-----Original
Message-----
From: Rand
Anderson [mailto:randerson@macgregor.com]
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 10:59
AM
To:
wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: 'Ben Bloch'; Burdett, David;
'Darran Rolls'; Diane Jordan
Subject: RE: [wsbpel] This telcon
process doesn't work!
Folks,
My initial
reaction to today's kickoff:
We ran into some
issues (some business but mostly protocol, I think), but to me, these seem
like mostly normal issues for the birth-pains of a new group with this
kind of mission and industry interest. The benefit to running into these
kinds of issues in our kickoff meeting is that we can solidify some ground
rules and practices early in our life that will help things go more
smoothly the rest of the way, before we get to the really gnarly issues.
BTW, thanks to all who spearheaded, attended, and supported this, but
especially to Diane and John for their patient
leadership.
Some points of
order that I might offer:
A few folks
complained about having a conference call meeting conducted mostly in
"listen-only" mode and needing to resort to speaker queues. I presume they
felt that this somehow would constrain or limit (negatively) the
opportunities for contribution and/or interaction.
In fact, if we
were to strictly follow Robert's Rules of Order, these constraints would
be barely noticed by anyone participating (with maybe a minor exception,
see my suggested revisions below). [In fact, following Robert's Rules on a
conf call with speaker-queuing is better than following Robert's Rules in
person in at least one way: the fairness of the queuing is managed for us
by the call system; when in person, the sequence of hand-raising is
somewhat subject to the memory of the chair.]
John, I think you
mentioned getting a FAQ for Robert's Rules posted to the BPEL site - this
is crucial, and everyone needs to get some basic familiarity with
operating in a group bound by Robert's Rules. They are intended (and
crafted over many years) to help ensure fair and orderly conduct of
decision making by groups.
To be clear, for
BPEL conf call TC meetings, I am strongly in favor of conducting them
roughly as was proposed for today's call, with listen-mode most of the
time (to minimize line noise), plus the following
guidelines:
-
allow folks to get in the
speaker queue at any time (this is simply analogous to raising your hand
to be heard at an in-person meeting)
-
ask that the meeting chair
simply call on those in the queue in a FIFO manner, as appropriate to the
point at hand
-
note that getting into the
queue doesn't mean you can speak at will; you will get your turn as called
upon by the chair
-
again, participants should
think of getting in the speaker queue simply as equivalent to raising your
hand. If you 'drop your hand' then re-raise it, you first fall out of the
queue and then get back on at the end of the queue. This is
fair.
-
until we get the hang of it,
we maybe need to be a bit more heavy-handed on enforcing some of the rules
of order, e.g., when the item on the floor is whether or not you object to
the current motion, do not use your moment on the floor to suggest another
amendment - that only creates confusion. There are certain times open for
amendments, etc. Read Robert's Rules to get some understanding of how this
works.
[...]