OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

  • 1.  ODF TC call agenda and duration

    Posted 09-25-2008 12:28 
    Dear TC members,

I'm currently preparing the agenda for the next TC call, and I am 
noticing that we currently have more items on the agenda when we will be 
able to address in a single call, even if we skip re-occurring items 
like the review of action items or public comments. Some of the items 
furthermore are already on our agenda for some time.

In order to avoid that we get a large backlog of items, and to make sure 
that TC members don't have to wait too long for a discussion or ballot 
of the items they are requesting, I would like to propose two actions:

1) I would like to suggest that we add durations or times to the 
individual items on the agenda. If the duration we have planned is not 
sufficient, we may decide whether we continue the discussion, or whether 
we move the discussion to the mailing list or the next call.

My guess here is that we should reserve 10 minutes for the discussion of 
each new proposal, and 5 minutes for ballots on proposals that have been 
discussed already. If you believe that you require more time (or less), 
then I would like to ask you to let us know this so that we can consider 
this when setting up the agenda.

2) I further would like to suggest that we temporarily extend the 
duration of the call by half an hour.

The first item is something I would like to start with the next call. If 
you have any objections, please let me know that.

The second item requires a little bit more preparation, because 
extending the duration of the call may conflict with your schedules. I 
therefore would like to ask you to let us know if extending the call by 
half an hour does not work for you.

Best regards

Michael

-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
Sun Microsystems GmbH             Nagelsweg 55
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany          michael.brauer@sun.com
http://sun.com/staroffice         +49 40 23646 500
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS

Sitz der Gesellschaft: Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1,
	   D-85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten
Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder, Wolfgang Engels, Dr. Roland Boemer
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering


  • 2.  RE: [office] ODF TC call agenda and duration

    Posted 09-29-2008 15:32 
    Michael,

With regard to (2), it seems that we may not need to extend the call times.
I'm basing that on the fact that we ended promptly and covered the specific
agenda items.  There is a problem with some of the standing agenda items.

I also felt that having time blocked out is an excellent idea, and it seemed
to work well in this call.  We were running far overtime on the errata
discussion, but deferral of resolution on 17.5 put us back on track.

I have two suggestions for expediting the work further:

1. Although straw polls are very useful, we found that they are difficult
during the call.  I think this may be because the practice is unfamiliar.  I
also think that it may be difficult to do quickly because it is challenging
when the working language is not the native language of all participants.
My recommendation that we make use of the TC list for straw polls as a way
to tell whether we seem prepared to come to a conclusion.  This will also
provide more time to confirm understanding of what the question is and have
thoughtful responses.

2. With regard to action items:  It might be useful to identify action items
for which movement is requested one or two calls in advance, and have
responses made to the list.  The call could be used to confirm a status
change, at most.  

 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org 
  


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 3.  RE: [office] ODF TC call agenda and duration

    Posted 10-02-2008 05:05 
    If we can keep the main TC meetings to an hour, I think that is 
preferable.  The critical thing is for the meetings to focus on things 
that require a quorum of TC members to accomplish.  These are formally 
items which require votes by OASIS TC process or by the TC's standing 
rules. 

If we are spending TC time on things that does not require all of, then we 
are probably not operating as efficiently as we could.

I notice that we have been spending a large amount of time recently on 
defect reports and errata.  Although this is important work, it is 
probably not something that should dominate our TC  call time.  We should 
be spending most of our time on ODF 1.2 proposals that are ready for 
approval, or nearly so. 

That is my opinion.  Does anyone disagree with that premise?

What we have done in the past is create subcommittees when an important 
side activity requires a prolonged level of communication among a number 
of TC members to produce a draft ready for review by the entire TC.  We 
did this for accessibility initially, and then again for formula and 
metadata.  We recently did this again for ODF Next Requirements.

Subcommittees is how the TC scales its efforts.  If we had to discuss the 
minutia of every proposal on every call, we would never get anything done. 
 But if we have interested TC members prepare drafts in SC's, then we get 
the advantages of having the interested experts produce the draft, while 
preserving the rights of all TC members to review, possibly modify and 
eventually vote on the final version.

Of course, not everything require a SC.  If something can be resolved with 
a week-long discussion on the list, or my having a one-time call with an 
ad-hoc group of TC members, then that can be handled without the formality 
and overhead of a SC.  But let's recognize when a SC is appropriate.

It appears that Japan has submitted a 2nd defect report on ODF 1.0. 
Nothing surprising.  More typographical errors, much of it which we've 
already seen.  But we will need to process these, as well as other 
comments received by the public.  Rather than dominate TC time with these 
important, but less time sensitive issues, I wonder whether it is now 
appropriate to create a Maintenance SC?  Participants in this SC would be 
responsible for reviewing incoming comments and defect reports on existing 
ODF TC deliverables, and proposing dispositions (fix via errata, fix in 
next version, no fix, etc.) and drafting errata documents.  Both proposed 
dispositions and draft errata documents would be submitted to the full TC 
for review and approval.

I'm assuming that such a SC would attract interest from Patrick, Michael, 
Dennis and me.  Maybe others as well.  In many cases we're already doing 
this work.  The important thing would be that we would be taking this work 
off of the TC's agenda, and dealing with it (in the draft stage at least) 
via a separate call, thus preserving our current ODF TC call at 6 minutes.

-Rob



"Dennis E. Hamilton"


  • 4.  RE: [office] Meeting Effectiveness and Maintenance SC

    Posted 10-02-2008 16:09 
    My impression is that the TC Coordination Calls work best with the work
off-line to the calls and actions requiring voting well prepared prior to
the call (with the probe for comments prior to that call).

I also think that creation of a Maintenance Committee is timely, although I
can see polling the TC list on items where we would be baffled or uncertain
about the committee's desired direction.  I am available for such work along
with Michael, Rob, Patrick, and others.  In my case, it is part of my
gaining mastery over the specification so I can contribute more properly on
technical matter, so now is a good time before the spec hiccups become
invisible to me.

 - Dennis 

PS: I am concerned a little about the number of weekly calls I may be
dealing with.  I need to revamp my home-office telephony arrangements, I
think.


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 5.  Re: [office] Meeting Effectiveness and Maintenance SC

    Posted 10-02-2008 20:13 
    Dennis,

Please don't apologize for asking about processes that are unclear or 
that seem sub-optimal.

I don't want to increase the burden on Michael or Rob, who have lots of 
other duties but if the TC had a better interface (nothing any of us 
control), it would be much easier to automatically record the 
information you seek. Why a standards organization lacks something as 
simply as comment tracking as part of the service it offers all TCs is 
beyond me. It shouldn't be "roll your own" task for TC members who are 
already volunteering time on behalf of their employers.

BTW, you really should write the the OASIS administration about the use 
of the "*" next to names and companies. If I ever knew the explanation I 
have forgotten it and so far as I can tell, it isn't on the OASIS 
website. Now I am curious myself.

I appreciate your efforts to bring matters to our attention that some of 
us have simply accepted as "the way it is." Can't say that all of it 
will result in general agreement or even changes but I find it useful.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> My impression is that the TC Coordination Calls work best with the work
> off-line to the calls and actions requiring voting well prepared prior to
> the call (with the probe for comments prior to that call).
>
> I also think that creation of a Maintenance Committee is timely, although I
> can see polling the TC list on items where we would be baffled or uncertain
> about the committee's desired direction.  I am available for such work along
> with Michael, Rob, Patrick, and others.  In my case, it is part of my
> gaining mastery over the specification so I can contribute more properly on
> technical matter, so now is a good time before the spec hiccups become
> invisible to me.
>
>  - Dennis 
>
> PS: I am concerned a little about the number of weekly calls I may be
> dealing with.  I need to revamp my home-office telephony arrangements, I
> think.
>
> 
    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 6.  Questions and Answers - Asterisks, Attendance, and Issues Lists

    Posted 10-02-2008 21:17 
    First, the asterisk. This is the result of something that seemed like a
simple solution and turned into a nightmare. Way back in 2005 OASIS
instituted a new Membership Agreement along with a new IPR Policy. As each
member renewed, they had to execute the new Membership Agreement. Coupled
with that activity, as a TC reached a point where 50% of their membership
had signed the new Membership Agreement, they could start to transition to
one of the new IPR Modes. So, in order to identify which companies had
signed the new agreement, an asterisk was placed next to the company name as
each organization renewed. Of course individual members also had to execute
the new membership agreement and therefore gained an asterisk. Now
fast-forward to the summer of 2007. Each TC had to transition to the new IPR
modes by 15 April 2007. At that point everyone had executed the new
membership agreement. Asterisks weren't assigned to new members since they
weren't needed for tracking purposes. As members renewed, we started to
remove the asterisks. But then we noticed another problem - all of a sudden
individuals were showing up twice in the attendance records -- the system
apparently thought that BEA* was different from BEA, or Smith* was different
from Smith*. How to solve the problem? Well, if we could do a global search
and replace we could get rid of all of them at once. While the attendance
might look odd for a couple of meetings, it would soon straighten itself
out. As we dug further into the mysteries of Kavi, it was clear that there
was no way we could ensure that we wouldn't be causing greater harm than
good. So the asterisks remain. Their meaning? Absolutely nothing.

Second, recording attendance. I'm actually surprised that the TC doesn't do
this (no offense intended to the Chairs/Secretaries). I thought all of them
did. I highly recommend it. A simple template for meeting minutes could list
all members and then a notation indicating who did/didn't attend beside it
(like an asterisk ;-). Some TC minutes also record who gained/lost voting
rights at the end of the meeting. This also allows the members to make sure
their attendance (or lack thereof) was properly recorded.

I'm not sure what the third question is - comment tracking? Oh yes. Issues
list. Our IT staff consists of two individuals - a systems administrator and
a webmaster. Both of these individuals are constantly exceeding our
expectations, but they're still just two individuals. We do have options for
external hosting as long as the OASIS requirements are met (and each request
must be approved by the TC Administrator). Several TCs are using a JIRA
system that is hosted elsewhere and I was hoping that they would allow us to
use their SAAS version for free but they differentiate between "open source"
and "open standards." We don't have the infrastructure to install, support
and maintain an issues tracking system ourselves right now; however, were
someone willing and able to host this I'd be happy to work through the OASIS
requirements with them.

It should be noted that while a number of TCs use a variety of systems for
issues tracking, no TC has ever anticipated the volume of "comments" that
are anticipated to be received by the new requirements SC. I'm open to any
and all suggestions!

(For instance, how about an XForms app where the commenter fills out the
form and an XSLT takes the relevant information and produces a report
similar to the TCs that are currently using XML to track their issues lists?
Anyone volunteering to build it?)

Regards,

Mary


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 7.  Re: [office] Questions and Answers - Asterisks, Attendance,and Issues Lists

    Posted 10-06-2008 08:21 
    Mary,

thank you very for your clarifications.

On 10/02/08 23:19, Mary McRae wrote:
> 
> Second, recording attendance. I'm actually surprised that the TC doesn't do
> this (no offense intended to the Chairs/Secretaries). I thought all of them
> did. I highly recommend it. A simple template for meeting minutes could list
> all members and then a notation indicating who did/didn't attend beside it
> (like an asterisk ;-). Some TC minutes also record who gained/lost voting
> rights at the end of the meeting. This also allows the members to make sure
> their attendance (or lack thereof) was properly recorded.

Actually, we are recording attendance. What we don't do is
1. to track in the minutes who of the attending TC members has voting 
rights and who has not
2. to track which TC members (with or without voting rights) are not 
attending

I have checked the minutes of several TCs when it was suggested that we 
track these things, too. I found only a single TC that tracks this 
information. All others TCs that I have checked simply seem to track who 
is attending, too.

While marking who of the attending TC members has voting rights seems to 
be practicable, it seems not to be practicable to track the status of 
all TC members in the minutes. The ODF TC has 56(!) members. About 13 of 
them attend regularly to TC coordination calls.

We may track who has voting rights but is not attending. But this would 
also mean that we duplicate information that is present in KAVI at the 
time a meeting takes place, and that we maintain there, too.

If it is is recommended that we track non-attending TC members, would it 
then be possible that KAVI's meeting attendance tool does track the 
status of TC members when we record the attendance? All information is 
present where. It is only not stored with the meeting records.

Best regards

Michael

-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
Sun Microsystems GmbH             Nagelsweg 55
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany          michael.brauer@sun.com
http://sun.com/staroffice         +49 40 23646 500
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS

Sitz der Gesellschaft: Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1,
	   D-85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten
Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder, Wolfgang Engels, Dr. Roland Boemer
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering


  • 8.  RE: [office] Questions and Answers - Asterisks, Attendance, and Issues Lists

    Posted 10-06-2008 13:15 
    Hi Michael,

  No reason to track non-attending members; the suggestion was only that a)
a listing of those in attendance is noted in the meeting minutes, and b) a
note is made to identify those members who either gained or lost voting
rights at the end of the meeting (that is, transitions). The list of who is
actually on the TC is publicly available from the TC home page.

Regards,

Mary

> 
    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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  • 9.  RE: [office] Questions and Answers - Asterisks, Attendance, and Issues Lists

    Posted 10-06-2008 20:43 
    My original suggestion was only to track non-attending Voting Members, in
addition to identifying those voting members among the attendees.  I
suggested this because it matters in regard to quorum determination and,
secondarily, because it makes visible the changing of Voting Member status
and is also in a completely-public place. 

I agree that tracking all members in the minutes is unworkable and also
unnecessary for any procedural purpose.


    
                                                
    
					
                                                    

        
                                                
				
    
                                                
    
                                                    
                                                        
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