Re: [office] Proposed TC Meeting Agenda Items

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Robert, all,

that's excellent timing. Actually, I wanted to put the formation of a formula 
sub committee on the agenda for Monday, as well as how we organize the TC 
calls in the future.

Regarding the formula sub committee. I have already created a sub committee 
charter proposal and will post this today in a separate mail. I will put this 
topic on the agenda for our con call on Monday.

Regarding a meta data sub committee. I think that the spectrum of the meta 
data topic turned out to be much broader than we originally thought. For that 
reason, I think it might be reasonable to stop the the discussions of meta 
data proposals for the moment, and to start a discussion what we want to 
achieve in this area. Given the complexity of the topic I think it would best 
to do so at a face to face meeting. I will come back to that topic later in 
this mail.

Regarding the TC calls. I agree that we need a TC coordination call, not only 
to better use our time, but also for quorum reasons. We cannot expect that 
the accessibility (and maybe future formula sub committee) members join our 
weekly TC call, so it will become difficult to reach a quorum once the 
accessibility sub committee has started. My proposal is that we start with 
having coordination calls once a  month, with the option to have additional 
calls on demand.

I suggest that we use our Monday time slot for the coordination call, and 
have a coordination call every first Monday in a month (unless this is a 
public holiday, where we would move the coordination call to the 2nd Monday).

I would further suggest that we use the remaining Mondays for discussions of 
those topics that are not covered by sub committees. Where I'm not sure is 
whether we should found something like a "core" or "maintainance" sub 
committee for this purpose, or whether it is sufficient to have TC calls that 
simply don't count towards voter eligibility.

Regarding a face to face meeting: I think it is very reasonable to have a 
face-to-face meeting in the near future where we discuss our goals for 2006 
as Robert suggested. This meeting might also be a good opportunity to discuss 
how we continue with the meta data topic.

I'm glad that I can offer to have this meeting take place at our Sun site in 
Hamburg. I will propose some dates for a face-to-face meeting in the next 
days and will put this topic on our agenda for Monday as well.

Best regards

Michael




robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote On 01/16/06 17:22,:
> 
> I'd like to suggest two agenda item for us to queue up for discussion at 
> a future TC call.
> 
> 1) Proposal to create additional Subcommittees
> 
> With the increased TC size (now 16 voting members) we should probably be 
> more protective of how we use our time during the weekly TC call. 
>  Personally, I'm not sure that we have sufficient time during these 
> calls to examine technical issues related to metadata, etc., to the 
> depth these areas rightfully deserve.  I'd propose that we think of the 
> TC call as primarily a meeting to propose and coordinate direction, and 
> to review technical proposals.   But we should make more use of 
> Subcommittees to develop debate specification areas to the point where 
> the consensus of subject matter experts has been reached.  Then have 
> these Subcommittees report back their recommendations to the full TC for 
> review.   We're doing this with Accessibility today.  I think Metadata 
> and Spreadsheet Formulas would be two other obvious candidates for such 
> an approach.
> 
> 2)  ODF TC Goals for 2006 .  
> 
> This is the type of thing we could discuss in the TC call if we moved 
> some of the other ongoing discussions into Subcommittees.  
> 
> What do we as a TC want to accomplish over the next 12 months?  
> 
> A strawman proposal:
> 
> a) Accessibility Subcommittee completes its examination of ODF 1.0 and 
> reports out findings and recommendations
> b) TC issues ODF 1.01 specification with errata and Accessibility 
> corrections, but no other new capabilities.  In other words, we agree to 
> "fast track" any accessibility requirements.
> c) Subcommittee formed to develop and propose further support for 
> Metadata and Spreadsheet Formulas.
> d) ODF 1.1 draft released with enhanced metadata, spreadsheet formulas, 
> and whatever other new features the TC may propose
> e) Compliance Subcommittee formed to propose ways to define compliance 
> and recommend and perhaps develop a means to verify compliance of 
> ODF-supporting applications
> 
> 
> -Rob

-- 
Michael Brauer                                Phone:  +49 40 23646 500
Technical Architect Software Engineering      Fax:    +49 40 23646 550
StarOffice Development
Sun Microsystems GmbH
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