regarding location

I see that in a previous webont phone call, a "straw poll" indicated a 
"tie" between Manchester and NY.  I don't understand why a straw poll is 
necessary when all the trouble to do a web tally was undertaken.  The web 
vote with the rankings of 1-5 were, as I understood it, set up to let 
people specify through the rankings both their favorite single location 
and their preference between having it in the Eastern US vs. Europe.

The tally clearly shows that group members expressed an overall preference 
to have the meeting on the East Coast. Manchester had the most "1s", it 
also had the most "5s".    NY had by far the highest avg score in the 
tally.  This is obviously just a battle between Europeans who want to stay 
in Europe and Americans who want to stay here. 

If we're going to throw away the web tally, then let's do this properly - 
let's first vote on whether to have the Jan. meeting in Europe or in the 
US, and THEN let's choose a location.  I think Ian surprised most of us by 
suggesting Manchester, as we were all expecting the alternation to 
continue.  If the group decides to have the next meeting in Europe, 
personally I'd rather not go to England twice (and I know I'm not alone), 
and I bet other volunteers would come forward to host the event.

-Chris

Dr. Christopher A. Welty, Knowledge Structures Group
IBM Watson Research Center, 19 Skyline Dr.
Hawthorne, NY  10532     USA 
Voice: +1 914.784.7055,  IBM T/L: 863.7055
Fax: +1 914.784.6078, Email: welty@us.ibm.com

Received on Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:32:40 UTC