Re: [geolang-comment] Montréal minutes

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| The experience with the other two TCs has been that teleconference
| meetings work, but not very well.

* John Cowan
| 
| I'm puzzled by this.  Can you mention what it is that "doesn't work"
| about them?  

Two things, mostly. Firstly, there have usually been technical
problems, so that it has often been difficult to hear what people
say. Secondly, the telcons have tended to be somewhat disorganized and
much less productive than F2F meetings. This last is just my
subjective opinion, and it may be due more to the lack of experience
of the participants with telcons than anything inherent in telcons
themselves.

| The W3C XML Core WG and Linking WG have weekly telcons, and the
| RELAX NG TC has biweekly ones, and a great deal gets accomplished.

So I've gathered, which has made me wonder a little what it is that
makes the W3C people seem happy with their telcons while we are not.

I had a look at the RELAX NG minutes and I think such an issue-driven
approach is likely to work much better than the approach taken in the
two other TCs. The problem is that the two other TCs are trying to
work out the concepts involved and so something as structured as this
is difficult to achieve.

For GeoLang an issue-driven approach should be possible, and so
telcons might indeed work better for this TC than they have for the
other two.

| While this TC surely doesn't need to meet that often, a monthly
| telcon with an agenda prepared in advance would probably be quite
| productive.

A monthly discussion with agenda might, I agree, be productive, but
personally I would very much prefer to have it on IRC instead. To me
it seems that IRC has all the benefits of telcons, plus a few extra,
and none of the disadvantages. The only disadvantage seems to be that
the OASIS TC Process document does not give IRC meetings equal status
with telcons (for whatever reason).

I'm leaning towards IRC at least for discussions where we need to
raise and clarify issues rather than actually decide them. If we find
that we need to take decisions before Baltimore we can schedule a
telcon for that purpose.

One reason I don't think we need that many official meetings before
Baltimore is that for a large part of what we're doing we are in any
case stuck waiting for the PubSubj TC to finish its work.

It would be good to hear what the rest of you think, though.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >