I assume that we should discuss this proposal on the PWG DL, not the
PWG-ANNOUNCE DL.
I agree that reducing the number of PWG face-to-face meetings by half, i.e.,
bi-monthly, is probably a good idea.
However, there is another concern that I have, which is that the people left
on the ongoing projects don't have much communication between each other.
The UPDF group, the IPP group, the IPP FAX group, the new PWG Media Size
(and Type) group, and the Print Format MIME Media type registry should be
working more closely together. But having meeting on separate days isn't
helping with the communication between groups. So just reducing the number
of PWG face-to-face meetings still leaves some real problems.
So I suggest that we use the time of the canceled PWG meetings for a shorter
telecon held only during part of one day. The telecon would have a planned
agenda with documents available a week ahead of time with a list of issues
to be resolved, and documents to be reviewed. Minutes of the telecons are
written up, just like a face to face meeting. But since we will have all
the players present from each of the projects, we should be able to improve
the communication between the projects.
The IPP telecons have not been particularly effective and have had low
attendance for the following reasons, in my opinion:
a. too frequent
b. vague agenda, so no preparation can really be done
c. no minutes
d. not enough work done between the telecons by small groups of people
(2-4 people).
I have been impressed with the UPnP telecons, which do have planned agendas,
a minute taker, meet no more often than once a month, and have two or three
specifications that are progressed at each telecon. Each of these documents
have several authors who do most of the heavy lifting and editing between
the meetings.
So another part of the plan is to have three or four folks doing real work
in between meetings on a particular document, not just one person editing
the agreements from one meeting to be reviewed at the next meeting.
So the above proposal for roughly monthly telecons, in between the face to
face PWG meetings, will hopefully fix some of the problems stated above.
Some of the open questions:
Who organizes and runs which parts of the PWG telecon?
Do the separate projects sort of merge back into a single PWG group?
Comments?
Thanks,
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: don at lexmark.com [mailto:don at lexmark.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 06:53
To: pwg-announce at pwg.org
Subject: PWG-ANNOUNCE> 2001 Meeting Schedule
All:
The development of standards in a single area is often a cyclical process.
Work
on standards in printing is no different. Many of you may remember a year
ago
when we were forced to overlap meetings in ways to minimize personnel
overlap
and to schedule evening sessions in order to give time for all the PWG
projects
to meet in a single week.
Where there's a peak there's also a trough. At this point in time, the PWG
is
in one of those troughs. The IPP project is rapidly drawing to a
conclusion.
The UPD project will soon complete and of course the MIB and 1394 efforts
are in
maintenance mode. That leaves the IPP Fax effort as the only one in the
real
heart of the development process. Additionally, the US economy has caused
several of our participants to scale back in their travel expenditures and
hence
their face-to-face participation in standards meetings including the PWG.
Therefore, I proposed at the March PWG meeting in Tampa, the following
schedule
change:
- Apr 23-27 -> Portland OR (meeting notice recently sent)
- Jun 4-8 Toronto -> cancel
- Jul 30-Aug 3 Amsterdam -> move to Toronto
- Sep 10-14 Texas -> tentatively cancel
- Oct 22-26 Phoenix, AZ -> move to Texas or keep in Phoenix
- Dec 17-21 Los Angeles, CA -> tentatively cancel
Those in attendance in Tampa agreed with this proposal. The only definitive
actions at this time are the cancellation of the Toronto meeting dates and
the
movement of the Jul/Aug meeting to Toronto. We will continue to assess the
need
for meetings and make final determination of the September, October and
December
meeting dates and locations as we move forward. I encourage individual
working
groups (such as UPD or IPP Fax) to schedule face-to-face meetings at
locations
and times convenient to those groups between Plenary meetings.
In order to maintain communications among the various working groups,
alternative communications channels such as a Plenary Teleconference or a
PWG
"newsletter" may be used when there would normally have been a face-to-face
meeting.
BTW: Effective Wednesday, March 21st, my phone number will change to
859-825-4808.
**********************************************
* Don Wright don at lexmark.com *
* Chair, Printer Working Group *
* Chair, IEEE MSC *
* *
* Director, Strategic & Technical Alliances *
* Lexmark International *
* 740 New Circle Rd *
* Lexington, Ky 40550 *
* 859-232-4808 (phone) 603-963-8352 (fax) *
**********************************************