Re: [802SEC] Electronic participation in meetings
Geoff,
I believe, but am not at all certain, that your position might rest on
the fact that as membership is defined today there is no requirement
that the member have any particular qualification than to be able to pay
the meeting fee often enough and to sit in a designated conference room
long enough to meet our requirements. In my opinion, this results in an
average quality of member that is rather lower than many would wish. It
could be that you feel that an increase of the number of participants
through electronic means would further degrade this member quality. I
believe you would be correct. If our membership requirements don't
change.
To open our meetings to electronic participants, I would hope to raise
the quality of our members, as well. This would require that 802
revisit its membership requirements with that in mind. I believe that
these two things, when combined, would result in higher quality meetings
and more rapid standards development.
I would expect that our chairs would continue to exercise their ability
to run a meeting by limiting discussions of "low quality", just as they
do now. I don't see how having more participants will hamper their
efforts in this regard. I did grant that the currently available tools
might not be up to the standards that we would desire. But, that is not
a reason to discard the idea of electronic participation out of hand.
-Bob
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ***** IEEE 802 Executive Committee List ***** [mailto:STDS-802-
> SEC@ieee.org] On Behalf Of Geoff Thompson
> Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:02 AM
> To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: Re: [802SEC] Electronic participation in meetings
>
> At 08:05 PM 1/27/2009 , Bob O'Hara wrote:
>
> >To separate the general discussion of electronic participation
> >from the experiment run in the Whitespace SG, I have created
> >this new email thread. Please move the general discussion here.
> >
> >I have read the emails from Tony, John, Geoff, and others.
> >They all cite valid issues with the tool used and the problems
> >it created running an efficient meeting. I agree that the tool
> >has issues and causes inefficiencies in the meeting.
> >Tool issues are not a reason to not consider how we can open
> >our meetings to more participants, unless we are just against
> >that idea on general principles.
> I very strongly disagree.
> >
> >I believe that more participation generates better discussions,
> >Which then generate better standards.
> Not necessarily. If more participation requires a lower quality, more
> cumbersome discussion process for the most interested and most
committed
> parties, then broader participation is not necessarily a win. That is
the
> issue we are discussing here. If we open the process to anyone in the
world
> who is casually interested, perhaps not in a constructive way, then we
lose
> in terms of our goals, which is producing innovative and relevant new
> standards.
> > If electronic participation
> >will allow more people to participate, or even to observe, why
shouldn't
> we enable that?
> For precisely the reason above.
> It is a balance.
> We try to do invention by committee.
> It is not a given that the larger the committee, the better the
output.
> >
> > -Bob
> >
> Best regards,
>
> Geoff
>
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