What should Code4Lib NorCal Do?

Discussion led by Eric Phetteplace

• What do we call ourselves?
  • Several suggestions, but Code4Lib NorCal won the vote

• Locations:
  • Sonoma might be an option.
  • San Luis Obispo would be good for NorCal SoCal meetups.
  • UC Berkeley and Stanford might be good hosts.
  • California Library Association meeting is in Oakland this year, November 7-9. Oakland University could host something for Code4Lib NorCal.
  • Internet Archive? Maybe a tour or a hackathon there?

• Frequency:
  • SoCal group has met twice in the last six months.
  • Twice a year to start for us might be good.
  • Times that don't conflict with National Code4Lib, so fall and summer.

• Organization:
  • We need people to handle some basic organization. Eric P. will coordinate a meeting to figure out those questions on Google Group.

• Outreach:
  • Our group is almost entirely academic libs. Should we do outreach to public libraries? Patrick Newell would be willing to work with someone else to do this outreach.
  • Aaron Collier will reach out to the SoCal people to find out if anyone would want to do a joint meeting.
  • West Coast representation at National Code4Lib tends to be light. How can we make west coast libs more aware? Outreach to tech librarians.
  • Could we sponsor a diversity scholarship to National Code4Lib meeting? In conjunction with SoCal group. $500 should be enough to help get someone there.

• Types of events:
  • A Hackathon meeting, something hands on. The ALA Midwinter hackathon was a good model. It was structured, and focused on 2 specifc APIs. One was more guided (showing people how to work with the API) and one was more free form (people who already knew how to work with APIs).
  • If we did a hackathon it would be good to combine it with a meetup over a two days span to make travel easier for more far-flung folks.

• What next?
  • Eric P. will start to get discussion over the Google Group list over next steps.
  • Aaron will see if we can configure an RSS feed for the Google Group.
  • We should advocate for more capacity at National Code4Lib (although it's tricky to find a balance between being open to people who want to come and maintaining a small conference)
  • If we want to start thinking about hosting National Code4Lib in California we should start taking as a group. Might also want to collaborate with SoCal to find a good location.