Re: A Robert's machine

[Jon Bosak <bosak@boethius.eng.sun.com>]

[tallen@sonic.net:]

| Just scanning it, this sounds interesting.  But I'm not sure I
| see why it should be standardized in OASIS.  Not only is it not
| a proposal for an XML specification, it shouldn't be.

I can think of several answers to this, but they don't all run in
the same direction, and I'm not sure which I would actually want
to use if pressed.

1. CGM isn't XML either, and yet a big chunk of OASIS consists of
   CGM Open.  (I think that this is valid but sorta blunt.)

2. If the PA works in practice (a totally untested proposition at
   this point), OASIS would be the first organization in which I
   would suggest its application.  Given (I say) that the machine
   is successful, the PA TC may turn out to be the committee that
   standardizes the process by which OASIS TCs actually operate.
   I think it would be nice if the committee responsible for
   maintaining the detailed OASIS committee process were an OASIS
   committee that ran according to the OASIS committee process.
   There's a certain appealing consistency there.  Of course, this
   is a very long shot, but I think we should judge the merit of a
   proposed TC on the basis of its intentions.  That is, if we
   judge merit as such at all, which I don't think we've decided
   yet.

3. The PA proposal has been somewhat colored by my participation
   in a series of colloquia at Stanford given by industry legend
   Doug Engelbart.  A lot of the talk there has been about how to
   improve decision-making processes through the use of a Dynamic
   Knowledge Repository (DKR), which is built on your basic
   Nelsonian open hyperdocument system (OHS).  It seems
   increasingly clear to most people at the colloquium, which is
   about halfway through its run at this point, that the reference
   implementation of a DKR should be built on XML.  (In fact, as I
   will explain to them in a presentation I'm scheduled to give
   the group in a couple of weeks, what they really should be
   interested in is XML Linking, but that's a detail.)  In my
   opinion, the PA is the "killer app", at least initially, for
   hyperdocument technology applied to total quality management,
   by which I mean the continuous improvement of managerial
   processes.  So here's a group that will be developing XML
   standards for the thing of which the PA is an application, a
   group that will be developing domain-specific XML and XLink
   specs as part of its activity.  It's not shoes, but it is a
   real XML application domain, just as XML topic maps is a real
   XML application domain.  From a standards viewpoint, the PA is
   an extension of this work.

It occurs to me now that a PA could be run by the kind of
administrative structure that we were saying Thursday will have to
be in place for purposes of appeal.  Just a thought.

| However, The Robert's Rules Association might be real interested;
| alternately there must be societies dedicated to parliamentary
| pursuits (which might actually have some parallel work in progress
| already).

I expect organizations of professional parliamentarians to be
among the groups least supportive of this proposal if it succeeds
technically.  It's like asking the portrait painters to help
foster the daguerreotype.  A few will surely connect with the
technological approach and provide its first generation of
implementation experts, but I expect the great majority to find a
free replacement for professionals in their line of work somewhat
threatening.

Jon