TC Meeting Minutes 5-29-04

Here are the minutes for this month's meeting:

May 26, 2004

Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee.

Dial in toll free: 877 950 6921
outside of USA toll: 1 203 277 0324

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Rex Brooks
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Russell Ruggiero
James Landrum III
Sylvia Candelaria de Ram

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened 12:05 p.m. Eastern Time.

Minutes of previous meeting accepted.

This meeting was held on the alternature normally scheduled fourth Wednesday of the Month.

We had a quorum. As a result, decisions indicated in these minutes are approved.

We began by taking reports, starting with Sylvia's PyCon attendance in March. Sylvia reported that it was an upbeat, positive conference that began with software developments collaborations called 'sprints.' In these Python programmers set a task or set of tasks for a software program or set of components to perform, then take turns creating the overall structure and subroutines, and any new packages needed to complete the task, testing as they go.

Sylvia mentioned that one development in particular was appropo to some of our upcoming efforts, VOIP, in Python by Anthony Baxter from Australia. She noted that Mitch Kapoor, noted inventor of Lotus 1-2-3 delivered the keynote address on his new Personail Information Manager, PIM. Because it is proprietary, Kapoor's address, despite his often-quoted stance in favor of the Open Source Movement exemplified by the general PyCon membership, was not well-received.

Sylvia noted that there was a discussion about which XML standards the Python community ought to support, particularly those put forward within or indepedently of standards organization by the largest vendors, such as Microsoft and IBM. In the course of the discussion OASIS was brought up. This revealed a lack of understanding about what OASIS is and does and how it is organized, which Sylvia was able to step forward and explain.

Sylvia reported that she had submitted her NSF Grant Proposal addressing the topic of Human Social Dynamics but she was not sure about whether the sbmission was accepted due to some technicalities with regard to the deadline. She advised that such submissions go to the administrative finance officer who usually wants a year of budget by the submitting groups to validate the budgets submitted. So, it was confirmed that this should be attempted wherever possible in our pending grant proposal writing efforts.

James asked whether we wanted the good news or bad news first and we chose the bad news and learned that the "Native Dancer" proposal for continued funding had been declined a second time, and that his team is reconsidering whether or not to continue the process for a third round of rebuttals and adjustments. He said that his project reviewers commented that the submission needed a bit more work on the trial evaluation protocols and a larger medical component. Sylvia suggested looking at a dance program in New York City which was funded and might provide a successful model. (My notes are not clear on that, so correct me if I that characterization is incorrect.)

We discussed this for a while with regard to the notion that the reviewers had asked why the dance program did not also include more contemporary pop culture elements such as hip hop since the target audience is in the teen to early adult age range, which seemed somewhat at odds with some previous criticism. James did make it clear just how difficult a task it can be to work one's way through this gauntlet. General consensus was that the more we know, and the more individuals we can learn from who have negotiated these processes both successfully and not, the better we can understand and adjust our own efforts.

The good news from James was his full attendance, and Rex's partial attendance at the recent Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative Congress, a conference or symposium on GIS-based and indexed organization and presentation of cultural data related to geographical locations, a discipline which can be applied outside archeological and anthropological arenas, as well. James also mentioned the work in related areas by a UC Berkeley-based program called CITRIS, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interst of Society, whose director, Ruzena Bajcsy, gave a well-received presentation on CITRIS in relation to the Cultural Atlas Initiative. In particular, this group tackles aspects of emergency response which intersect with the liaison work Rex is doing with Emergency Management and the Common Alerting Protocol, CAP.

Rex said that contacting CITRIS is a priority he will attend to shortly.

Russell reported that he will be attending the 4th Quarterly Conference on Emerging Technology Components on June 3rd, in Washington, D.C. Russell also reported that the demonstration that we have planned with Level 8 Systems on using CAP and WSRP as well as WSDL-based Registries with security and access control standards is proceeding.

Likewise, Russell noted, we have good contacts in government for presenting the new technologies we have cultivated and with which HumanML will be working. Indeed, he reported, these indviduals include us among those to whom they look for information about emerging technologies. Russell reported that the databases in the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, are mentioned in a May 24th New York Times article under the headline of "US Nearing Deal on Tracking Foreign Visitors," which coincides with our interests and the impending publication of his latest article on Government and IT Directives which detail the intricacies of these new and emerging technologies within the consolidation being conducted within DHS. This article and the others he and Rex have collaborated upon continue to strengthen our credibility and the credibility of our sister organization, Humanmarkup.org, Inc.

This issue of credibility concerned Rex in his report, saying that the Java Location Services Newsletter devoted to CAP was now out, coinciding with Russell's latest efforts. In addition, Rex noted, these efforts are aimed, if possible, to build up to the demonstrations and presentations he is attempting to organize. In that regard, he reported that he had made an excellent contact with the Manager of the Community Warning System within the the Office of the Sheriff of Contra Costa County in the SF Bay Area, whose programs serve as national prototypes and which have long been focused on using CAP. This is particularly important, Rex said, because it is a concrete example that will be working in real time along with several others as components of the demonstrations and presentations we are planning.

Rex also reported that he had started working on the revision of the Primary Base Schema and hoped to have the latest revision ready for a vote by the next TC meeting, but said that the end of June was more likely.

Ranjeeth reported that he had set up a new remote workstation which Rex would be using both for some programming work on the areas related to the grant proposals under way as well as the Primary Base Schema. It was then further suggested, as new business, that we should use this facility through partitions in the 120 GB hard disk on the remote machine, or else on the other remote computer Ranjeeth could set up, as a test bed for developing HumanML-based applications. We agreed to explore that possiblity further.

We adjourned at 12:55 p.m. Eastern Time.

huml message