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Subject: Re: Establishing TCs: Food for Thought
[Norbert@datachannel.com:] | I would suggest that the PAC looks at this and | comes back with a recommendation to the board. Laura (see below) was asking about a hypothetical TC that desired two things: - to have a steering committee, which would be responsible for coordinating and/or making decisions about non-technical activities related to the TC's work (such as PR, marketing, recruiting, and other items such as the following:) - potentially, to request that additional funds be invested by the TC and/or SC participants which would be used to hire a project manager and/or subject matter expert Let me take these individually. 1. How to set up a steering committee depends on whether you want the committee to steer or to coordinate. Since I can't imagine a situation where a single TC needs a separate steering committee, I'm going to assume that what's being asked is how to set up a steering committee for the case where related work is occurring in two or more TCs and it's desired to coordinate or manage that work. a. If what's desired is a true steering committee (a committee that can impose its will on the TCs being coordinated), then our off-the-shelf mechanism is a single TC that forms subcommittees and manages the work of those subcommittees. However, such subcommittees have to be formally created according to the traditional model. In particular, their members must be appointed by the TC that creates them (though their membership is not limited to members of the TC). Within that limitation, any TC can recursively create subcommittee structures of any desired depth; this feature of the traditional system is available now and will continue to be available under the augmented system we're designing. b. If what's desired is a mechanism by means of which TCs that wish to be coordinated can participate in the coordination but do not operate under a hard requirement to obey the decisions of the coordinating body, then our mechanism is the Joint Committee. It's my job this weekend (assigned at our last PAC meeting) to attempt to specify Joint Committees. I should have a first attempt out in the next 48 hours; any board members interested in this should monitor the workprocess list for details. 2. How to authorize a TC to hire and manage employees such as a project manager or subject matter expert is, I believe, a completely new question for us, and one that I'm not sure we should be considering. The bylaws place all business decisions in the hands of the board. Amending the bylaws to allow autonomous TCs to make decisions that can create legal or financial obligations for OASIS seems to me beyond the present scope of the PAC. Jon ================================================================== From: Norbert Mikula <Norbert@datachannel.com> Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 07:50:31 -0700 I would suggest that the PAC looks at this and comes back with a recommendation to the board. ---------------------------------------------- Norbert H. Mikula Chief Technology Officer/DataChannel Norbert@DataChannel.com Chief Technical Officer/OASIS Norbert.Mikula@Oasis-Open.org DataChannel, 600 108th Avenue NE 9th Floor, Bellevue, WA 98004 Phone: 425.462.1999 Fax: 425.637.1192 <http://www.datachannel.com/> -----Original Message----- From: Laura Walker [mailto:laura.walker@oasis-open.org] Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 10:51 PM To: Workprocess@Lists. Oasis-Open. Org Cc: Soboard@Lists. Oasis-Open. Org Subject: Establishing TCs: Food for Thought Hi everyone, The following has come up several times recently, during conversations I've had with industry communities who are considering forming a TC under OASIS. I'd like you to think about this, not necessarily as something that has to be incorporated into the TC process itself, but as one of the business dynamics involved in successfully supporting our constituency. Let's suppose ... A group of firms determine that the would like to form a working group in order to collaborate on the development of an XML specification. They believe that joining forces with an organization who can provide governance, infrastructure and resources would be the most expedient way to accomplish this. Further, they wish their product to be unbiased, vendor-independent. Therefore, one of their criteria for selecting the aforementioned organization is one that has a reputation for these things. And so they come to OASIS. Logical, right? Here's where it gets tricky.... In addition to forming a working group (or a TC in our nomenclature), this group would like: - to have a steering committee, which would be responsible for coordinating and/or making decisions about non-technical activities related to the TC's work (such as PR, marketing, recruiting, and other items such as the following:) - potentially, to request that additional funds be invested by the TC and/or SC participants which would be used to hire a project manager and/or subject matter expert While our By Laws provide plenty of flexibility to do such things, I would like to settle on a standard approach -- one that would be scalable and transferable. Thanks for considering this, Laura
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