Re: Proposal for face-to-face meetings and telecons in 2008

Good to hear you like the idea.

Regarding your not coming... oops, I actually proposed the old time 
because you recently commented that the 8am time is inconvenient because 
you get hungry.  I forgot that we changed to the 8am time because you 
couldn't make the 7am time.

Do you have any other times that might work?  Would 6:30am-7:30 or 7:30 to 
8:30 be better?

Cheers,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
IBM Victoria Software Lab
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer





"T.V Raman" <raman@google.com> 
11/20/2007 02:46 PM

To
John Boyer/CanWest/IBM@IBMCA
cc
public-forms@w3.org
Subject
Proposal for face-to-face meetings and telecons in 2008







I think 2 meetings plus two calls a week is a good idea ---
especially if we can partition the calls to have very focused
agendas e.g. one call for present bug-fixes vs one call for
longer term things. 
Of course I wont come to the one at 7am PT, but that's a known fact.

John Boyer writes:
 > We haven't had much of a chance to continue the discussion by email 
about 
 > how to increase attendance and participation in 2008, but we did begin 
to 
 > have some attractive ideas at the end of the last telecon that I would 
 > like to continue discussing tomorrow.
 > 
 > Here is a proposal based on the discuss:
 > 
 > *How about we have only two face to face meetings, but have two calls 
per 
 > week.*
 > 
 > There is an obvious benefit of reducing the cost of participation, 
which 
 > is important to the survival of smaller organizations and even 
important 
 > to those at larger organizations where approvals are hard to come by.
 > 
 > There is also the obvious benefit of reducing the schedule upset to 
 > oneself and one's employer.
 > 
 > However, I also think this will result in significantly accelerated 
 > progress.  It is hard to commit a large chunk of time to the group, so 
 > committing any time tends to get put off; indeed, the recent face to 
face 
 > attendance is really just one manifestation of this general point.
 > 
 > Having an extra hour *scheduled* in weekly would therefore accelerate 
us 
 > by quite a bit by giving us more time in increments that people can 
 > manage.  And if you have to miss the occasional call, it's not so bad 
as 
 > missing a whole face to face.
 > 
 > I also think it would be possible to get people more engaged in doing 
at 
 > least one action item between the calls.  And as people get better at 
 > doing action items, they become less of a bother because they can be 
done 
 > more quickly.
 > 
 > Here are a couple of logistical notes:
 > 
 > If this option is selected, I would think we should consider moving the 

 > Raleigh face to face out to May, then meet at the tech plenary in 
October.
 > 
 > If this option is selected, I would think the second call should take 
 > place during our old time on Thursday mornings (7am pacific, 10 
eastern, 
 > etc.). 
 > 
 > If this option is selected, we may need the approval of a higher 
 > authority, such as the CEO of W3C.  I think it is quite unlikely we 
would 
 > have to recharter because we are holding telecons in lieu of face to 
face 
 > meetings.
 > 
 > Finally, note that I did also thinking of the alternative of going down 
to 
 > three meetings and having a 90 minute call.  But that alternative 
scores 
 > quite a bit lower on all of the above metrics.  It doesn't cut costs in 

 > half, it doesn't cut the big schedule upsets in half, and it doesn't do 
as 
 > good a job accelerating the group because we'd still be meeting only 
once 
 > weekly, so no chance to break it up and get people to do action items 
 > between the calls.
 > 
 > Please post your thoughts about this proposal.
 > 
 > Thanks,
 > John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
 > STSM: Lotus Forms Architect and Researcher
 > Chair, W3C Forms Working Group
 > Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software
 > IBM Victoria Software Lab
 > E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com 
 > 
 > Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
 > 

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

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