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

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

Steve,

Steve Pepper wrote:
> | >1. Fresh start, clean slate, new chair, all that.
> | >2. Less admin with just one committee (especially given the degree
> | >    of overlap we had in membership).
> | >3. Opportunity to change the name and become less Topic Maps-centric.
> | >    Suggest calling it "OASIS Published Subjects TC" and going after
> | >    representation from the RDF community.
> 
> Oh, and
> 
> 4. Mary for chair (unless Patrick wants to fight her
>    for it ... but he has so many hats already ;-)
> 

Maybe, maybe... ;-)

What I find curious is despite several posts asking the question:

If the present TCs are broken, how is another TC going to do any better?

There has been no answers from anyone who appears to assume that the 
present TCs are broken.

Since I have asked for reasons why the present TCs aren't working (and 
gone unanswered) I will offer my own (with ways forward as well):

Personally I think the present TCs have been less than very productive 
primarily because we are such a small community and all of the 
participants have day jobs. It is simply not possible for those 
participants, however skilled or dedicated (and I think they all are) to 
devote unlimited amounts of time to OASIS TCs along with other standards 
efforts and still maintain their regular duties.

Having a new TC, whatever the name, etc., is not going to change that 
basic fact.

But I don't suggest the foregoing to say that the TCs are doomed. Far 
from it. The GeoLang and XMLVoc TCs need the output of the PubSubj to 
move forward.

There is at least one group that is very interested in doing the 
language side of GeoLang that is not presently in the TC, but for them 
to start, they have to have a starting place from PubSubj.

As I mentioned yesterday, the SBL is in discussion with a vendor that 
could easily issue PSIs for biblical materials, but again, it needs to 
know which way to point its cannon. Either one would be a boost in 
visibility for PSIs in the near term and not two years from now (if not 
more) with a new TC.

As I noted yesterday, there are several deliverables that could issue 
from the PubSubj TC without any change to its charter and being less 
than the "full monty" would be less of a drain on the resources of its 
members. If (I should say when) the PubSubj TC starts issuing work 
products that can be used by the RDF community (or anyone else, perhaps 
the topic map community) we should find it an easier task to attract new 
members to share the work load. We can certainly give the work products 
less topic map centric names if that is seen as an advantage.

We have been down this "present organization is not working, the 
solution is another organization" road before. Setting up another TC is 
simply avoiding the substantive question about how to use the resources 
we have to go forward in favor of appearing to go forward by forming yet 
another TC with the same members. Not being a large vendor with a 
marketing staff (none of the TC participants are) I prefer substantive 
progress over motion to give the appearance of progress.

If your question, Steve, is will I fight to keep the TCs going (whether 
as chair or as a participant) and making substantive progress as opposed 
to creating the illusion of progress through procedural motion, the 
answer is yes.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick


-- 
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!