Hello
Messages on the list last week about the meeting on 30th November suggested
that it might be worth reminding all list members about the current
arrangements for FISHEN face to face meetings.
At present there are three overlapping 'types' of FISHEN member:-
1) List members / e-conference delegates - ie everyone receiving this
message. This is an open list and everyone with an interest in the work of
promoting and using standards for information in the heritage sector is very
welcome to join. The list provides the main 'forum' for debate and
discussion, and also an online archive of FISHEN papers.
2) Attending members - these are representatives of organisations involved
in the sector who have the time and resources to commit to attending
meetings twice a year, and to undertake development work on FISHEN
standards.
3) Non-attending members - these are representatives of heritage sector or
related sector organisations who want to be kept in touch with the work of
attending members by receiving papers from meetings etc. They have a
standing invitation to attend any meeting if the discussion will be relevant
to a particular project they are involved in.
To clarify the situation that arose last week (for which I apologise - I was
on a training course and had not discussed arrangements in detail with Phil
C.) the meeting on 30th will be of attending members. A draft agenda was
sent round to attending members for their comments. This would have been
followed up in the usual course of events by a final agenda which would have
gone to both attending and non-attending members, along with details of the
venue, so that the non-attending members could decide whether or not they
wish to join us on the 30th. Instead the draft agenda went to everyone on
this list.
As regards the venue, the meeting of attending members (and those
non-attending members who are joining us on this occasion) on the 30th will
in fact be in *both* Swindon and London. We will be making use of the
video-conference link that now joins the two English Heritage offices.
Clearly with the development of FISH as a UK wide forum, this is a
technology that will be of great asistance in making possible face to face
meetings, at least in a virtual sense, of representatives from across the
U.K., and perhaps even further afield. Details of the venues will go to all
attending members and non-attending members who are joining the meeting
tommorrow.
I'd be very interested to hear from list members who have experience of use
of video-conferencing for meetings of this sort. Perhaps you could copy any
comments to this list, so that we can as a group start to evaluate the
potential of this approach. For those with a technical interest, EH uses
equipment supplied by Polyspan (see www.polyspan.com) with 512K leased lines
connecting the offices, providing TV quality images.
Edmund Lee
FISHEN Coordinator
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|