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

All,

My company and I are not sure if changing the number of face to face 
meetings to only two meetings each year will ensure that all/most members 
will attend both meetings. Experience with other working groups has shown 
that when you lower the number of face to face meetings you will still 
have people that aren't able to come to those fewer meetings. This because 
: there is a scheduling conflict that wasn't known when the meeting was 
scheduled (both related to the company as personal), unable to travel due 
to funding (for bigger companies at the end of the year, for smaller 
companies just because they are going through a difficult period), other 
company specific reason why you can not attend. If you can't make a 
meeting due to one of the previous reasons, it is worse then before 
because you are missing 50% of the meetings instead of 25%. We also think 
that it is going to be hard to increase the number of meetings again after 
your lowered them and it turned out that it didn't fix our problem.

We also believes that during face to face meetings our company gets the 
most in return for our 'investments' in W3C. This is the time when 
interesting discussions are held, and it even  happens that people talk 
about how they implemented something and what they could have done better 
(during the meetings but defiantly during the breaks and diner). 

Having two calls a week will certainly increase the work that gets done 
__IF__ people manage to do action items between the calls, otherwise it 
will just increase the number of action items, that a limited number of 
members are handling. Having two calls a week I personally don't like that 
much due to the time they are scheduled. A Typical working-day starts at 
7u30 for me, and the call ends at 6pm (or 6u30pm if we start the time 
Raman proposes) local time, after that I have to drive home with takes 
another hour. So I get at home at 7-8pm when we have telecon, I don't have 
any trouble working some days so long, but having to commit doing it two 
days a week for the WG (plus some extra day(s) when it is busy at work), 
is maybe a bit too much. Don't understand me wrong, I don't have any 
trouble with doing some extra calls for some weeks, or doing 2 hour calls 
for some period but having them every week, I'm not sure about that.

The other problem with the proposal is that it is harder for my employer 
to commit that I am available on the two fixed hours on the fixed days, 
then it is to have me available the one each week and the 4 half weeks a 
year. The later (how it is currently) is easier to plan in a small company 
as ours, with limited resources (people). On the other side my employer is 
happy to commit that I will be able to do more work if it stays like it 
currently is and do some more WG related tasks then I do now (lucky me).

I just wanted to give my and my employers opinion before the telecon 
starts, so you can read it and think about these points.

Regards,

Nick Van den Bleeken  -  Research & Development Manager
Inventive Designers
Phone: +32 - 3 - 8210170
Fax: +32 - 3 - 8210171
Email: Nick_Van_den_Bleeken@inventivegroup.com

public-forms-request@w3.org wrote on 11/21/2007 12:05:01 AM:

> 
> 8:30--9:30 would be better, because then I could eat breakfast
> from 8:00--9:00.
> No disrespect intended, but I've decided not to take any W3C
> calls  at earlier times  --- whatever the subject --- I killed
> myself taking way too many of those in my past life.
> 
> John Boyer writes:
>  > 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 
cutcosts 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
>  > 
>  > Title:  Research Scientist 
>  > Email:  raman@google.com
>  > WWW:    http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
>  > Google: tv+raman 
>  > GTalk:  raman@google.com, tv.raman.tv@gmail.com
>  > PGP:    http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/raman-almaden.asc
>  > 
>  > 
> 
> -- 
> Best Regards,
> --raman
> 
> Title:  Research Scientist 
> Email:  raman@google.com
> WWW:    http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/
> Google: tv+raman 
> GTalk:  raman@google.com, tv.raman.tv@gmail.com
> PGP:    http://emacspeak.sf.net/raman/raman-almaden.asc
> 
> 



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Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 11:43:55 UTC