ICS Task Force Conference Call Report

October 10, 2000

Participants: Kathleen Messer (ICS Chair) Elizabeth Housewright (Co-Chair), Jo Ann Bradley, Gail Cosmo, Lore Gravino, Pat Lavigna (recorder), Marvin Pollard, Harold Schleifer

Epixtech has offered to have members of the Enhancement Subcommittee (Kelley, Jo Ann and Elizabeth) go to Evanston for training and discussion of problems. Epixtech is willing to spend some serious time working with the Committee on a daily basis. Kathleen suggested that we tackle the remaining problems before sending the Committee to Evanston. There is also a time element involved here. Traditionally the months of October and November are extremely busy for ILL offices. It would be much more feasible to send the Committee to Evanston after the Thanksgiving recess. There was also discussion about the value of seeing the system work in a test environment. Testing in an artificial environment will not raise our level of confidence.

Marvin will acknowledge the offer and give them a counter proposal. This proposal will state:

1. It is not a good time to send the Committee to Evanston.

2. We will invite Epixtech staff to come to California and work with our testers in an integrative environment. They will spend some of the time in Long Beach working closely with Marvin and then make short visits to our other test sites. Epixtech staff will have the opportunity to see what an ILL office is like this time of the year.

3. We need to identify an Epixtech employee who will be responsible for fixing problems and maintaining daily contact much like they are doing with OCLC operability.

There was discussion about the future of the Task Force. Various options were brought up. There is considerable time and effort being spent on Committee work. Some of the Committee members are working 10+ hours beyond their regular forty hours. Work on the bug report is especially  time consuming. Bugs should be fixed immediately and it shouldn't be necessary for committee members to spend so much time on the report.

Kathleen volunteered to be a liaison between Marvin, Epixtech and the Committee.  She hopes this will help relieve some of the time constraints on other people.

The possibility of inviting Epixtech staff to attend the November 3 meeting in Long Beach was discussed.   Marvin thought we could use this as a motivational tool to get Epixtech to spend some quality time on the project.   Others thought it would raise the stress level of the meeting and it might be hard to keep control of the meeting.  It appears that the meeting will most likely be postponed until late November or early December.  At that time we should be able to give a demo using an integrated system.  Members of the Task Force, members of the Management Team as well as all other ILL people who are represented by the Task Force will be asked to attend.

Configuring the remaining campuses represented by the Task Force was discussed but it was decided to wait until late November or early December because a number of changes are expected.