Re: [tm-pubsubj] teleconferences, Committee Plans, etc.

[Patrick Durusau <Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org>]

Greetings,

I will take on the task of calling the OASIS folks on Monday and getting 
their suggestions on how we can get the three TCs moving again.

Will post a summary of that discussion to the group late tomorrow (by 
22:00 GMT, Monday, 13 October 2003).

Suspect it will be a combination of F2F and IRC meetings, particularly 
as Lars points out that teleconferences are expensive and sometimes 
difficult to participate in. (Unlike Lars, I am vain enough to not admit 
to a hearing problem, actually if you watch I favor my left ear and 
don't do well in noisy environments. Opps, the secret is out. ;-) Well, 
better that you know than simply thinking I am inattentive.)

A lot of our early effort will need to go into PubSubj since the other 
two groups, GeoLang and XMLVoc, need the work product of PubSubj to proceed.

Since Lars asked for alternatives (see below), here is my suggestion in 
terms of meetings (starting in October, all three TCs unless otherwise 
indicated):

October: IRC Agenda: goals and tasks for December F2F (some substantive 
work, mainly to attract new members)

December: F2F Agenda: break up tasks in PubSubj into deliverables that 
can roll out separately, fashion schedule for GeoLang and XMLVoc 
accordingly.

(Theory being that assigning someone to write a summary of "The Art of 
Computer Programming" all three volumes looks a lot more daunting than 
do a summary of Vol. 1, Section 2.3 Trees. Still useful work and more 
likely to be undertaken since we all find it hard to get started on 
overwhelming problems.)

February: IRC Agenda: review goals and deliverables for XML Europe

May: F2F XML Europe Some technical work but mainly recruitment for 
GeoLang, XMLVoc, since we should have some concrete tasks for those 
groups by this point. Show off what we have done so far. (Suspect a 
joint meeting with free drinks, soft drinks anyway, some snacks, etc.)

June/July: Bad months but do need an IRC meeting to get ready for Extreme.

August: F2F Extreme Markup Suggest that we make this F2F the one where 
we focus on architectures and technical questions of delivery. Have all 
the folks interested in that on hand so no reason to waste the opportunity.

October: IRC Technical work and agenda for XML 2004

December: F2F at XML 2004

By my count that gives us two meetings of all three TCs this year and 
six (3 IRC and 3 F2F) next year. Some of them could be combined meetings 
I suspect. Will ask the OASIS folks if that is a problem. No trip to 
Aruba (in deference to Mary and to be honest, I sometimes spend weeks 
without getting off my block except for travel so I won't miss the extra 
trip).

Suggestions for a different mix or schedule? (Obviously quite loose on 
the agendas, but we should be able to shape those up before the meetings.)

Separate post coming on possible work products (yes, multiple ones) from 
PubSubj.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Mary Nishikawa
> | 
> | First, I agree with Steve and Robin. I think that we should make one
> | TC with subcommittess, draft a new charter, and send out a call for
> | participation. The people who are only interested in Geolang, for
> | example can participate in the subcommittee.
> 
> The trouble is that we can't do that, however much we may want to:
>   <URL: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php#charter >
> 
> A TC is not allowed to change its charter.
>  
> | At a minimum, we need to conduct either a meeting or electronic vote
> | within a 6 month period. That means we would only need two
> | meetings/electronic votes per year.
> | 
> | Very active OASIS committees have  monthly meeting teleconferences and
> | a face to face meeting each quarter (I take these commitees seriously).
> | 
> | I guess we can be somewhere in the middle. One  teleconference every
> | 6 or 8 weeks  may be realistic, and one face to face meeting/year is
> | doable for most.
> 
> I think a combination of IRC meetings, email, and then whatever else
> we need to keep OASIS happy is probably the way to go. Concalls are
> IMHO not very effective (there's always sound problems), and they are
> also expensive, whereas IRC has none of these problems.
>  
> | If we are better at keeping track of proprosals, review of documents
> | and versioning we can really make progress.  Maybe Lars Marius
> | wouldn't mind us using his CVS for tracking of documents.
> 
> I'd be happy to. It may also be that Kavi can do this.
>  
> | I still have a proposal on the table from Feb 2002 on Best Practices
> | for Published Subjects Documention Stucture which I had almost
> | forgotten about (To my surprise it was recently cited in an article on
> | "Semantic Anchors for XML" in IBM's Developer Works by Uche Ogbuji.
> | http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think20.html
> | 
> | I think there is still interest in published subjects :)
> 
> Of course there is! We just need to get restarted, that's all.
>  
> | Whatever we can get would be nice. Teleconferences that I book
> | usually cost somewhere around 400-500 USD for a 2-hr
> | conference. This is not a trivial amount. If the sponsor can book an
> | 800 number for participants, that would be great, and we would get
> | more participation, I think, but I would guess that the cost would
> | go up. Some companies have their own teleconference system which may
> | be cheaper.
> 
> Personally, I'd much rather not have teleconferences. I really don't
> like them, and find them very exhausting. This may have to do with my
> poor hearing, but if we could go for IRC instead I would very much
> prefer that.
>  
> | I think that those that did not vote for a chair and for the ballot
> | due on the 24th can effectively be removed from the roster as
> | members.
> 
> They probably can. :-(
>  
> | We can do this all in a ballot. It is the easiest and most efficient
> | way to get feedback from most of the people here.
> 
> Yeah. I think we should have a little discussion to get the
> alternatives on the table, and then do a ballot to decide which way to
> go. The problem with an email discussion is that there is usually a
> silent majority whose opinion goes unheard...
> 


-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!