Hi all - I asked Ken Holman, one of the chairs of the UBL TC, how the bi-coastal meeting schedule has worked for them. Here is what sent back to me. For them, it works quite well.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
G. Ken Holman <gkholman@cranesoftwrights.com>Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: Can you comment on a question from -> [legalcitem] Topic for discussion: adding meetings to support multiple time zones
To: Chet Ensign <
chet.ensign@oasis-open.org>
Hey, Chet! Thank you for asking!
Jon Bosak set up the two teleconference approach to each weekly meeting and, as you mention to them, it has worked well. Members in the two Americas can choose which of the two meetings to attend (we have one in Peru, two in the US and me in Canada). As chair, it helps that I can attend both to give some continuity ... that may not be available to all committees if their chairs are on one side or the other.
Both calls take place on the same Wednesday UTC day, 00:00UTC and 14:00UTC, which means Tuesday evening for those in the Americas (Australia's Wednesday morning), and then Wednesday morning for those in the Americas (Europe's Wednesday afternoon).
During the Pacific call members will vote and I'll minute provisional acceptance pending the Atlantic call. The Atlantic call attendees then complete the vote. We have always managed to establish all motion criteria in advance of voting so that we don't expect anyone to vote against a motion, so we haven't yet encountered a situation of voting down. But I don't see why it wouldn't work ... a vote tallies the opinions of all members, regardless of when they are on the phone. But it requires all discussion to have taken place beforehand.
The Pacific minutes are presented, unchanged, as the Atlantic agenda items, which also gives a sense of continuity. I don't introduce anything new. With Jon we used to have a day and a half between meetings, and that opened up the opportunity for new items to be added to the second call, which doesn't help those in the first call. So my advice is to keep the two calls as close as possible together and have a policy to try not to introduce new items for the second call.
Importantly, we have never raised a new voting issue in any meeting, either Pacific or Atlantic. If during either call we determine the need for an issue to be voted on, the vote is scheduled for the next week. Of course there may need to be an exception for a critical issue, but so far no. When the agendas for meetings for that week are published, the agenda email subject line includes a notation that it is a voting meeting (in case members don't typically look inside the email). See these agendas for an example:
https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201311/msg00001.html
https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201311/msg00007.html
And note our use of a web page for tracking the time, such as:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=2013-11-06T15:00:00
We don't have a lot of technical discussions during the calls ... we try to hold those on the mail lists so that everyone can participate and the calls are not that long. When we have regularly-scheduled face-to-face meetings we'll put off some phone discussions until we are all in the same room.
I guess that is all ... UBL members seem really quite content with the way Jon set up the meetings. No-one says they feel disenfranchised.
Please let me know if I have overlooked anything.
.. . . . . . . Ken
At 2014-04-15 13:13 -0400, you wrote:
Hi Ken,Â
The Legal Citations Markup TC has, like the UBL TC, members from around the globe. One member in Hawaii is planning to drop out because the meeting timeframe is early morning for her and another, in Japan, participates but in the middle of the night.Â
I sent today a note to the members explaining what UBL does and giving an example of a parallel pair of meetings.Â
One question that came back from the TC was how UBL reconciles differences between the two meetings. I said that I would ask.Â
Has UBL ever encountered a situation where conflicting proposals came up in the two meetings or, in general, where something had to be reconciled between the two sets of participants and, if so, how were they resolved?Â
Also, do you have any general advice on how to make this sort of arrangement work to the best? I want to help us be as inclusive as possible - especially since the gentleman in Japan is a thought leader on legal citations and I feel bad getting him up in the middle of the night every other week.Â
Thanks,Â
/chet
---------- Forwarded message ----------
To: "<mailto:legalcitem@lists.oasis-open.org>legalcitem@lists.oasis-open.org" <<mailto:legalcitem@lists.oasis-open.org>legalcitem@lists.oasis-open.org>
LegalCiteM TC members,Â
I would like to raise a topic for discussion at tomorrow's meeting.Â
The Legal Citations TC is one of the few groups at OASIS with members around the globe. That means that meeting times that are convenient for some of us are prohibitively early or late for others of us.Â
One other TC that has faced this challenge is the Universal Business Library (UBL) TC, one of the most successful standards to come out of OASIS. UBL has managed this challenge by running mirror meetings to fit schedules of those in Europe (on one side) and Asia Pacific (on the other). See for example:Â
- Agenda for Pacific UBL TC call:Â <https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201404/msg00009.html>https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201404/msg00009.htmlÂ
- Agenda for Atlantic UBL TC call:Â <https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201404/msg00012.html>https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/201404/msg00012.htmlÂ
Might we try something similar in order to make meeting times work for all participants in the TC?Â
Best,Â
/chetÂ
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