On Jan 31, 2005, at 2:10 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Giles is disappointed about the Private Nature of J3 and WG5
> deliberations.
> As many others have pointed out, this is simply not the case.

And it has been pointed out before (including specifically to him). I
simply don't even understand where this comment comes from. If
anything, the deliberations are so open that it makes them harder to
follow. Everything is on the public server. (There's a small members
only area that has almost nothing in it - mostly things like copies of
some other standards that the committee has copies of but is not
legally allowed to make publicly available). There is so much on the
server that it is hard to paw through and find the "good" stuff. It
would take just as much work as... it takes the committee members
themselves.

As Van says so well, if one doesn't step up and volunteer to come to
the meetings and scribe everything said, one isn't in a very good
position to complain that nobody else has volunteered to do it for you.
There was once a time when at least some of the major debates were
scribed; yes, it can be done. But volunteers to do that have largely
dried up. (And then there was a thankfully isolated case of a scribe
who simply would not make even an attempt to present an impartial
summary; the debates about fixing the scribe notes took longer than the
original technical debate.  :-().

(I'll note that Van clearly works very hard himself. I don't know how
he does it. I couldn't put out that much if I worked on it full time.
Not that I always agree with Van's proposals, but I can't help but
admire the amount of work).

I've largely finished with my work on the committee for now (its been
nearly a decade and a half), other than throwing in my occasional
comments remotely. I've learned many things in the process, probably
mostly things I should have learned in kindergarden, but I was a little
slow.  :-) Among them are..

1. As much as we all (myself included) make generic "committee jokes",
this kind of work needs the breadth of viewpoint that you get from a
committee. No one person has adequate appreciation of all the issues.
The tricky part is in figuring out that this even means me.  :-) Yes,
working in a committee structure is frustrating and horribly
inefficient. I could vent about the frustrations a lot; this doesn't
seem the place or time.

2. The technical part of the work is important.  And hard work.... And
not enough. There is a people part also. You not only have to have good
ideas and work hard on them. You also have to get other people to go
along with them. This shouldn't be any great surprise to anyone here.
But successfully applying the knowledge of the importance of that
people part can be pretty hard also. One *COULD* think to start by
explaining how everyone else was screwing things up, if one wanted to
add to the challenge of the game, but.... :-(

--
Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
[log in to unmask]       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
                             |        -- Mark Twain