Re: stds-802-16: Meeting schedules

[Brian_Petry@3com.com]

[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as non-confidential.]



Jerry,

I agree with you, for the most part.  The Boulder meeting, however, is a
"sanctioned" interim meeting.  Most of the 802 committee have these when they
need to keep things moving.  The other meetings, I think, are informal and
unsanctioned.  But we ought to let them have the unsanctioned meetings if they
think they can be productive in submitting contributions.  The contributions
they come up with should be treated just like any other, except that they happen
to come from multiple people.  Personally, I do not think the unsanctioned
interim meetings are necessary, and agree that they are burdensome in terms of
time expended, interruption and travel costs.

I much prefer the Internet/IETF model, where most of the work gets done with the
email reflector.  It's cheaper; it forces us to get thoughts down on paper; it
is automatically recorded; it can achieve wider industry participation; it's
convenient for polite technical debate; it produces results faster; it is more
democratic---discouraging off-line consortia.  The IEEE LMSC is much different
than the IETF, though.  Membership is tracked and votes are tallied.

But I must add that I am dissapointed so far with the lack of participation on
the reflector.  We agreed at the Austin meeting to "get moving" on system
requirements, post content on the reflector and that I would gather the
contributions into a document.  We only have a handful of submissions so far,
making me wonder if people are really interested in an interoperable standard.

Best Regards,

Brian Petry





Jerry Woodard <JerryW@wytecinc.com> on 04/14/99 12:57:20 PM

To:   "'stds-802-16 @ieee.org'" <stds-802-16@ieee.org>
cc:    (Brian Petry/PA/3Com)
Subject:  stds-802-16: Meeting schedules




[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as
non-confidential.]

[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as
non-confidential.]

Folks -

Let me see if I have this 802.16 schedule straight:

(1) We have a regular quarterly meeting scheduled in Montreal starting July
5.
(2) We have an interim meeting scheduled in Boulder starting May 10.
(3) There was an "interim" interim meeting held in Dallas on April 12.
(4) There is yet another "interim" interim meeting desired to be held in
Dallas before May 12.

I understand that anything that is "decided" at these ad hoc meetings will
not become official until "voted on" at the main meeting.

I object.

This process is a charade that disenfranchises most of the 802.16 study
group.  It is expensive and disruptive for most of us to stop work on our
employer's assigned tasks and fly off to attend a series of hastily
contrived volunteer committee meetings.

I see that there are two possible choices for 802.16:
(1) A couple of you folks just go ahead and make the decisions, write the
documents, and then ask the rest of us to mail in our votes so that there is
an appearance of a consensus, or
(2) Limit the meetings to the quarterly gatherings at which times an open
discussion can be held on all topics with no preconceived outcome.

Jerry Woodard
Wytec, Inc.