[ubl-lsc] New UBL liaison; changes in LSC schedule

[Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@sun.com>]

I am very pleased to announce that Thomas Lee of CEID (Center for
E-Commerce Infrastructure Development, The University of Hong
Kong) has been appointed the representative of the ebXML Asia
Committee to the UBL Liaison SC.  The ebXML Asia Committee was
established by ECOM (Japan), KIEC (Korea), and TCA (Taiwan) in
December of 2000 in order to promote ebXML in the Asia region.  It
now has 21 member organizations from Asia/Pacific, including
Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Australia and eASEAN as the
liaison member.

The addition of ebAC means that we will need to rearrange our
LSC conference call schedule.  As is well known, it is basically
impossible to schedule a conference call that will equally well
accommodate people in the U.S., Europe, and Asia/Pacific.  I have
discussed this with UBL LCSC chair Tim McGrath, who from his base
in Perth understands the problem all too well, and we have come
up with a solution that should not only accommodate the addition of
liaisons from Asia/Pacific but also address the problems we've
encountered in assembling a quorum in each call.  The plan is to
hold two calls on the same day once a month (rather than one call
every two weeks), one call for U.S./Europe and the other for
U.S./Asia, with each call devoted to informal discussion and all
formal business needing resolution by vote taken care of in email.

Since we need to rearrange our schedule anyway, we might as well
take this opportunity to address another problem with our current
meeting time, which is that it requires European participants to
phone in on Friday evenings.  The appropriate Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday slots are already taken by other key UBL phone
conferences, so I will propose that we take the obvious remaining
alternative and schedule LSC meetings for Mondays.

More formally, I propose the following:

   That the UBL Liaison SC meet on the first Monday of
   each month, beginning 6 January 2003, in two conference calls,
   the first call to take place 8-9 a.m. California time (4-5
   p.m. in London) and the second call to take place 4-5
   p.m. California time (8-9 a.m. in Perth and Hong Kong).

   That on Mondays that coincide with UBL TC plenaries, the
   meeting time be moved further into the week on a schedule to be
   determined by the LSC.

   That any decision arrived at by unanimous consent in both meetings
   be considered the decision of the entire UBL SC.

   That issues failing to achieve unanimous consent in both
   meetings be submitted to an email vote or held over for further
   discussion at the option of the chair.

If this proposal is adopted, our schedule for the first half of
2003 will look like this (all California times):

   Monday 6 January 2003 8-9 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.
   Week of 3-7 Feb 2003, time TBD (UBL TC meeting in Denver)
   Monday 3 March 2003 8-9 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.
   Monday 7 April 2003 8-9 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.
   Monday 5 May 2003 8-9 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.
   Monday 2 June 2003 8-9 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.

With regard to the LSC call scheduled for 20 December, the one
important thing we needed to know for this meeting was whether the
next schema package would be delivered as previously scheduled.
Over the last month, the time has slipped slightly from "end of
December" to 13 January, which still fits our matrix of liaison
review meetings by allowing for an announcement at the NRF
convention in NYC 12-15 January.

Tim McGrath reports as follows:

   Since the last face-to-face the LC team have moved rapidly to
   implement our new document models for release 0p70.  This is a
   credit to the high calibre of analysts and business domain
   experts contributing to the work of UBL.

   We have now produced draft document definitions for the Order,
   Order Response, Despatch Advice, Receipt Advice and Invoice
   document types.  These are currently being reviewed by our
   business experts before internal QA.  Next week (week
   commencing 23rd Dec.) we hope to generate the XSD schemas for
   these definitions.

   In parallel to these activities we are preparing supporting
   documents covering the business scope and implementation
   guidelines for release 0p70 together with a description of the
   LC document design methodology and some examples and
   stylesheets of UBL document instances.

   Also noteworthy about this forthcoming release is the joint
   publication of the latest UBL Naming and Design Rules and Code
   Lists papers.

   Overall we are still close to our schedule and if we can
   maintain momentum over the holiday break are on track for
   delivery of the next UBL release in the week commencing 13th
   Jan. 2003.

In sum, therefore, we appear to be on track with the schedule we
roughed out in our last LSC meeting.  Given that several key
people (including Tim) have already indicated to me that they will
not be able to participate in the meeting we had scheduled for
Friday 20 December, I suggest that we cancel this one, resolve to
meet Monday 6 January 2003 as proposed above, and take care of
some calendar maintenance in the meantime by email.

Does anyone have a problem with this?

Jon