RE: stds-802-16: 802 Rules Change ballots underway
Terve Roger,
Naftali speaks words of wisdom.
1. The meeting timing (whether plenary or interim) is important to
oversees guests. Especially those tiny locations 3-4 flights away
make travelling really awkward, Sunday is spent travelling to be in
time on Monday morning (Monday afternoon opening is often a much better
alternative, probably even for North American people). WGs should end
by Thursday evening and thus SEC shouldn't enable WGs to continue on
Fridays, once again there aren't usually any afternoon/evening flights
with overseas connections from these tiny locations meaning in worst case
an early Saturday flight and home late on Sunday...
The basic problem is that somehow the process isn't efficient. WGs tend
continuously to extend their meetings and SEC is following. Instead SEC
should push this development in the opposite direction (OK, Email voting
is a try...). Fixing the SEC meeting time to 1-6pm could squeeze some
hours (3-7pm seems to be the current praxis). Anyhow, I would encourage
starting before noon to restrict the WGs to maximally the closing plenary
on Friday.
Naftali is right that additional (in)formal meetings should be encouraged
to help sorting out issues. After all, many items are problems just to lack
of communication and thus it's really annoying when a couple of people nag
forever about minor things consuming valuable meeting time. Efficient meeting
practices would mandate people to do their homework (our comment resolution
process tries to do this) thus restricting the meeting time for decisions. I
know, this is utopia in practice, but at least worth a try!
2. No comments
3. Email voting sounds good and would enable sorting out issues between meetings.
But the process isn't trivial, as Nico and Naftali pointed out, there must be
clear guidelines how it works! This on one side will add more bureaucracy and
administrative work but on the other hand also more deadlines etc. Most of us
are not doing standards full time and some even follow several groups. Suddenly
one's own time management becomes the critical factor. It's impossible to require
people to stay alert week by week for any urgent issues. The amount of 6 deadlines
(for 6 meetings) per year is sufficient granularity to ensure one can handle also
other tasks. Standards work is important, but I don't think anyone of us will hesitate
if the time should be spent on securing a critical deal. Less deadlines and sufficient
time between will allow people to contribute steadily as opposed to a fragmented approach
leading to low return ratios and thus unreliable and irregular results.
Email voting could be used for straw polls to aid in directing the way of work (e.g.
adjusting a contribution). A mechanism to identify potential disagreement before
entering the meeting floor would enable a dialogue to be started with potential
opponents prior to the meeting thus making it possible to adjust the idea to fit
the majority or even expand it. Currently discussion is conducted first time the
item is presented in a meeting leading to all debate and education happening during
valuable meeting time.
BR
Jori
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Naftali Chayat [mailto:naftali.chayat@alvarion.com]
> Sent: 16 May, 2002 8:56
> To: 'Roger B. Marks'; stds-802-16@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: stds-802-16: 802 Rules Change ballots underway
>
>
> Hello Roger,
>
> Follows my opinion on the issues raised.
>
> (1) move the SEC Closing Meeting to 1-6 pm on Fridays
>
> I strongly object to that. While appreciating the willingness
> of SEC members
> to work late on Friday, the next step will be that the
> Working Groups will
> stretch the closing plenaries till Friday noon. In the past
> the SEC closing
> meetings were on Thursday night, then it shifted to Friday
> morning, and now
> to Friday afternoon. I want to remind to my US colleagues
> that to reach
> Israel by Saturday evening, meet my family and be at work on Sunday (a
> workday in Israel) I have to depart from US about Friday noon
> the latest
> from most places in the US.
>
> Same, by the way, is relevant to Interim meetings. In 802.16
> meeting in
> Finland it seemed natural that no meetings will be held on
> Friday so that US
> people will get home by weekend.
>
> In the past I tried to attend the SEC closing plenary, at
> least for the few
> items that interested me. This goal becomes more and more
> elusive. It hurts
> the openness of the process in SEC.
>
> I consider the creep in conducting business later and later on Fridays
> inappropriate and uncourteous towards non-US members (just to
> remind that
> IEEE is an international organization). For all the reasons stated I
> strongly object to the motion.
>
> (2) add a second SEC vice chair
>
> Without knowing the workload on the Vice Chair, a second VC
> seems more like
> a backup position rather than an acting one. I would
> recommend designating
> one of the SEC members as a Second Vice Chair rather than
> inflating the SEC.
>
> (3) permit email voting in WG (other than Letter Ballots)
>
> The proposed change in rules lacks two things: a definition
> of response
> time, and a mechanism of raising motions to be resolved by
> email voting. Can
> I decide on June 20th that I want to move that Wavelet
> modulation be removed
> from 802.16h and send a motion to the reflector? How much
> time will be given
> to respond (2 minutes)? What is the mechanism for having discussion
> (probably email to the reflector), keeping some thread of
> discussion and
> limiting discussion (rather than have 183 emails, 160 of
> which with useless
> rhetoric between 3 members)?
>
> Another issue is that committee work is usually a focused and planned
> effort. Having motions dripping between meetings will cause
> all of us to be
> on alert all the time and increase the fraction of time spent
> on committee
> work. I have some other work to do between meetings.
>
> Technical work is usually done by relatively small subgroups
> of experts.
> Having quorum requirement on email technical votes will cause
> many of those
> to fail due to lack of interest, and then somebody will come with
> "membership loss" rules etc.
>
> I would like to remind that there is another tool for
> technical progress
> between meetings, and that is teleconferences. Those are
> seldom used in
> 802.16, but in 802.11, for example, many issues are promoted by
> teleconferences.
>
> To summarize, email voting mechanism is a tool which needs to
> be in place
> (especialy for urgent issues such as response to external
> events), however
> the current motion does not detail the safeguards for its
> proper use and
> more work is needed to define those. I speak against the motion in its
> current form.
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Naftali Chayat.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger B. Marks [mailto:marks@boulder.nist.gov]
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 1:36 AM
> To: stds-802-16@ieee.org
> Subject: stds-802-16: 802 Rules Change ballots underway
>
>
> The 802 SEC is in the process of balloting on three rules changes.
> The voters are the SEC members, including me. The ballots all close
> on 8 June. Comment resolution is scheduled for the July meeting.
>
> Here are the three issues, briefly described, along with a link to
> the email announcement of the ballot:
>
> (1) move the SEC Closing Meeting to 1-6 pm on Fridays
> Sure: http://ieee802.org/secmail/msg02043.html
>
> (2) add a second SEC vice chair
> Sure: http://ieee802.org/secmail/msg02095.html
>
> (3) permit email voting in WG (other than Letter Ballots)
> Sure: http://ieee802.org/secmail/msg02040.html
>
> I have uploaded the text of the three changes to the WG
> upload directory.
>
> I will be discussing these at the Opening Plenary at Session #19, and
> I welcome your comments at the meeting or by email (preferably to the
> reflector).
>
> Roger
>