Re: [xtm-wg] Re: Charter: Participating Member conditions

[Steve Pepper <pepper@tosca.infotek.no>]

Steve,

My 2 cents on the charter issue:

There surely cannot be any doubt that 

  - having the first two "official" meetings of TOPICMAPS.ORG in
    the US;
  - proposing (at a point in time too late for anyone to act
    accordingly) that attendance at both those meetings be a
    prerequisite for founding participating member status; and
  - refusing to have two consecutive meetings in Europe this
    spring/summer

at the very least constitutes a stacking of the cards against those
of us based in Europe (not to mention the rest of the world).

That's not to say anyone believes it was deliberate; it's just a
fact (such ?-centricity is more often related to thoughtlessness).
    
But you are being a little disingenuous, Steve, when you say:

>Although the organizational meetings were held on
>both coasts of North America, they were attended by Europeans and
>others from around the globe.

Since neither meeting report includes a complete list of attendees
with their affiliations, it's impossible for me to know exactly who
would qualify today for participating membership, but I'm willing to
bet there would be very few, if any, non-US based persons among them.

And that despite the major involvement of German, British, Norwegian
and French experts at every face-to-face working meeting during the
final years of the development of the topic map standard.

No, we're not paranoid, just a tad touchy ;-)

However, your proposal goes a long way to rectifying this situation:

At 08:57 09.03.00 -0600, Steven R. Newcomb wrote:
>In answer to my own question, I hereby propose that Graham Moore's and
>Kal Ahmed's written contribution of an XML-ified version of ISO/IEC
>13250:2000, and a similar contribution by Martin Bryan to the effort,
>should all be considered sufficiently contributory to the founding
>process that we should regard them as having been founding members.
>By that same yardstick, I think that Steve Pepper, Daniel
>Rivers-Moore, and any others who made contributions to the foundation
>of TopicMaps.Org should also be regarded as founding members.  That
>means that Kal Ahmed, Martin Bryan, Graham Moore, Steve Pepper, and
>Daniel Rivers-Moore all would become founders.  I don't know who else,
>if anyone, should be regarded as a founder by the same yardstick, but
>at least the criterion of having made a written contribution at
>founding time establishes both legitimacy and very limited franchise,
>so we don't have to worry about an avalanche of requests for other
>exceptions on the same basis.  I'd be delighted if we can all agree on
>this idea and welcome all such people as founders.

In addition to those mentioned, Holger Rath has made important
contributions through attendance at ISO meetings, presentations at
conferences and at least four publications (that I know of).

>I also think that
>Graham's and Steve Pepper's status as founders should give either one
>of them the right to vote on behalf of Bertelsmann, or to transfer
>that right to another (permanent) Participating Member from
>Bertelsmann.

STEP Infotek is no longer part of the Bertelsmann empire. We now have
only the "STEP" name in common with the STEP Group. I would represent
the Norwegian company Infostream (or its likely new owner, the French
company Integra).

>Anyway, if we all agree, I propose to add a statement to the beginning
>of the Charter explaining how the founders came to have the privilege
>of being regarded as founders:
>
>  Be it resolved: The founding Participating Members of TopicMaps.Org,
>  having attended one or both of the preliminary organizational
>  meetings (in Alexandria, Virginia, USA in January, 2000 and in San
>  Jose, California, USA in February and March, 2000), and/or having
>  made other contributions to the process of founding TopicMaps.Org
>  prior to the San Jose meeting,
>
>  {insert list of names of founders here}
>
>  do hereby form TopicMaps.Org, adopting the following as its Charter
>  and By-Laws:

The "one or both" is new here, but it may help rectify the imbalance,
so I can go with that. Having meetings in Gothenburg in May AND in
Paris in June would be a way of opening up the organization to
potential new members from Europe (a lot of whom would be "content-
oriented"). As to the rest of the world, all I can say is "You'll
have my backing at once if you raise your voices!"

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, STEP Infotek AS (+47 908 27246)