen even though we planned on it.
    - Erik left under less-good terms and we don't have a post about it.
    - How do we decide whether to write a blog post?
    - For now let's not communicate at all.
3. JH invoice
    - Jim should move this forward, not Chris.
    - Why did this require Chris to move forward?
        - When Jim had asked this before, Maryam seemed to defer to Fernando.
        - Chris mentioned that JupyterHealth was a lot less committed than it seemed.
        - **ACTION JIM**: Understand the funding dynamics of JupyterHealth and 2i2c.
            - Are we actually going to get paid for Q3/4 of 2024 or not?
            - What are expectations around future payment?
5. STRUDEL invoice
6. How to avoid the JH and STRUDEL anti-patterns in the future
    - This feels not happening in an invisible way to Chris, causing him anxiety.
    - We need contracts to be in a certain state before work can be done.
    - **ACTION:** Jim will give an update on JupyterHealth and STRUDEL.
8. Jupyter Executive Council?
    - JC recommends that if Chris can deal with it personally, then go for it. If Chris will be too stressed personally, then give it up.
10. NF Goals as drivers of 2i2c activities
    - Chris thinks the goals are a good starting point for the organization.
    - We might be missing some goals and we'll need to discuss other ways to do this.
12. Blog post
    - CH: Jim will take a look 
14. AI stuff -- JupyterHub enables people <> people; JupyterAI enables people <> robots
    - Yuvi thinks that 2i2c could offer "frictionless AI" that is facilitated through orchestrated infrastructure.
    - Chris thinks we'd need to identify the way that 2i2c leans into its strengths.
    - Jim: could we make community-wide assets available to everybody via LLMs?
        - 2i2c enables community infrastructure, how does this relate to LLMs?
        - Example: Community champions create an LLM that is designed for earth science workflows, and 2i2c can help manage / orchestrate the LLM to work with the community.
        - CH: This feels like a good idea for a grant pitch. Could we create a 2-pager that motivates this?

## 2024-11-19

### Focus areas

- Product menu and pricing
    - Giuliano is the key collaborator.
    - CH: Make sure you have synchronous conversations with GM to be on the same page
    - How do we avoid this becoming too complex?
    - Q for Chris:
        - What does it mean to be a member of the 2i2c consortium?
- Sales operations
    - Harold is the key collaborator.
    - James as a supporting role to move that forward.
- Understand revenue implications for business model.
    - Can we pull in Ron from CS&S?


## 2024-09-24

- Action needed
    - Letter from CZI saying "yes we received money"
    - Need a letter confirming
        - Has received money
        - Has been fiscally responsible
        - Has performed on the grant
        - Has reported back
    - Will wait for guidance from Jim.
- Feedback on Navigation Fund e-mail? ([draft link](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLY_HsxBNcN0gwjWae4bAk6pWbkY5bHMq7qVnsIjZ9o/edit))
    - Good idea to push this forward sooner than later.
- Emerging ask with DevSeed
    - 2i2c and CS&S need to confirm eligibility as a subawardee at a certain price-point.
    - Below 2.6 "work years" and we don't have to jump through extra hoops.
    - Need to show that we've gotten a contract for > $500K a year for three years to confirm eligibility.
- Initiatives meeting frustration
    - April introduced a thread to Jim/Giuliano to explore different user archetypes.
        - Value proposition as seen by customers needs to be more measurable.
    - Giuliano seemed dismissive of Jim's feedback 
- HHMI update
    - Special guest was Rowan - he gave demos, which was focused on a lab group page for the Loren Frank group and rendering it in CurveNote
    - People loved it
    - "How scalable is this?"
        - Rowan said "Steve spent about 4 hours creating this"
        - Jim mentioned that at $250/hr this is like $1K and noted that this is much cheaper.
        - Seemed to agree with this.
    - Indicators
        - Learning and behavior is going to come from two sources: people behaving a certain way, or people improving and learning.
- James M. update
    - Navigation Fund proposal was upsetting him
    - No Cost Of Living increases at 2i2c since he's been here.
    - Role that JM plays has a lower salary than his current salary.
- Jenny's training seems to prepare her better to play the role of the Product and Community lead.
    - 

## 2024-09-17

- Agenda
    - How to avoid being commodified?
    - Is there some way to do this that isn't just consultancy?
- Feeling a little stuck on pricing
    - Need to find pricing structure that lets some communities pay very little, and other services that are more expensive.
    - CH: What things can we "sell" right now in order to commit to something
- Revenue targets
    - $200K recurring revenue per month ($2,400,000 / year) is what Jim is focused on.
    - Sustainability is "revenue greater than costs"
    - Would like to get to "revenue exceeds costs" by the end of our CZI extension.
- Indicators
    - Revenue projections
        - Committed revenue.
        - Probability-adjusted revenue.
    - Efficiency of sales
        - Time between first touch and first revenue.
        - Hours of 2i2c time $ revenue.
        - Number of touchpoints needed until a sale.
- User archetypes
    - We don't have user archetypes within 2i2c and this makes it harder to sell
- James and Jenny have a lot of work
    - Support queue is a lot for James
    - James also doing operational stuff
    - Jenny doing a lot of documentation but also social media.
- Bucharest fundraising plans were
    - Small bets ($1000/mo)
    - Medium bets ($10K-20K / mo)
    - Fundraising
    - Didn't do small bets because the sales cycle was too long.
- How does 2i2c generate value beyond a commodified JupyterHub?
    - Assume that NSF commodifies JupyterHub, what does 2i2c provide in addition to this?
    - What is 2i2c's superior product?
    - Giuliano is managing the pipeline of platform improvements which has confined his scope of what he thinks about.
    - James is distracted with sales operations.
    - "nobody is looking strategically at product direction"


## 2024-09-10

### Org design updates

- JC and JM met to talk about the org design
- JM was concerned about how silo'ed it felt
- We exist along a 

### DevSeed updates

- NASA

### Curvenote and HHMI

- HHMI really likes the work being done with Curvenote
- Their publishing platform is going to be built on Curvenote
- Feelings about this?
    - Happy about how 2i2c has helped them
    - Some anxiety about how Curvenote is getting love and 2i2c is perceived as more slowly.
- Could 2i2c be providing the hubs here?
    - Kristen / Michele / etc are aware of this possibility and like the idea.
    - They aren't directly connected with Curvenote.

## 2024-07-09

+ CZI updates? How can Jim help?
+ Discuss coding-challenge-scaffolding idea
    + Chris thinks it's a good idea if:
        + It is valuable for creating open science communities with impact (seems like Donohoe paper makes a good case)
        + It is technically buildable and maintainable with an average to above-average engineering team.
        + There's no other obvious organization that we would partner with this instead.
        + There's $$ to do it.
+ NSF/NASA/Other prioritization discussion

## 2024-07-02

### CZI

+ Positive vibe from Dario at CZI. Budget has been spent but there may be a special budget exception to bring in $700K. Dario will talk with Steve Quake (head of Science) for approval to make a special request. 
+ This is the only and last time for core support from CZI. We have this plot that shows revenue from contracts and grants. They were surprised to see how much came from grants. Some of the grants are like contracts....but getting development grants is not the focus on sustainability. 
+ The new deck is more focused on the path toward sustainability. 
+ $700K from CZI will push us to June 2025. We will need to grow contract revenue. 
+ They were worried about the long-term viability of 2i2c. Their strong advice was that we have to work that out right now. 
+ Chris showed the deck that triggered these discussions.
+ Breathing room through June 2025 will give us a chance to more thoughtfully implement a sustainability plan. 
+ Probability? We can't tell for sure but Chris has guarded optimism. 

### Navigation Fund
+ Karthik? Shared feedback on the deck. Waiting for Rowan.

### Curvenote MOU

+ Chris will flesh it out more. Chris will share it with Rowan soon, likely later this week. 

### Data in AirTable

+ Jim will focus on grant prep for now
+ Jim will assist James and Harold with data hardening.

### CS&S

+ CS&S needs to deliver value to 2i2c.
+ CSIDnet, RESA, PreReview have sparks with 2i2c.
+ New hires may create opportunities for 2i2c.

## 2024-06-17

1. What are the most important takeaways from the meeting? What information have we gained that informs our August decision date?
	+ NASA “core services” opportunity is big for 2i2c
	+ ACCP opportunity is good for 2i2c with challenges
	+ Interactive preprints and articles are a new focus of investment for CZI; Journals are interested
	+ HHMI is more interested than I expected
	+ Jarrod and Stefan see 2i2c as more core to scientific Python than I expected. Centralizing 2i2c as the medium through which core Pyton devs connect with scientists is a possible funding scenario. Linux Foundation assistance? LF is a possible FSP host.
	+ Neuroscience is harder to unify than I expected
	+ Funders want proto-community + infrastructure-plan as evidence of potential impact. Infra alone is not persuasive enough 
1. Does it change anything about our fundraising strategy?
	+ ACCP is time sensitive good chance for $500K+. To be spent before March 2025. 
	+ Need interactive demos that showcase success
	+ Need Chris to help find leads and visions for neuro communities
1. What funding leads did we generate at the meeting?
	+ Chris please follow up with Prachee re interactive publishing. Jim to help build coalition with HHMI, CZI?
	+ Wellcome is cautious without a vision + infra. Need to follow up with Angela/CSS re Climate Sensitive Infectious Disease. Malvika has ideas here too.
1. Are there any follow-ups we need to act on soon? 
	+ Astera. Jim spoke with Jessica and Prachee
	+ Neuro network plan?
	+ CS&S re ACCP
	+ NASA (Steve Crawford) re NCE
	+ NASA (Steve Crawford re Augmentation; need help with pchub story
	+ Deck re: NASA “core services” pitch; need help with Deck
1. Does any of this change our short-term plans for fundraising?
	+ Mostly no
	+ Need interactive demos with 2i2c association
	+ Need constellation service description for ACCP (draft in progress; will need feedback; transfer to a deck) and NASA “core services”. 
	+ Need funders contacts in our CRM


## 2024-05-28

### Roles and responsibilities exercise

- Feedback on a proposed exercise with the team around re-defining 2i2c's team roles
    - **Context**: Roles are "buckets of responsibilities" with expected skillsets.
    - **Observation**: Some team members have responsibilities attached to their role that they are not performing (either because of capacity, or interest, or skill).
    - **Goal**: Define the most important responsibilities that must be done in 2i2c, and ensure we have a role + a team member for each.
    - **Exercise to do as a team or in subsets**:
        - Define the "things that need to be done" across all of 2i2c
        - Prioritize them
        - Start grouping them into roles, where we start with the priority ones. Aim to only group things we'd expect that role to actively steward / do.
        - Look at our current people, and map them to roles.
        - Leave the meeting with alignment about everyone's responsibility, and an expectation that they must carry it out.

- Notes
    - JC: Feels like this is a big lift for 2i2c if we do it all from a blank slate.
    - Could we focus it on a specific aspect of our work? E.g. "the lifecycle of a communtiy".
    - "Too many stickies from too many diverse areas would make it hard to move forward".
    - CH: Maybe we could define the stickies ahead of time? JC nods.
    - JC: Important to have the value proposition conversation ahead of time.
    - CH: How to get people to design systems isntead of just implementation.
        - JC: Challenge is how to bootstrap this. Doing the systems work gets de-prioritized when you need to focus on getting things done.
        - CH: Povertry trap analogy! How can we become more disciplined around system improvement?
        - CH: Partnerships system building is part of the Partnerships Lead role. Community Success sytem building is part of the Community Success Lead role. What can we do to build these systems? Is there a degree of artificial blocking here? 

- Sustainability strategy considerations
    - Do we need to check some of our assumptions in that document and discuss with the team?
    - Should we use the team meeting to align on this strategy rather than defining it ahead of time?
    - This will have a big impact on where Jim/Giuliano/others prioritize their time.
    - JC: Would be really helpful to have a capacity clarification? Are we blocked on new hub launches? What are the easy features on hubs? What can we sell at scale starting in July? 
    - CH: Noticed that the product menu initiative deviated about 2/3rds of the way through. Became more about broad goals and strategy.
        - JC: It was more of a process thing. We agreed there was other stuff we really needed to focus on.
        - What we need now
            - Distill what it means to sell one hub.
- Planetary computer
    - launch as a demo/mvp with a time-box and 2i2c covering some initial cloud costs
    - explore how to turn this service into a sustainable operation
    - similar to binder....how can we make it into a sustainable service?

- CH: recommends book called `Founding Sales`: https://www.foundingsales.com/

## 2024-05-21

### To do

- [x] Chris will write up a summary strategy for fundraising
    - [x] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wiOZSStLIxFyUPtymQXo9fkTco_apKXLqLHCNmUk2fo/edit#bookmark=id.ln7hutdjl2p
### Notes
- System for tracking grants to prioritize and apply to
    - Example: need to prioritize your effort against other partnerships work that needs to be done (e.g. cost recovery)
    - Example: need to ensure that other parts of 2i2c are brought in to make key decisions (e.g. around deliverables)
    - Starting point: create an initiative for this, [James just did so in this issue](https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/1129#issuecomment-2123404068)
- Fundraising strategy document - feedback? ([link to draft strategy doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wiOZSStLIxFyUPtymQXo9fkTco_apKXLqLHCNmUk2fo/edit))
- [Fundraising pitch deck](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d3GDTfI9WtNzCzKFV4oUO8dWhuPdsCaTEJrytTHwejw/edit#slide=id.g271b8d5e10c_0_4646) feedback?

### Consortium models

- An old idea within 2i2c
- Becoming more relevant
    - MIT example
        - MIT Brain said he can just run the infrastructure himself.
        - But wants to support open source
    - GESIS example
        - They have their own devops team
        - But wants them to be close to best practices
    - CH: Imagined consortium model similar to SDSS
        - JC: Thinks this is very similar.
    - JC: Going to talk to EarthScope about their consortium model
- Can organizations join a 2i2c consortium to gain proximity to our best practices, team, etc.
    - 

## 2024-05-14

### Product Roadmap Slides

- Any blockers?
    - Implied pricing for constellation without a clear basis.
        - Do we need more information about constellation pricing and rationale?
    - Questions at the end / call to action needs to be more deliberate.
        - Is this going to be a synchronous call or asynchronous?
    - Hubs should be awesome at all tiers
        - Artificially holding back features is creepy. 
        - Team should support buildable images
        - Chris: No one should have to know about quay.io to access an image.
        - Jim: strongly agree. Let's try to build toward making images/toolchains "first class" products that can be shared by other communities.
        - Chris: not enough information to make strong commitments to pricing. 
        - Chris: we need to articulate the tiers with associated personas and buckets of functionality; guiding principles; anticipated value released
        - Perhaps eliminate all pricing mentions for future state; report on past pricing. 
        - This is an r&d target, not a sales asset. We don't have enough information to nail this down right now. 
    - Link from Chris, [this is a quick cost breakdown for modeling service prices](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19XIyI-zGQTM5bhunqrThxsFvV8GEr2Q_SDKka34zbcI/edit?usp=sharing)
    - Link from Jim [Draft constellation tier pricing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P4JQV3cBQ0WAKOm4jR8uk1IFXxmr48anTI6oB_HDcxM/edit#gid=1503502663)
+ General Roadmap Slides?
+ Navigation Fund prep? General funding timing?
    + trusted partner level feedback
    + nothing back from Chelle or CZI
    + Josh Greenberg got back but has not yet followed up.
    + Chris has been focusing on roadmap
    + Missing piece around sustainability; what is the roadmap toward sustainability as a destination
+ Federated standards setter + (or versus) Infrastructure operator?
    + Balance risk of undercutting our own sustainability
    + Standards setting without revenue associated with infrastructure operation
    + Implicit in the value proposition and business model is large scale constellation sales generate the revneue to run 2i2c
    + Strategic advising on multi-community organizations
    + Jim suggests Chris check this out! [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa](https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/visa)
+ Jim's recent focus...
    + F7 --> sharing systems for 2i2c/NASA communities
    + GeoJupyter; DevSeed



### Upcoming milestones as brainstormed by Chris

1. Product roadmap ASAP
    + run roadmap by communities <-- get feedback
2. Develop sustainability / organizational roadmap to complement product roadmap
3. Pitch roadmap with feedback to prospective funders ASAP (e.g. Karthik)
4. Shoot for one round of feedback before CZI meeting.




## 2024-05-07

### Next steps

- [x] ACTION JC: Create two initiatives issues, one about an organizational roadmap, and another tracking major funding pushes / grants / etc to drive Jim's actions

### Feedback on pasting data into issues

- Copy/pasting information / data / etc into issues vs. using a single source of truth
    - The team has noticed confusion when the "outputs" of work are encoded in issues, in comments, etc.
    - When we have a SSOT for something, it's better to just refer to that source rather than to copy/paste information into new places (if we must, then let's copy/paste a screenshot of the SSOT or something)

### Fundraising strategy initiative refinement

- Questions to answer
    - What questions do we need to answer to develop an effective fundraising strategy?
        - Financial situation
        - Current capacity
        - Options available to us
        - What is the best option?
    - What does our portfolio of fundraising efforts look like? Can we divide and conquer without hitting capacity issues?
        - Organizational funding
        - Grant / deliverables-based funding
            - Community service funding (e.g. Catalyst). Scale out, broaden access.
            - "Making cyberinfrastructure resources available" (e.g. provide ARCO data and fancy compute for high-performance computing). Scale up.
            - Open source technology funding (e.g. Executable Books)
            - Verbs we could use to drive our participation in grants.
                - Creation, Sharing, Participation
        - General service contracts growth, probably for Constellation
    - What information is needed to push forward each part of this portfolio? Should each be an initiative?
        - Example: for Jim to be able to pitch the service properly we need clarity on what's possible now, what might be possible next, etc. Those need to be in the form of assets that he can use to explain the service.
        - Example: For Chris to work directly with funders in general about 2i2c, we need more aspirational and long-term content with a multi-year pitch.

- What does Jim need to prioritize and strategize grants to apply for.
    - Clarity about where we want to develop product
        - Computing and high performance work
        - Usage and cost monitoring
        - Sharing and communicating with one another: feels like we have a clear path foward
    - Should we prioritize "growing new service capabilities" vs. "sell what's currently possible"


## 2024-04-23

Jim is on the road for HHMI. Perhaps best to have a quick phone call?

+ Jim to provide quick retrospective to Chris re: HHMI

## 2024-04-16

+ Jim got the draft slides for HHMI yesterday. Working on incorporating 2i2c content into the template...
+ Value proposition?
    + "Infrastructure" is too wide
    + What is the subset of "infrastructure" that 2i2c provides? What parts of the stack must follow R2R? What parts are outside of R2R?
    + What are the principles that 2i2c recommends around "open science infrastructure? Can we extract a value statement from these principles?
    + I like "community-led" but don't understand the boundaries yet. The "led" aspect here overlaps with the shared responsibility model. What parts of the infrastructure must/should be led by community? 
        + CH: I feel like we're missing clarity in the VP that highlights how 2i2c is a platform that empowers community leaders to design spaces for _their_ community. This hub where communities interact is the primary thing we "offer" and also what differentiates us from SaaS like Colab. How do we describe "the hub and the tools available for community leads to utilize" in the VP?
        + An exercise to consider: What would your elevator pitch look like? If somebody you didn't know asked you to describe what 2i2c does, what would you say? I feel like our VP needs to be a condensed version of this response.
            + JC: I agree with the exercise.
+ Harold intervened to help me (and Partnerships) follow through on renewals and stale accounts. Harold is bringing James in to help Elliot and me. 
+ ICOR plan? https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/1043#issuecomment-2050528295 

## 2024-04-09

+ Emerging opportunity: [Aligning Science Across Parkinson's](https://parkinsonsroadmap.org/#) (Matthew Lewis via Kristen Ratan)
+ Projects vs. Initiatives
+ Constellation pricing
+ Hub components descriptions
+ Sharing
+ Fundraising strategy consultation
    + [Take a look at this fundraising workshop](https://aspirationtech.org/programs/strategicdevelopment/howtoraisemoney). I think we should consider participating in order to give us a more comprehensive approach to fundraising.
        + Interesting. I am curious to know more background here. 
        + Broader point. CH wants to make sure we are not missing the big picture. What are the opportunities? We can sometimes get too technical in response to the things that are nearby. We don't often ask the strategic questions. 
        + Specific opportunity here is to work through a workshop with Geoff MacDougal to craft a fundraising strategy for mission-driven organizations. Another colleague recommended him. 
        + Analyze the ways we might achieve sustainability through 2025 with a reach goal toward 2030. 
    + Do you have the capacity and interest in attending or engaging with them?
        + I have interest. Whether I have capacity depends on prioritization.
- [ ] Chris will review his prior discussions with Geoff
- [ ] Chris will write up an issue to track the opportunity
- [ ] Chris will follow up with Jim later this week.
- [x] Jim to write up a (draft) plan to deliver financial sustainability as a framework toward the sustainability goal (See: https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/1031)
+ % allocation for Partnerships team members
    + What do you think is the target % allocation between initiatives work, partnerships development, reactive work, etc?
        + I find this hard to answer as the target depends upon systems we don't have in place. Let's discuss.
    + Can we more reliably define+track partnership efforts that require more-than-usual effort?
        + I'm actively trying to do exactly that.
    + Example: this upcoming HHMI pitch sounds like it's taking more time than typical. How can we prioritize it relative to other initiatives?
        + HHMI is a first case of `Constellation` sales. The value propostion, hub component description, product menu, cost analysis of delivery, value we can price....are all components of this pitch. 
        + Organizing team-wide focus on these aspects of 2i2c's operation seems to be a challenge.
+ Feedback from CH
    + Can we find a different way of sharing long ideas and text?
        + Example: the [describe sharing system issue](https://github.com/orgs/2i2c-org/projects/50/views/1?pane=issue&itemId=58672327) has a lot of content that isn't clearly related to your ask of others. I recommend focusing conversations in those issues towards "making if clear what work needs to be done and who needs to do it" and find a different place to store brainstorms and content creation.
            + The content shared that way was in response to a request from Jenny and James.
            + How do you suggest that content be shared?
                + Initiatives Board? Things that appear in the `Done` column should be memorialized with a blog post.


## 2024-04-02

+ JC is adapting to new working style
    + What not how
    + Transition from Partnerships -> Operations is confusing
+ JC is a candidate for a job (Fields Institute Director)
    + Low-probabiliy outcome, but worth exploring.
    + CH: What's the timing?
        + Earliest is September 2024.
        + More likely is January 2025.
    + CH: What are your considerations for taking the job if offered?
+ HHMI prep is a focus right now
    + JC will travel to DC area for a few days surrounding the main meeting on April 22.
    + Current sprint aims to use this event to generate better descriptions of 2i2c's products and services with an emphasis on "sharing system"
    + CH: How does this relate to our in-flight initiatives? Which will we move forward with this effort?
+ Fundraising contact w/ Kristen?
    + She is slammed right now, probably will restart in early May

## 2024-03-19

### Notes

- JC feeling some anxiety around his working styles and adjusting to the team / boards workflows.


### Thoughts from Chris for async considerations

### Review action items from last meeting

In our last meeting you were going to put together some grant opportunities so that we can triage and prioritize. I see that there's a task for this in the initiatives board, so unless you want to discuss something I suggest we just track the item there.

https://github.com/orgs/2i2c-org/projects/47/views/3?pane=issue&itemId=55720372

### Value prop is up next

I haven't gotten further on the value proposition statement, because I've been focused on finishing off the initiatives -> operations boards proposals. I am hoping to get that into "final draft" form today and then turn to the value prop deck.

- [ ] We need to put together a slide deck to share with interested stakeholders for feedback. (Tasha, Fernando, Chelle). Get validation. Chris made a draft deck. 
- [ ] Knoweldge communities questions? Can we provoke that issue and seek feedback to validate?
- [ ] What does 2i2c "actually do"?

> Chris will tie off intiatives discussion. Chris will then finish off two slides on the deck and Chris will seek feedback from Jim on next steps. How shall we seek feedback? Bring in Giuliano.

### Yuvi anxious messages in #partnerships 

I also wanted to let you know that I had a brief conversation with Yuvi following his comments in #partnerships today. I gave him some feedback that (in my opinion) him sharing anxious "is anybody checking up on these leads?" messages is not a constructive way to advocate for better team practices. I apologize if that caused you or James anxiety and just wanted to let you know that I noticed it. If you have any feedback on that, I'd be happy to discuss.

### Initiatives / operations boards

If you feel that you have enough context to have an opinion, we could discuss the direction of the current boards proposals. I think summarized best by this comment:

https://github.com/2i2c-org/team-compass/issues/819#issuecomment-2005497890

If you're +1 on that, then I think we are basically ready to move forward there, but I want to make sure you're on board with it and noticed you haven't had a chance to give feedback.

CH: Recommend that you read up on this resource:

https://www.flightlevels.io/

**Jim is +1 on that plan.**


### Elliot invoicing / billing thread

My assumption is that you and James are leading that effort and I'm intentionally not engaging much there, but let me know if you need anything from me.


## 2024-03-12 

### Actions

- ACTION CH: Respond to issue with this value prop


### Value prop statement brainstorm

Giuliano's suggestion:

```
Open infrastructure for Knowledge Communities

"We deliver open-source solutions for knowledge creation and sharing, empowering diverse communities to collaborate, discover, innovate, and achieve their collective goals."
```

#### Open Infrastructure for Knowledge Communities

"
We collaborate with the open source ecosytem to build solutions for knowledge creation and sharing,

empowering communities to work together to achieve their collective goals.
"


We connect the open source ecosystem and knowledge communities to empower them to create and share.

#### Open Infrastructure for Knowledge Communities

**We (empower communities to create and share knowledge) by collaborating with the open source ecosystem.**

**We empower communities (to create and share knowledge by collaborating with the open source ecosystem.)**

### New hub flowchart

Yuvi is building a flowchart to sequence setting up a new hub.

## 2024-03-05

### Actions

- [x] ACTION CH: Questions for Chris to ask Danielle
    - What's the relationship between 2i2c and DAIR?
        - E.g. if we turn on Jupyer AI? Will people get pissed at us? Is there a way to move this forward?
    - How is CS&S balancing "science" and "society"? (e.g. accessibility vs. outcomes in science)
    - Describe our budget situation and ask what she thinks we should do.
    - How should 2i2c build a Board of Directors? When?
- [x] ACTION JC: Start tracking the Gazelles grant in our sprint board and have Jim work on it.

### Notes

- Actions status from last meeting
    - [ ] ACTION JC: Will write out current grant leads so we can be more intentional about them.
    - **JIM:** Write out grants opportunities (these became more complex; we have many...)
    - **JIM:** Prioritize the grants opportunities to prep for a meeting with Danielle
    - **JIM:** Discuss per-user pricing with Katherine (pending next phase of work by Giuliano)
- Gazelles grant
    - Action plan on the gazelles grant - who is working on this and where are we tracking? Partnerships board?
    - **Jim** is working on this. It is not being tracked... **Jim** will fix that up soon.
    - [x] Jim to update Harold on this new-to-this-sprint reactive work stream
    - Should we work on this?
        - Yes - it is building good relationships with Carl and Jed, probably Michal too.
- CS&S new financial report
    - [New CS&S financial report just landed](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zTMsA7HzscUcXLcI0LpE9mHLN2cO_jDfnsALTWb7Ej4/edit?usp=drive_link).
    - How can we use this to share knowledge about our accounting and finance tracking process?
    - **Jim:** I'm not sure yet. I will review and share feedback soon.
    - Chris: I want a process for sharing financial information about 2i2c so that Chris is not the bottleneck source of truth. We want a way to share the information to enable corrections and accountability beyond Chris working alone. 
    - This should eventually be a transparent process and documented as part of our sprints workflow.
    - We want a roughly monthly state-of-financial-health of 2i2c. We want a process that is triggered based on the latest financial data from CS&S. The monthly process will end when we complete the review among the "treasury committee" with a slide or two or a voice-over video. 
    - This is important enough that we need multiple eyeballs on it. 
    - related?! Fernando is stressed that 2i2c does not have proper governance oversight with a Board. How will we address that? When? We need to break this challeng out into tasks that can be completed.
- Strategic objectives for Partnerships
    - [Take a look at this strategic objectives planning document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15tQQ2Mnnk_Co6yAnLtij5nOyDNuQMIV41pQtrHLi1Wc/edit#heading=h.939hdqd2ezd)
    - It was started in January but we didn't complete it. We'll likely start using this to drive our sprints in the coming month or two (have had it on hold for a bit while Harold focuses on growing our team's delivery capacity).
    - In particular I'd focus on the Partnerships creation + success sections and make sure they're aligned with your thinking.
    - Not strictly actionable now, though if you have thoughts I'd love to hear them. But this is mostly an FYI.
    - **Jim will review**
    - Pieces are broken down along _Partnerships Creation_ and _Partnerships Success_. We will want to go through an alignment process to ensure that we have the right measures in place to see that the partnerships team is working toward agreed upon objectives. 
- Engineering capacity - have you spoken to Harold about this?
    - My understanding is that Harold and April have identified a significant skills gap between Yuvi and the rest of the engineering team.
    - He's working through it, but I suspect we'll need to start intentionally dropping balls or delaying things.
    - I want to make sure you're aware of this, since it will impact the kinds of things we commit to in partnerships - we may want to gameplan around this.
    - **Yes, Jim is up to speed on this.**

## 2024-02-27

### Actions

- [ ] ACTION JC: Will write out current grant leads so we can be more intentional about them.
- [x] ACTION CH: Send an e-mail to the Source Coop team to tag in Jim and work on that grant proposal.


### Notes

- Fundraising stategy with Danielle
- How to effectively bring proposals for org change without overwhelming people
    - JC: We should track this on the project board somehow.
    - Baby steps towards this
- Grant opportunities from Jim
    - A few opportunities have come up
    - Wants to list this out and be more intentional rather than organic about it
- Source cooperative and michael grant
    - Aligned that it's a good idea
    - Can we learn about fundraising from them?
- Pricing by user vs. other cost recovery mechanisms
    - What would a "Community centric pricing model" look like?
    - Talk to Katherine Skinner about this
- CryoCloud growth and value propositions
    - Diverse collection of expertise
    - The way the slack / hub / etc operates allows individuals to contribute and help one another.
    - Jim and Giuliano will dig into this topic more to help us understand our funding streams etc.

## 2024-02-13

### Vacation planning

- Will be AFK as much as possible
- If there's something critical, text is OK
- Some dangling things are delegated to James

### New delivery system

+ Good progress with the new delivery system -- first sprint
    + James did a very good job
        + Has been doing a lot of the delivery implementation with Harold.
        + He's acting like a COO to Jim's CEO
    + Jenny may be underempowered at the moment
        + She has a lot of tactical deliverables. Less strategic, more about developing out the system itself.
        + She liked delivery system because it provided strategic context for her
        + Was assigned a bigger task for the sprint (chunking out an epic-level deliverable)
    + Harold is doing a nice job
    + Noted that unplanned work flows through Jim regularly

+ Product discussion with Giuliano update
    + JC had been more passive about defining business and pricing models.
    + Waiting for feedback from GM, waiting for guidance, etc - GM thought Jim should be more active.
    + G asked Jim to be more proactive on business model and product.
    + [[Discussion] Product Menu](https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/866)
    + Definition of "minimum viable product"
        + JC and GM had slightly different definitions
    + Binder analytics archive: https://archive.analytics.mybinder.org/
+ Smithsonian
    + Data Science Lab (DSL) reports to the Chief Information Officer within Smithsonian
    + Have funding via the "Museum of the Latino Experience" (one of many Smithsonian sub-museums)
    + DSL collaborated with UC Santa Barbara to do Callysto-style projects.
        + Smithsonian creates content, delivered to students in community colleges, goal is to give them experiences to continue with a 4-year program in STEM.
    + Lots of sub-institutes with similar interests
    + Really liked the idea of a digital fabric for smithsonian.
    + Questions:
        + How can we help the Smithsonian people become expert users of the 2i2c stack? Can this be a perceived value to them as well?
+ Pricing models - how could we do this sustainably?
    + Almost all competitors have a pricing model that either defines how much cloud they have in a month ("compute units etc").
+ Rowan
    + HHMI has been speaking with CurveNote
    + NeuroLibre is considering working with them as well
    + Believes that 2i2c has plenty to do with "infrastructure as a service"
    + Is "sharing etc" going to be too much work for 2i2c.
    + Where's the "line" for 2i2c's communications work? What is in-scope for 2i2c, what is out-of-scope for 2i2c?
    + 2i2c is heading toward "facilitate a community's knowledge base". Our Team Compass. CryoCloud JupyterBook. 
    + More complex aspects of authorship (reviewing process; interfacing with other parts of the publishing industry) look to be out of scope.
    + It would be cool to have 2i2c serve as a vision leader that helps convene the collection of "gazelles" to push forward the grand plan of improving science. We want to avoid defining 2i2c as infrastructure-as-a-service. That space is super competitive. 

+ form-driven "no code" experiments to automate content flows into our SSOT systems; Catalyst; Jim requested nonprofit pricing from make.com.
    + Chris has used integromat and make.com previously. 
    + Possible use for synchronizing calendars for time off more easily. 
    + Giuliano is interested in ProductBoard synchronization of feature requests from FreshDesk. 
    + CS&S uses make.com as well. Joe uses make.com.
+ DevSeed "Multiplayer Earth Management System" as an evolved product category that is better than "Geographic Information System"; Fernando has brought the idea forward to QuantStack. 
+ Possible follow up on ICSI and JupyterHub? Waiting for Graham...


## 2024-02-06

### Some sources of anxiety

- Anxiety around focusing on systems rather than "getting things done now"
- Not on the same page with James
    - JC's take: Projects are columns (TOPS, CZI, etc)
    - Rows are actions that cut across each project.
    - JC's take was that doing the horizontals first would allow us to make progress on many projects at once.
    - This didn't "resonate" with JM. He feels under-empowered and reactive (he's just reacting to structures)
        - He took "horizontals" as "reactive work to things we promised in deliverables with projects driving the work"
    - Breakthrough: call them "initiatives"
        - "Tactics that are aimed towards 2i2c team-wide goals"
        - "Repeatable, scalable, standard operating procedures" that we use project funding to create
    - CH: Describes the idea of using contracts/development contracts to fund R&D.
- Work hierarchy
    - Initiative / Epic / Deliverable / etc

### Strategic planning process and Giuliano

- Do we need to start this again from first principles?

## 2024-01-30

+ CZI infrastructure grant closed in November
    + Chris is working on first draft
    + Jim and Chris may collaborate on telling our success story
    + This is a moment to reflect on what we've achieved over the past three years. This was a high-level use of $1.1M. Quantify the impacts we want to highlight.
    + The same fundamental case is what we will want to make to various funders in the upcoming quarters. 
    + Moonshot? Funding path to explore... is there any appetite in the funding landscape for another version of the CZI award? When/how to set this kind of meeting up? Talk to Josh at Sloane. Talk to Carly, Kate and Dario. Order of operations?
        + Chris suggests first release the report
        + Use the report as a milestone for next conversations
    + Deadline? CS&S will finish financial reports. CZI is pretty chill on when to provide a closing report. Chris wants this tied off by mid-February. 
+ CIlogon renewal: [draft addendum](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1DGIK5f276y0YfXL11sNp-jqr3160HIZn)
    + Jim updated Chris on this plan. 
+ Update on 2i2c's runway and an accounting misunderstanding with CS&S
    + Short version:
        + We were double-counting some income in AirTable, and as a result we've over-estimated our runway by roughly 2.5 months ($400k). Our current projected runway cliff is October.
        + There is still a lot of uncertainty in the quality of the data CS&S has around contracts, any unrecovered funds that we still need to invoice, etc, but that's likely only going to change the runway by a month or two at most.
    + Longer version:
        + We've been defining our "known future income" by combining two numbers:
            + The "Net Income" field of CS&S's monthly accounting reports.
            + The "Remaining Income" of each active contract, calculated by `Award total - Amount paid to 2i2c`.
        + In a meeting yesterday with CS&S, I discovered that `Amount paid to 2i2c` is not the right number, because it does not account for invoices that we've sent out, but have not yet been paid for.
        + Instead we should calculate the remaining funds in a contract as `Award total - Amount invoiced by CS&S`.
        + Making this adjustment revealed that we were double-counting the funds in several contracts (ANU, Columbia/Pangeo, NASA VEDA) and un-correcting subtracted about $400k from our available funds.
    + I don't think that this is a catastrophic correction, and it's definitely better that we find out now than later, but it does increase the urgency to make 2i2c sustainable.
    + It also seems that CS&S wasn't treating their "Contracts" AirTable as a source of truth, so some data may not be correct. They are working to update this more frequently now.
    + I'm also waiting to hear from Elliot what costs we can invoice for that we didn't account for because contracts lapsed, no cloud costs, etc. When I have more clarity on this + the data quality issue above, I will recalculate the runway and tell the team. **For now this is private**.
    + We will need to define an annual budget for CS&S at the end of Q2 (June) and I suspect that we'll need clarity about "expected income" then in order to get a green light from CS&S to continue employing people at our current rate. We should reach out to them for guidance on this. 
    + Chris: We need improved certainty on recurring revenue. This is the responsibility of Partnerships. 
    + Chris: How big are the fires? We need to do some fund raising. Unless we can find a CZI-style block grant....fund raising will require additional capacity to deliver on promises in grants. We need to do the front-end work to identify the gaps in our delivery capacity and our cost structure. We need to identify targets to put into proposals. 
    + The work on budget/runway is required to inform 2i2c's 2024 fund raising strategy. We need a believable model with quantified risks of losing awards by June for the CS&S budget analysis.
    + **Target**: Grow a $1.7M annual ($140,000 monthly) revenue stream by October.
+ [Draft Catalyst agreement](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ovjE2Nol1TdErJGt7io_UrVFkgk2sh_g79YfLNT8Kbg/edit#heading=h.qo34o8p9in1e) text
    + Generally going in the right direction, more work to incorporate values into the contract
    + Elliot is aware this is happening
    + Chris should respond if specifically pinged, but not needed otherwise
    + CH suggests we put this in front of Elliot ASAP once there's a draft
+ Franchise sales idea...
    + Chris: What's the bang for the buck here?
    + To get to $150K MRR....is there enough opportunity to bite into that problem? Jim: Maybe? Imagine converting ~25 Syzygy universities into paying customers from Canada. 
    + CH intuition: This feels promising but may play out over more than 3 quarters to set up, which is roughly the window where we need to demonstrate sustainability. Maybe a medium- and long-term thing to pursue if we can achieve sustainability first?
        + On the other hand if we can demonstrate potential with very minimal investment of our resources, it's worth trying.
+ [ASAP opportunity](https://parkinsonsroadmap.org/roadmap/#)
    + 2i2c should be a platform provider to support communities using tools. 
+ Jim to highlight CryoCloud image advances from today to James. James should organize an event where they show us and others what they did. 

## 2024-01-25

Identify a sequence of actions leading to financial sustainability. What should we prioritize? What is our focus?

We will need, by 2024-10-01, to demonstrate improved financial recovery. 

## 2024-01-25 Strategy conversation

Options

- Grow hubs as a service one community at a time
- NASA VEDA-style more complex engagements
- Funder-supported collection of hubs
- More organizational funding? Series A style funding for a nonprofit. 
- Explore business models around interactive publishing

- Jim asked Yuvi and Damian what they preferred
    - DA: 70/30 recurring hubs vs. big projects
    - YP: 75/25 because he wanted 75% on the dev side, 25% on recurring service agreements.
    - JM: thought that we want the recurring hubs ongoing toil to go down to 0 over time.

Chris: 2i2c is offering a "platform". People take these building blocks and do something useful as a service. Toronto (our customer) provides the platform to their users (students, instructors). There are two different value streams here: the value delivered to Avi Hyman; the value delivered to the end users like students and instructors. 

Chris: The platform should make it super easy to whip together the building blocks to instantiate a version that helps the leaders of a community generate their target value. 

Jim: Some caution around the two-tiered persona of platform users. If you look at "platforms", there is often a two-tiered structure.

Chris: What are the **three pillars of value** that 2i2c is trying to provide? 
1. BROADENING access and provisioning for a shared computational space; 
2. COLLABORATING interactive place to quickly ask and answer questions; 
3. SHARING a way to communicate and share whatever you have found. 

> Are these "mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive"? Chris from 2024-01-30.

Jim added the BOLD verbs above to echo strong alignment with Chris. 

Chris: I told Angus to think of James and Jenny as customers of JupyterBook/MyST. Help them get unstuck. 

Chris: I think we agree. We want 2i2c to enable communities to **mobilize their knowledge** using JupyterBook and MyST ecosystem. Is it ready? Jim: Yes! This is an effective MVP.

Chris: EBP is moving toward using the MyST documentation engine. Choosing to use JB in current format will not close the door to using MyST.

What's the distribution of contract values?

Jim: 3 to 10 "big ticket" grant-funded projects that provide funds for development complimented by hub service contracts. Chris: A scaleable service requires optimization efforts on operations. A grant-funded project pays for development. James' intuition is right. 

We want the cost to deploy/manage/upgrade hubs to be as close to zero as possible. Platforms need to be self service. 

The "bicycle of the mind"...a quote from Steve Jobs. What is your approach to technology or products? Steve was looking at the energy efficiency of locomotion across different animal species. Condor was very efficient. Human was pretty inefficient. But then the article added an extra line....human riding a bicycle....the human shoots up to the top! Jobs thinks about technology and products as the bicycle to the human's mind. 

Jim: Shall I try to quantify this further? Sharpen the future state. Describe things in the pipeline with revenue. 

Jim: Hey Chris, what do you view as 2i2c MRR for comfortable sustainability? Roughly $150K. What are we at now? It depends on how to amortize a grant over time... also need input on cost of sales comparted to amount recovered. 

## 2024-01-23

- Yuvi / James sticker conversation
    - Apparently Yuvi and James had some intense conversations around James' recent decision to use Stickermule for printing stickers at AGU.
    - Chris is curious if Jim / James have discussed this at all.
        - Briefly. Jim was made aware of the situation at AGU. Yuvi rejected the stickers. James indicated he'd learned and would not use Stickermule in the future. Jim is curious to know if there is a persistent issue. 
        - Chris and James connected last week. Yuvi brought this issue up again. Chris indicates this issue is "eating away" at Yuvi. When Yuvi and James spoke...James didn't really look into it so much....I wouldn't have used it if I'd looked into it more. Yuvi is annoyed now  that James didn't look into the information Yuvi shared. 
        - Yuvi also asked James if he would throw away the stickers. James said `NO`. Ouch.
        - Chris: Issue here is trust. How can we improve trust between Partnerships + Trust? Yuvi is feeling battered down and responsible for too much. 
    - Doesn't feel like anything critically actionable now, but is a situation to monitor.
- Kyle Kelley reaching out
    - Interested in health projects, applying for NIH grants along with **Will Stein** from CoCalc.
    - Interested in Real Time Collaboration, LLMs, some stuff similar to SolyR.
        - Fernando mentioned this aspect from his discussion with KK. Fernando indicated that the proposed RTC changes are revisiting issues that have been addressed in Jupyter. He was not convinced that redoing RTC for Jupyter using William's approach is the biggest buring issue for the community. 
        - Fernando mentioned that KK proposed to him that they collaborate on an NIH-funded SBIR grant with a company. FP did not recall the name of the company but described it as similar to the "beltway bandits" adjacent to government agencies in the DC area. FP expressed some surprise that the proposal KK was bringing to him appeared to overlap strongly with JupyterHealth. On first glance, it felt competitive but then FP (aligned with what JC thought too...) saw that this could be a nice endorsement that JupyterHealth is the right approach to open up the health ecosystem. 
    - Mentioned that his grant might include some JupyterHub operations and there might be a chance to collaborate with 2i2c there.
    - Jim does not know KK
        - Chris interacted with KK when he was at Netflix. That was a unique time in the project because there was a conflict beween different parties in the Juptyer Project. That led to the Interact project...use React.js...kind of a fork. There is a history there of KK kinda doing his own thing instead of staying in the open source lane. This was stressful for FP and BG....not worth revisiting in more detail here. The team at Netflix left to form Noteable. Noteable just closed down through some kind of acquihire. Kyle and Carole had internal disagreements.... Kyle got deep on the LLM integration. Carole is fundamentally opposed to current incarnation of LLMs. Carol outranked KK in the organization...
        - CH and KK had a catch up call. KK wants to enable compuational workflows with Jupyter. The NIH thing is one way to do some of that work. CH will introduce KK to Rowan and Angus since there is some synergy with the EBP direction. KK made a vague gesture to have 2i2c manage JupyterHub infrastructure. 
- Hiring rationale for TOPST. See [this issue](https://github.com/2i2c-org/meta/issues/787). 
    - **Chris:** Can 2i2c proceed to hire as proposed there?
        - Chris did not realize that the pay outs were written into the grant. 
        - 2i2c needs systems to specify when there are financial implications for funding flows on grants. 
        - Synthesis on grants strategy needs to be discussed at a later time.
        - Budgetary wise: go for it. 
        - Missing info? Who is overseeing who? Is there clarity on the deliverables? **Jim has followed up with James and will nail this down over next day or two.**

    - **Jim to Chris:** What process should Jim follow with CS&S? Chris will follow up soon via email so we can engage with the consultants.
- Kat Skinner / Catalyst conversation debrief
    - Chris: still some uncertainty here. What will IOI work on? We shared a lot of context. Kat appears to be worthy of our trust. 
  
- Strategic priorities on partnerships
    - Chris would like to define a **state of partnership** that we want in 12 / 6 / 3 months, and then backwards engineer a set of **strategic objectives** to accomplish in order to get there.
    - Should include **financial health of 2i2c, but could also include staffing and partnerships structure**.
    - Can we identify some time to start working on this together?
- JupyterHealth updates
- DPGA update
- Job levels update
    - Could Jim take a look at [this job leveling guide](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VAjqQADHzbDievPuNYbzCDYVJnac8wSE/view?usp=sharing)
    - Could this provide a framework for job levels across all of 2i2c?


## 2024-01-16

### Thoughts on meeting with Harold

- Appreciates his approach
- Miro board revealed all of the complexity we're dealing with
- Chris shares the good feelings about Harold. Experience in the ways that strategy informs operations. 

### Catalyst meeting and get-to-know-you with Jim

- Was a Partnerships-level meeting within Catalyst
- Surprising dynamics
    - Melissa was concerned about losing reputation by delivering services without the honoraria/microgrants
    - Budget for honoraria will flow out of "coordination budget" held by 2i2c. Total portion is $15K.
    - Talk to Damian about this - he's been the one that is setting this up
- Comments about specifying roles more clearly was seen positively by Melissa
- Seemed like Taj didn't have authority to Jim
- Coordination between Community Success and Partnerships
    - Liked the idea of coordinating between the two.
- Jim proposed to use a binder and a vanilla-hub-for-all-Catalyst to get things started faster
- Jim proposed that we should have an agreement document that describes expectations with communities; this requires work
    - CH: Will connect with IOI, which seems intent on working on this as well. They call it a "community-centered service agreement"
    - Implement R2R in the draft agreement; improve "ownership" of the tech language to align with open source; improve description of "shared responsibility model" as part of "community-centered"; encode goverance/trust/transparency into the agreement
- Jim: Confirm with Damian that 2i2c can deploy binder-as-a-service; Confirm with Harold on systems for deploying binder-as-a-service

### Elliot meeting re: business processes

- Had a meeting to make sure we're getting paid from AWI and Toronto.
- We want this to become as automated as possible.
- Lightweight way? Backlog? Biweekly review of AirTables to make sure we are on track for revenue. Basic action clean up.
- More updates on this soon.

### MyST/JupyterBook/Curenote updates

- AGU meetings with Rowan - workshop with CryoCloud? Interactive proceedings delivered with MyST?
- Jim feels like CurveNote is getting pinched between Wiley and AGU
- CurveNote feels ready to open source parts of their stack to be more open
- Rowan reported to Jim that there's a weird feeling of competition from James / exclusion from Angus because the strategic alignment between 2i2c and curvenote is not explicit
- James made a video to show off using JupyterLab to create a Jupyter Book site.
    - Jenny has refactored and improved this workflow.
    - Jim is going to build a Jupyter Book with a 2i2c hub.
    
### Angus' reporting line

- Jim is confused about Angus' reporting line
- Angus currently reports to Chris. Eventually, we will incorporate Angus into 2i2c's delivery systems. Angus is speaking with James and Jenny. Angus is assisting with content production systems.

### Rough agenda

+ Projects plan work is ongoing; roles
+ Alignment on partnerships lead success criteria? Salary change?

## 2024-01-09

Things on Chris' mind to discuss:

- Plan to resolve salary and role questions. Review [partnerships lead success criteria](https://compass.2i2c.org/partnerships/roles/lead/), align on these for 2024.
- Engaging Jim in Catalyst - what is the right way to do this? What is the role that Jim wants to have? What's the breakdown between Jim and James here?
- Partnerships org plans for 2024
    - Role of James - where should he focus his efforts? How to hold him accountable? (for carrying out major projects like the Community Showcase, Chris has found it hard to follow James' work, for example [the quarterly goal issue](https://github.com/2i2c-org/community-showcase/issues/10) wasn't updated after the first 2 sprints)
- Plans for interfacing with Harold (DM) and Giuliano (Product Lead)
- Jim to review emerging Strategic Plan document
    - Dhavide
    - Integration of workstreams
    - Prioritization: HHMI, NASA big grants?

    - Need to design the goals and the team composition more effectively.
    - Retrospectives were more about process than the product.
    - We're missing the "show off what you've done" aspect.
- How can Chris be more active in the Sprint process?
    - Chris can focus on "what was built / learned / done" in the sprint.
    - Damian can focus on "how has the process gone?"
- How to better describe our product
    - 2i2c is building Open Science Infrastructure
    - We're facilitating cloud-native open science infrastructure.
    - "The hub" is a noun, it is static.
    - Our value is the *service* around the noun.

er for the team to drive this forward.
        - JC: Has noted that our "product development" has been very Yuvi-centric, and as a result this has isolated others.
          - Worried that Yuvi would be difficult to control here.
          - But that Yuvi has a lot of respect for her and this might be a good dynamic.
        - JC: Worried that Pris might not have enough Jupyter context.
        - JC: We'd need to make sure that Pris and the product world would still listen to the community and partnerships team.
        - JC: Emphasis on process may create obstacles to the lightning strikes. Need to make sure that we have a space for creativity.
- It's fairly wordy
  - Ideally it would be simple enough that you could both recite its main points from memory.
  - "Definitions of success" and ways to measure each. Max 2-3 definitions with 1-2 measures each.
  - Breakdown of responsibility (who is held accountable to do what? how are they held accountable?)
  - Breakdown of authority (who has final decision-making rights about major direction and goals, work assignment, etc?)
- Where to focus
  - I suggest we focus it on financial sustainability, the contractual relationships that 2i2c has with its communities, and helping communities be successful in their use of the infrastructure. That last one is also quite broad and might be good to expand on (e.g., do we want communities to grow? to connect with each other? etc)
  - I also suggest we not get too creative with our definitions at first. E.g. when defining community success let's just start with something like "net promotor score" rather than finding a way to measure "open science". We can refine these as we learn more.

### Communicating impact

Increasing signal that some communities want external stakeholders to their communities to have content.

### Requests for user subscriptions

Several communities have requested the need to offer subscriptions to their hubs.

### M2LInes
  - Had very few users and it was too expensive.
  - Users were doing model builds that weren't really optimized for the cloud.
  - Overlapped so much with LEAP that it made sense for them to merge.
  - They generally liked 2i2c and may want to come back to work w/ us.

### Service description
  - CH: I suggest working with Georgiana to turn this proto-goal into something that's ready for Q3 prioritization discussions.

### CZI meeting and general visibility
  - CH: Agree that we need better visibility about the status and commitments across projects like CZI.
  - Right now James is leading that project, so we need to learn from him what the current status is and whether things are moving forward.
  - Chris spoke with the IOI team yesterday to provide high-level guidance and feedback around governance and is going to introduce to Jim / James / Pris soon for subsequent conversations.

