Managers 7May08

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Agenda suggestions

Jennifer and Midori would like to suggest that for this meeting we leave the current agenda items until we have properly discussed what the managers' call is for and how it could work better.

We had a brainstorm and came up with the following suggestions:

Manager's calls: proposed new rules

  • There should be no progress reports except in exceptional circumstances (e.g. regulates implementation)
  • The chairperson each week should write and receive agenda items 1 week ahead of time, so that everyone can consider them in advance.
  • People should submit items with a list of the names of the people who need to be present for the discussion in brackets after the item. If only a small number of people are needed then it may make sense to move this topic to a smaller meeting. There needs to be some thought in advance about what is really appropriate for the managers' call and what can go to a different call.
  • If we have only a few items then we can have a shorter call. It does not need to last an hour.
  • The chairperson should control the meeting more tightly so that digressions and rambling are stopped, and

GO-related discussions that only need a small number of people are moved to another call. All present must co-operate and respect the chair, no matter how senior the digressor and how junior the chairperson.


Other points for consideration:

  • Jennifer would like to suggest that we start having a separate content call with Midori, David, Jennifer, Chris and possibly Tanya. Currently many topics of discussion on the managers' call are actually things that would best be discussed just amongst the content people but there is not a forum for this just now.
  • Jennifer frequently finds that she would like to raise points about content that are not being raised by the content managers. Can we establish a norm that it is okay to raise point pertinent to other people's areas of management? We have not previously discussed if this was the plan or not.
  • There has been a habit established where the more junior managers are a bit too cowed by some of the PIs.

In some instances the progress of work is being hampered, especially where a PIs has misunderstood the question in the first place, and been offended by something they read in that was not there. Sometimes critical issues are being explicitly banned from discussion, or very serious misunderstandings on email are preventing critical progress from being made. It would be helpful if we could work out a protocol to follow when such a misunderstanding takes place. A diplomatic signal that means 'Please stop and listen!' would be a good start.

  • Currently the meeting is often being used as a convenient time to ask one of the PIs a question, as they are hard to get hold of at other times. Is this an appropriate use of meeting time or should we revert to mailing GO-Top in this situation?








Agenda item requests

Communications question

From Ruth Lovering: When should we notify the PIs of new developments e.g. papers, grants, new general initiatives. Ruth is keen not to bombard GO-Top with emails but also interested to have their views. She could send reports via the relevant managers but this takes away the opportunity for the PIs to respond directly to her emails.

Meeting Frequency

From several people in the UK: Is it necessary to have GO Consortium meetings twice a year? Several UK people are much happier with less frequent meetings, as the trips to the US are very disruptive and physically gruelling, and also very expensive to attend. With the use of skype and webex we feel that there are far fewer contentious issues, and many people are happy to resolve things using online meetings. Might we consider using these technologies more for the whole group? For example Tanya's talk on regulates and Jennifer and Harold's talks on mf-bp links could easily have been given to the whole group via webex and a phone line.


Human Genetics

Dear Dr Lomax,

Further to our earlier phone conversation, I have pleasure in formally inviting you, in my capacity as European Editor of the journal 'Human Genetics' [1], to invite you to contribute a review article on the Gene Ontology Project and its utility for human geneticists (broadly in terms of the functional analysis of human genes and perhaps specifically in the context of the analysis of genetic disease). I am sure that a review article would be of great interest to our readership and would be highly cited. In terms of its length, there is no absolute maximum length although 5000 words is about average for our reviews. Mini-reviews of 2000-3000 words on a 'hot topic' within your research remit are also very welcome. The exact timing would also be up to you although the next 6-12 months would be desirable from our point of view.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can provide further assistance. I look forward to hearing from you.

With all best wishes,

David Cooper


mf-bp

How should I (Jennifer) continue with the electron transport bp-mf work? The discussion got derailed a bit at the consortium meeting and I would like to ask for clarification about this. The main question is about how to represent the species specificity of the links. The species specificity seems pretty straight-forward but we do not currently have a way to capture this information.